Huckabee Supporters are not "Religious Bigots"

Huckabee Supporters are not "Religious Bigots"

Politics is not bean bag and there is frequently a temptation to try to demonize your opponents. The successful politicians I admire resisted that impulse.

I don’t like Obama’s ideas but one of the reasons he’s beating Hillary is because he’s nice and nice usually beats nasty.

So please, people, the Christians who have come out in support of Huckabee may be mistaken or misinformed but they are not religious bigots.

The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler has it right when he quotes someone named Bryan at “Hot Air”

It’s going to be unwise going forward for Huckabee’s opponents and their supporters to keep throwing out the “religious bigots” line against him. That’ll be the quickest way to divide the GOP and turn off voters who were recently being asked and often told that they would have to vote for Giuliani even though he doesn’t represent their issues well. Huckabee’s opponents are going to have to outflank him on issues and be more articulate in expressing them than he is.

He follows up with:

That’s exactly right. It has been a puzzle to us why, with somebody as obviously inept and uninformed like Huckapoo sticking his foot in his mouth every time he opens it, his opponents have been harping on about his self-hyped Christianity instead.
Listen: We know that you Establishment RINOs don’t much like religion, that you’d much rather that all of us religious yokels, all 85% of us or so, just turn up and vote for your candidates and then shut up for another four years so you don’t get the Christian Cooties all over your well-coiffed, beltway noggins, but it really doesn’t play very well with all of those of us who actually believe, and we are a rather significant demographic, you know.
Now, before any newcomers not familiar with our position start thinking that we’re endorsing the Huckamessiah’s tent revival meeting-style campaign or his endless and quite loud implications that he’s the only Christian in the race (he isn’t) and that if you don’t vote for him, the Baby Jesus will cry and Hellfire will be unleashed upon us, let’s make abundantly clear that it sticks in our craw as well. It’s disgusting, it’s not true and it’s about as close as you can get to hubris without having to dodge actual thunderbolts. As a matter of fact, the Huckster had better lay off his insinuations about being G-d’s Anointed Candidate unless he does want to become a walking lightning rod.
That’s not the point here. Our point, and Bryan’s, it seems, is that when you completely ignore the Huckaclown’s obvious, objectively indisputable lack of qualifications and complete ignorance of anything going on anywhere outside his house in Arkansas and instead harp on about his religion, you’re making his point for him. As a matter of fact, you’re being as stupid as he is, only in reverse. He’s saying that we should vote for him because he’s a Christian, you’re saying that we shouldn’t for the same reason.
Now, take a deep breath, put down your cocktails, put on your thinking caps for a second, you can always take a couple of Tylenols afterwards to relieve the headaches, and ask yourselves: “How is that going to look to the eighty-freaking-five or so percent of voters who are Christians?”
Can you say “protest vote?” Can you say “they’ve fucking well had it with the anti-religious bullshit and they aren’t going to take it anymore?”

Rush Limbaugh made the same point (with less robust rhetoric) recently when a caller called Huckabee’s supporters bigots. Rush sighed and said “that’s not helpful” and he’s right. You are not going to change anyone’s mind by calling them names or impugning their motives.

Huckabee is good at connecting with people on a visceral level. He’s personable, he’s funny and he makes no apologies for his Christianity. And Christians who have been put down by Democrats, the drive-by-media and by the country-clubbers in the Republican Party will only get more emotionally attached to Huckabee if they are attacked for sharing his religion.

Huckabee appears to be no more of a statesman than the last president who came out of Arkansas, but his problem is with his political instincts, not his religion. I’m fine with someone putting a cross in his Christmas message and with carrying a Bible into or out of church, as long as it’s not a prop but an expression of genuine faith.

Regarding attacks, I suggest that the best way to the nomination and the election is to show how America and the world would be better if you led it. Leave the attacks to losers.

The Clintons: Never Again!

Democrats don’t like Hillary!!!

Here is a very interesting article on the Iowa caucuses.

Before I tell you what is most interesting let me repeat myself: Iowa is not America and the Iowa caucuses are waaayyyy over-blown.

However, there is something to be learned from even this unrepresentative gathering. And the lesson is this: Hillary is not the choice of a majority of Democrats. More importantly, she is not the second choice of those who don’t place her number one. That is the reason she lost in Iowa.

Here are the relevant statistics for one caucus site:

Clinton, Obama, Edwards, each in their corner of the room. The opening count runs as follows:

Clinton: 52

Edwards: 43

Obama: 39

Biden: 13

Richardson: 9

Dodd: 9

Kucinich: 2

Undecided: 1

Of 168 people, Hillary is the first choice of 52, or 31%.

The Democrat caucus rules require a candidate to receive 15% of the vote. If you receive less than 15% your supporters must decide who else they want to support or form another viable group that polls at least 15%.

…the final count is handed down:

Edwards: 56

Clinton: 55

Obama: 54

Hillary has picked up only three delegates from the unaligned, while Edwards has gained 13 and Obama 15. This is the same pattern that the rest of the state saw — the same pattern that each of us predicted prior to caucus night. Hillary is no one’s second choice.

And that’s important. The Clinton cabal has a hard core of loyal supporters. But that core is not a majority. And it will not become a majority because too many people, Democrats as well as Republicans, remember the Clinton years as a corrupt and smutty soap opera script.

For this country, the Clintons: Never Again!

Virginian Pilot Exposes ... Nothing

I was sitting down, not bothering anyone; getting ready to eat some scrambled eggs and toast, using the Virginian Pilot as a place mat (it's highest and best use) when I saw the headline scream:

Suffolk paid nearly $250,000 to former high-level workers.

What the heck, why not pass the time and find out what those rascals in Suffolk’s city hall are up to now.

You can read the article by crack(ed) reporter Aaron Applegate for yourself.

So what nefarious things went on? Well it turns out that three Suffolk employees were entitled by contract or other agreement with the city to severance pay.

Example:

Herbert continued to draw his salary for six months after he was fired. The payments, totaling $65,000, were guaranteed under his contract with the council.

Which we find out as Applegate’s non-shocker winds to a miserable close.

City officials and the former employees declined to talk about the payments.
Severance packages for high-level employees are common practice and usually include provisions barring both sides from talking about them and from filing lawsuits related to the separation

My time did not pass by reading the article. It was murdered.

Virginian Pilot and local ownership

A day or so ago a letter was published written by Perry Miles lamenting the loss of local ownership of the Virginian Pilot.

AM DEEPLY DISAPPOINTED that Landmark is considering selling The Virginian-Pilot (front page, Jan. 3). Having ownership of the local newspaper in the hands of local owners, especially those with deep family ties to the region, is incredibly important to a sense of community. No doubt the business reasons are compelling, and newspaper ownership is a business. But it can also be, and has been here, so much more.
Farewell to all that.

He referred to “deep family ties to the region” and “a sense of community.”

I wondered at that.

I’m at a loss to see how the Batten family’s ties to this region have helped the readers of the Virginian Pilot. As I said before (HERE) the Virginian Pilot is a terrible product…

...produced by people who have some serious issues. For one thing, they hold their customers in sincere contempt, dumbing down the product, insulting their intelligence, and disparaging their beliefs and morals. All the while providing a product that is so riddled with errors and so many quality control problems that if it were not for the First Amendment, there would be a “newspaper lemon law.”

And that “sense of community” Mr. Miles referred to? Is it the focus on reporting on local events and reprinting wire service stories for everything else? That, Mr. Miles, is due to the fact that the Virginian Pilot does not have the money or the desire to do anything about sending reporters outside of the local area except for some stunts.

Oh, and that sense of community apparently does not extend to the military; the largest part of the community. With the military success in Iraq spiked by the Virginian Pilot, today we get treated to a front page story (reprinted from the Washington Post!) about the sexual escapades of two soldiers (one man and one woman) which left the woman dead following an auto accident. Note that this gratuitous front page story has no local tie-in. But it does have a local effect on the military wives who read this bit of trash.

The billionaire Batten family has decided that the peak of the market has passed for media properties and are cashing in their chips. Don’t cry for them. And don’t cry for the loss of local ownership and for the editorial staff who are responsible for this lemon. There is little hope that the next owner will be better for the community given the ideological blinders members of the drive-by-media wear. But the sale of the Virginian Pilot is a hopeful sign that the old media monopoly is nearing the end of its life and that citizen journalists will take up the slack.

The Meaning of Iowa

Rush Limbaugh predicted yesterday that if Hillary!!! Lost Iowa, her fellow campers would begin disparaging the Iowa caucuses. The people who caucus are few and Iowa is unrepresentative of the rest of the country.

Remember, Iowans have elected Tom Harkin, certified loon and convicted liar, to Congress since 1974. Iowans are isolationist, insular, and not a little bit greedy. The way to appeal to Iowans is to pass farm bills laden with fat and subsidies for the farm products produced there.

So let it be said that while I disagree with Hillary!!! on virtually everything, the spin we will hear is actually right. Iowa is not the country and the person who wins the Iowa caucuses is usually not the winner of the general election. In fact, only two people who were not incumbents won the Iowa poll and went on to win the presidency: George Bush and Jimmy Carter.

The primary reason for this is that the caucus goers are so unrepresentative. Caucusing is a great deal more time consuming that going out to vote so only a small number of people actually bother to go out. And those that do go out are committed. They are often fierce partisans and members of fringe groups. They are swayed by identity politics, the strategy that brought Preacher Huckabee his win in Iowa. The evangelical vote is so strong on the Republican side that Pat Robertson beat George H.W. Bush (the incumbent Vice President) in 1988.

So the Clinton camp will have a point when they dismiss Hillary’s third place finish in Iowa. But they will miss a larger point. Hillary!!! is not really running an independent campaign. The Clintons are running for a restoration of the Clinton presidency. The Iowa vote was more a referendum on Bill’s third term than it was a vote for Hillary!!! In that respect, Iowa is possibly The Last Days of the Clinton Dymasty, as Philip Klein states in the American Spectator.

With few tangible accomplishments of her own, Hillary Clinton launched her White House bid almost a year ago based largely on her husband's record, and on the promise of a return to the 1990s.

Well, on Thursday night, that dog didn't hunt.

Democratic voters overwhelmingly wanted change, and they didn't define change as turning back the clock 16 years. Instead, they came out in massive numbers to support the charismatic freshman Senator Barack Obama, and the former First Lady was relegated to a third place finish.


ON THE NIGHT before the caucuses, Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton shared the stage together at the State Historical Museum Building in downtown Des Moines. Had Fleetwood Mac's "Don't Stop" been playing in the background, it would have served as the perfect interactive exhibit: a 1992 Clinton campaign rally.

"It's been wonderful having my family with me," Hillary said after Bill introduced her, "and I think we were all just reminded what it was like to have a Democratic president of our country." It was a not so subtle appeal to Democratic nostalgia for her husband, which has been the cornerstone of her campaign.

There are, of course, people who have fond memories of the Clinton years. But for most people, the Clintons means turmoil, personal scandals, loathing for the military, stained blue dresses, shady land deals and improbably profits in cattle futures, disappearing records and misplaced FBI files. These are all fodder for soap operas, but not for the occupants of the White House.

The Clintons have mistaken the generosity of Chinese and Arab donors, the fawning of the drive-by-media and the adoration of well-worn and over-aged feminist post-pubescent girls for broad based support of the American people. When even the Democrats in Iowa caucus for change, the handwriting is on the wall. The era of Clinton is over.

Freepers for Thompson

Jim Robinson, founder of the FreeRepublic website has come out for Fred Thompson. Since FR is blocked by some of the Internet filters used by corporate America, I am reprinting his endorsement in full.

Why Fred Thompson is the best candidate (IMHO)
January 3, 2008 Jim Robinson


Posted on 01/03/2008 9:53:38 AM EST by Jim Robinson


He's pro life, liberty, gun, constitution, originalist judges, federalism, small government, low taxes, economic freedom, secure borders, strong defense, national security, national sovereignty, etc.

He's the most reliable conservative in the field and comes without the social liberalism, abortionism, nanny statism, open borders, gun grabbing, big government, big spending, big tax leanings and unstable knife in the back RINO baggage of Giuliani, Romney, Huckabee and McCain.

He doesn't cater to the global warming, socialized health care, or open borders/amnesty crowds. Just say no to all this liberal garbage.

With Fred, we know we're getting a solid, no-nonsense, commonsense pro life and liberty conservative who will defend the nation, secure the borders, defend the constitution, appoint originalist judges, defend the Bush tax cuts, work to simplify and flatten the tax code, keep social security solvent while providing alternative private accounts, reduce government and spending, and work to return states issues to the states. Imagine that.

In fact, he comes closest to being the conservative leader I've been praying for all these years. I don't know about you, but I think it would be great to be able to enthusiastically support and work for a true conservative candidate whose principles and convictions match so many of my own.

Also, he'll beat the socks off any liberal Democrat in the debates and during the campaign. The Democrat will be pushing to end the war and bring the troops home on some arbitrary date (ie, total defeat for us), pushing for universal health care, pushing to roll back the tax cuts and increase taxes on the "rich," pushing global warming, pushing comprehensive immigration reform (amnesty), pushing for gay rights, and for any and all manner of big government nanny state/socialist federal programs.

Fred will advance the commonsense conservative constitutional/federalist answer for all these issues, ie, "no." All of the other leading Republican candidates will try to outdo the liberal in pushing one or more of the "conservative" universal health insurance plan, the "conservative" solution to global warming, the "conservative" solution to immigration reform (amnesty), the "conservative" federal solution for education, the "conservative" solution to balance the budget (ie, this means tax increases rather than cutting government), etc., etc. Now, in all of the above sentences where I enclosed the word "conservative" in quotes, re-read them as "RINO.") In other words, the RINOs will compromise and give up the fight and give in to the liberals. They win, we lose.

He also recognizes that we are in a war between civilizations and that our very survival as a free and secure nation among free and secure nations hinges on defeating Islamic extremism and ending the scourge of International terrorism. The war must be fought to the finish, and fought to the total annihilation of organized terrorism. And, no, it is NOT the same as fighting crime. War is hell!

If I were a resident of Iowa today, I know I would caucus for Fred!

This endorsement is no small thing.

Virginian Pilot For Sale (Death Throes of an Industry)

A friend of mine died recently.

He wasn’t that old.

He had been hospitalized for months but the doctors gave his family hope that he would recover. And then one day I got a call from his wife; he had died suddenly. It was not totally unexpected, but it was still a shock.

So when I saw the headline in the Virginian Pilot that Landmark Communications, the Virginian Pilot’s parent company, had hired two investment firms to see if they could sell the company, it was not a total surprise. Like the death of my friend, the timing of the inevitable announcement is the surprise.

But after the first moment, the rationale becomes obvious.

The newspaper business has become totally dysfunctional. As in most cities, the Virginian Pilot is the only paper in town. The paper’s monopoly position as an advertizing medium protects it somewhat from the effects of its other business practices. After all, where are the car dealers, furniture stores, appliance stores and want-ad buyers going to go?

But the other part of the newspaper business is the filler that surrounds the advertisements: the so-called “news.” That part of the product has severe problems. It is produced by people who have some serious issues. For one thing, they hold their customers in sincere contempt, dumbing down the product, insulting their intelligence, and disparaging their beliefs and morals. All the while providing a product that is so riddled with errors and so many quality control problems that if it were not for the First Amendment, there would be a “newspaper lemon law.”

The Batten family, owners of Landmark, has become fabulously wealthy. And wealthy families, if they want to stay that way, know when to hold them and know when to fold them. They have several successful properties including the Weather Channel as well as the Virginian Pilot, and see that the peak of the market has arrived.

For the Virginian Pilot, the peak has passed, there is no end in sight, and no fixing a hopelessly defective business model. More and more their readers are finding the real news in the Internet. The culture of Olympian Liberalism is so pervasive that it cannot be changed without firing the entire staff. So they’re putting some lipstick on this pig and selling out while there is still some value to the franchise.

Who will buy this property? The rest of the drive-by-media conglomerates are looking at the same bleak future. The best bet is for wealthy dilettante to come along and use the paper as his personal plaything.

I feel sorry for the production people. But for those who are responsible for the actual output, not so much.

As the mafia hit man said to his victim, “nothing personal, it’s business.”

Fred Thompson: too sane to be President?

Paul Marks at Samizdata.net:

This morning Fox and Friends concentrated on three candidates in relation the Iowa caucuses on Thursday night: the two lead candidates in the polls, Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney - and John McCain... this was in spite of the fact that Senator McCain is not in Iowa (he is in New Hampshire) and that Fred Thompson is ahead of John McCain is most of Iowa polls.

This is a part of pattern: last night Fred Thompson was on Fox News Sunday, but in the panel discussion, later in the show, the panellists ignored Fred Thompson. He is attacked by people, including me, for not going on enough television shows - but when he does go on what he says is ignored, so perhaps I see why he does not clamour to go on. Yesterday morning Fox and Friends, like the rest of the media, was busy laughing at Fred Thompson's comments about not being obsessed with politics: "If one is not passionate about campaigning one should not run for office," was the message of the media.

But what sort of person is passionate about the political process? Not getting things done - but the process of gaining votes. Of going around pretending to be close personal friends with lots and lots of people one has never met before?

Fred Thompson is in the middle of a 40 town Iowa tour - so he is hardly lazy. And he does go on television shows - thus dealing with critics, such as myself, who attacked him for not going on enough shows. But what sort of person would enjoy all this?

A lunatic. Someone who was interested in office for its own sake - not as a means to reduce the size and scope of government.

What the media, including Fox News (the only non-leftist news station and, therefore, of vital importance in the Republican nomination process), are saying is that Fred Thompson is too sane to be President. It is not enough to produce detailed policies for dealing with the entitlement program Welfare State (a cancer that is destroying the United States and the rest of the Western World), or producing a new optional flat tax (individuals could continue to use the existing system if they wished to) to deal with the nightmare of complexity that the income tax has become.

It is not even enough to have a long record of service, going back to Watergate and taking down a corrupt Governor of Tennessee in the 1970's. And having one of the most Conservative voting records in the United States Senate - before leaving it in disgust at how the system did not allow real reform.

No - someone has to enjoy the prospect for office for its own sake, not to reduce the size and scope of government and restore a Federal Republic. One must enjoy the whole process of politics - i.e. be crazy. Or one must pretend to enjoy it - i.e. be a liar.

And then people complain that politicians are either crazy or corrupt. When they shoo away anyone who comes along who is neither crazy or corrupt.

Patterico’s Los Angeles Dog Trainer Year in Review 2007

Long but very much worth reading. Especially for this insight in how the drive-by-media uses adjectives to set the stage:

From a piece written in 2004:

Liberal Bias in the Wording of a News Article

Liberal bias takes many forms. When the alleged bias is the omission or distortion of critical facts, demonstrating the bias is a more straightforward project. But there is a more subtle and far more pervasive bias that is harder to explain to skeptics: a bias based on the wording of a piece. This sort of bias manifests itself in the tone, the word usage, and the perspective of a piece. I am going to attempt to explain this sort of bias today, by showing some of the devices used.

Today the Washington Post prints one of those articles that drive conservatives like me crazy. The article, a front-page news analysis titled Kerry Put On Defensive About Iraq, just drips with sympathy for Kerry. But I don’t find any clear misstatements of fact in the piece. The bias is in the way it’s worded, starting with the very first paragraph:

Over the past week, President Bush and Vice President Cheney have thrown Sen. John F. Kerry on the defensive with a daily assault designed to tarnish his credentials as a possible commander in chief. But the orchestrated attacks also revealed the president’s vulnerabilities on the issue that continues to shape the presidential campaign as much as any other.

I chuckled when I read the part about the “orchestrated attacks.” It reminded me of the survey that one web site did of all the times Dan Rather had used the phrase “carefully orchestrated leak.” You will not be surprised to learn that Rather always used the phrase to refer to alleged leaks by Republicans. Republicans are apparently the masters of “orchestration,” whether you’re talking leaks or attacks.

You see, whenever one candidate criticizes another, there are two ways to characterize what’s happening. If you think the criticism may be valid, you will refer to the criticism passively, and discuss the “mounting criticism” of the candidate being criticized. But if you don’t like the criticism, then you will refer to the criticism as an “attack.” You will consistently phrase the description of the criticism in the active voice, as in: “Cheney attacked Kerry over the issue of . . .” Rather than saying that the parties voicing the criticism have “pointed out” their opponent’s misstatements, you will say they “seized on” those misstatements.

This is the approach taken by this piece, beginning with its title: “Kerry Put On Defensive About Iraq” (rather than simply: “Kerry On Defensive About Iraq.”) It is replete with phrases accusing Bush and Cheney of attacking Kerry. Here are a few examples:

President Bush and Vice President Cheney have thrown Sen. John F. Kerry on the defensive with a daily assault designed to tarnish his credentials . . .

. . . .

The attacks also underscore the urgency within Bush’s campaign to deny Kerry a sustained post-convention bounce.

. . . .

Given that reality, Bush has gone on the offensive against Kerry.

. . . .

Bush and Cheney have seized on Kerry’s comment that he would vote again to give Bush authority to go to war, his claim that he would try to reduce troop strength significantly during his first six months in office and his comment about waging a more sensitive war on terrorism.

The GOP attacks followed a familiar pattern. Bush struck first . . . [t]hen Cheney moved in with tougher language designed to raise questions about Kerry’s reliability. Bush and Cheney also selectively interpreted Kerry’s words to cast them in the worst possible light.

. . . .

Cheney seized on a comment Kerry had made to the Unity convention of minority journalists about how he would differ from Bush on terrorism.

. . . .

Cheney fired back that sensitivity never won a war.

. . . .

Bush has also put Kerry on the defensive over a comment the Democrat made about troop levels in Iraq.

It’s hard to read the piece without coming to the conclusion that Bush and Cheney are just a pair of bullies. But what are they doing? Simply engaging in partisan rhetoric characteristic of any presidential campaign — rhetoric that Kerry engages in as well. Yet Kerry and his advisers are never described as “attacking” the Administration.

Another interesting thing about this news analysis is that it is told from the point of view of the Kerry campaign. In narrative fiction writing, this form of narrative viewpoint is known as a “limited omniscient” or “third person restricted” viewpoint:

To foster greater emotional involvement by the reader, the third person perspective can be limited to just one character. The narrator is still an objective observer, but one who comments on the thoughts and actions that are available only to the chosen character.

This is the way the news analysis is written. We see the thoughts of the Kerry advisers as though we can see into their minds: “Kerry advisers see the criticisms as both wrong and distorted.” But the thoughts of the Bush campaign are a matter of speculation — the writer seemingly has to guess what Bush and his advisers are thinking: “Bush’s goal appears aimed at shifting the focus of the debate from what has happened in Iraq to who can best be trusted to keep the country safe in the future. . . ”

What difference does it make to tell a story from the perspective of only one party? Roger Ebert once explained how, by making Norman Bates the protagonist of the horror film “Psycho,” Alfred Hitchcock was able to get the audience to see things from Bates’s point of view — to the point where, at times, we are actually rooting for the killer to get away with his crime:

The sequence ends with the masterful shot of Bates pushing Marion’s car (containing her body and the cash) into a swamp. The car sinks, then pauses. Norman watches intently. The car finally disappears under the surface.

Analyzing our feelings, we realize we wanted that car to sink, as much as Norman did.

The point: we are more likely to identify with, and sympathize with, the party whose point of view is given prominence.

It would be possible to tell the exact same story that is told in the Post news analysis, but put a completely different spin on the facts, by simply changing the tone, the facts that are highlighted, and the point of view that is emphasized. To demonstrate this, in the extended entry, I have placed the original story in the left-hand column, and have placed in the right-hand column a rewritten version of the story — one that uses the techniques I have just described, to spin the analysis to favor Bush. I think you’ll find that the rewritten version conveys a very different overall impression.

Patterico then demonstrates how the article could have been written with a conservative, pro-Bush spin using exactly the same facts.

The demonstration is eye-opening.

Read the whole thing.

Washington Post Finds Iraqis Who Did Not Enjoy Their New Year's Eve Party

Via IraqPundit:

At the New Year, many of us make resolutions. We promise ourselves that we will be better people. We say we'll quit smoking. We say we'll give more to charity. I would like to recommend that WaPo resolve to dispose of its hellish prism. Yes, I mean that very prism through which it views and covers Iraq. You know the one, the "it sucks to be Iraqi" prism.

From the AP (publisher of terrorist propaganda):

"It was something not seen in Baghdad since before the 2003 invasion — people publicly welcoming a new year with singing, dancing and alcohol-fueled revelry. The ballrooms of two landmark hotels — the Palestine and the Sheraton — were full of people for the first New Year's Eve celebrations after four years of violence that has bloodied Iraq."

From the NY Times! (which has done it's level best to sabotage Iraqi freedom):

"They were planning to party until dawn — it was safe enough to celebrate, but not to go home in the middle of the night,"

But from the Washington Post:

"We are here by the force of depression, not by bravery," said Hassan Abdul Hamid, a poet and television producer, who came with his wife and two teenage daughters. "Joy is a power that needs to be released, just like sickness."

But where was the joy? The people had come: More than 300 convened under the crystal chandelier in the banquet hall of the Alwiyah Club, a storied Baghdad social establishment. It was the revelry that was off to a ragged start.

The families sat at their tables silently eating hummus and Brussels sprouts, overwhelmed by the synthesizer and rasping bass. The teenage girls politely sipped cans of Pepsi through straws, and the young men puffed cigarettes and stared at the stage. A few babies started to cry.

It sucks to be a reporter when your side is losing (but the Iraqi people are winning).

Hillary's Death Defying Trips

Captain Ed summarizes all the things that are wrong with Hillary's self-promoting little lies about her daring exploits while first lady.

For those who remember when Geraldo Rivera did actual investigative journalism, his excellent work would often get marred by his shameless self-promotion. On more than one occasion, he would interject in his reports that his life was actually in danger while investigating mostly mundane controversies. Hillary Clinton seems to have discovered her inner Geraldo in claiming that she handled all of the dangerous diplomatic missions in the Clinton administration

Ever since Barack Obama suggested Hillary Clinton's eight years as first lady were a glorified tea party a few days back, she's looked for an opening to strike back.
On Saturday night in Dubuque she pounced, arguing she risked her life on White House missions in the 1990s, including a hair-raising flight into Bosnia that ended in a "corkscrew" landing and a sprint off the tarmac to dodge snipers. ...

It turns out that Clinton wasn't quite flying solo into harm's way that day.

She was, in fact, leading a goodwill entourage that included baggy-pants funnyman Sinbad, singer Sheryl Crow and Clinton's daughter, Chelsea, then 15, according to an account of the March 1995 trip in her autobiography "Living History."

In this appearance, Hillary insists that the guidelines in the White House were that any mission that carried danger should go to her, apparently rather than her husband. If that's true, it may say something about how Bill viewed her at the time, but this sounds more like another Clintonian affectation. If the mission carried that much danger, why would she have taken 15-year-old Chelsea along? Why would she have taken Sheryl Crow and Sinbad into a dangerous situation, where snipers would shoot down their airplane?

This absurdity demonstrates the larger absurdity of Hillary claiming her status as a First Lady as relevant experience for the presidency. No one knowingly sends spouses into harm's way, and they certainly don't send children into a shooting zone. The US usually doesn't send Presidents there, either; that's why we have a foreign service. Ambassadors and consular officials, trained to deal with these situations, usually get dispatched under heavy guard for diplomacy in regions such as these.

When a candidate reaches Geraldo levels of credibility, even the most impressive resume will eventually get discredited. Hillary keeps reminding us that she doesn't have the experience for the job, and she doesn't have the credibility to fool us into thinking she does. (via Dean Barnett at the Weekly Standard)

Read the rest. There are some surprising twists including the fact that this may not have happened at all.

Baghdad: First New Year's in years

BAGHDAD - It was something not seen in Baghdad since before the 2003 invasion — people publicly welcoming a new year with singing, dancing and general revelry.

The ballrooms of two landmark hotels — the Palestine and the Sheraton — were full of people for the first New Year's Eve celebrations after four years of violence that has bloodied Iraq.

Give thanks to God for all we have including life itself. Pray for those less fortunate, the victims of war. And for those who fight our battles for us, be especially thankful.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Day by Day

Puzzle

Reflections on Iraq and the Drive-by-Media

Tony Blankley (press secretary to former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich) takes a great quote from Donald Rumsfeld and gives it an interesting twist:

In Iraq, as military and security conditions continue to improve, American war politics enters one of its stranger moments in our history. Certainly it is historically odd for war reporting to diminish almost to the point of public invisibility -- just as our troops are starting to gain the upper hand. But we are fighting this war with the journalists we have, not the ones we want.

Fred's Message to Iowa Voters

Fred, in his own words to Iowa voters, makes the case for why he's the best man to America's next Commander in Chief.

Rules for living

Rules of living:

"Never get into a wrestling match with a pig. You both get dirty -- and the pig likes it."

Jill Lawrence and Why Reporters are both Despicable and Stupid

Jill Lawrence, a "reporterette" for USA Today tells us that Fred Thompson:

... doesn't like modern campaigning, isn't that interested in running for president and "will not be devastated" if he doesn't win.

Well, then what is he doing on the campaign trail? Perhaps the answer can be found in what Fred actually said:

Question: (Courtesy ABC News) My only problem with you and why I haven’t thrown all my support behind you is that I don’t know if you have the desire to be President. If I caucus for you next week, are you still going to be there two months from now?

Fred Thompson answer: That is a very good question, not because it’s difficult to answer, but I’m gonna answer it in a little different way than what you might expect.

In the first place, I got into the race about the time people normally get into get into it. The fact of the matter is people get into it a lot earlier than they used to. For some of them, they were juniors in high school.

The first place, I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t. I wouldn’t be doing this. I grew up in very modest circumstances. I left government and I and my family have made sacrifices to be sitting here today. I haven’t had any income for a long time because I figured to be clean, you’ve got to cut everything off. I was doing speaking engagements and I had a contract to do a tv show. I had a contract with abc radio…and so forth. A man would have to be a total fool to do all those things and to be leaving his family which is not a joyful thing if he didn’’t want to do it.

I am not consumed by personal ambition. I will not be devastated if I don’t do it. I want the people to have the best president they can have.

When this talk first originated from people around the country both directly and through polls, liked the idea of me stepping up and of course, you always look better form a distance.

But most of those people are still there. I approached it from the standpoint of a deal. A kind of a marriage. If one side of a marriage really has to be talked into the marriage, it probably ain’t going to be a good deal. But if you mutually decide it’s going to be a good thing. In this case, if you think this is a good thing for the country, then we have an opportunity to do some wonderful things together.

I’m offering myself up. I’m saying that I have the background, the capability and concern to do this and do it for the right reasons. I’m not particularly interested in running for president, but I think I’d make a good president.

Nowadays, the process has become much more important than it used to be.

I don’t know that they ever asked George Washington a question like this. I don’t know that they ever asked Dwight D. Eisenhower a question like this. But nowadays, it’s all about fire in the belly. I’m not sure in the world we live in today it’s a good thing if a president has too much fire in the belly. I approach life differently than a lot of people. People, I guess, wonder how I’ve been as successful as I’ve been in everything that I’ve done. I won two races in TN by 20 point margins in a state that bill Clinton carried twice. I’ve never had an acting lesson. I guess that’s obvious by people who’ve watched me…

When I did it, I did it. Wasn’t just a lark. Anything that’s worth doing is worth doing well. But I’ve always been a little more laid back than most. I’m only consumed by very, very few things. Politics is not one of them. The welfare of our country and our kids and grandkids is one of them.

If people really want in their president super type-a personality, someone who has gotten up every morning and gone to bed every night and been thinking about for years how they win the presidency of the united states, someone who can look you straight in the eye and say they enjoy every minute of campaigning, I ain’t that guy. So I hope I’ve discussed that and didn’t talk you out of anything. I honestly want – I can’t imagine a worse set of circumstances [than] achieving the Presidency of the United States under false pretenses. I go out of my way to be myself.

So,, Jill, does a man who does not want to be president give up a good job and subject himself to the anal exams that cretins like you perform ... why?

Follow up question: do you always write a story after you decide what the spin is going to be and without doing some fact checking?

More commentary from Railtank, Flopping Aces, Bob Krumm, and Red State.

See, this is what I don't understand. The flow of information is no longer uni-directional. There are more fact checkers out there than ever before. The quality control of the drive-by-media practitioners has never been high. Now the quality checkers are swarming around the Jills of this world, and the putrid product they produce looks less and less appetizing the longer it's examined. They claim to have "fact checkers" and, in fact, disdain the blogosphere for not having them. So why do the "fact checkers" (the MSM QC people) let this sort of junk get published? The answer is simple, really, the fact checkers are as clueless as the Jills of the world. The sort of idiocy that Jill wrote would strike a reasonable person as highly suspect and worth checking out. But to the sort of people who "fact check" this trash, given their ideological homogeneity, this sort of thing is, to their mind, "natural," coming from a Conservative. To them, conservatism is uncharted territory and they have no feel for what real conservatives say or do.

It does not have to be this way. But like the US auto industry, it's going to take the bankruptcy of some of the news "manufacturers" before the rest of them understand, really understand, that the old business model no longer works. Fox has found a niche and is willing to try a newer model. Rush Limbaugh has created a who new genre of broadcasting filling this untapped market. But the old MSM is convinced that its customers have no where else to go. They could not be more wrong. Detroit auto makers found the Japanese eating their lunch, but they were a long time adapting. Same for the MSM.

Limbaugh on Fred Thompson

From RedState Rush discussing Thomson's appearance on the Charlie Rose Show.

Rush:

Let's go to the audio sound-bites. Last night on Charlie Rose's show on PBS. Former Senator Fred Thompson is the guest. Charlie Rose says "You constantly say in this campaign that you are a conservative. What does that mean today?

plays clip from Charlie Rose interview:

Fred Thompson:

It means things that are consistent with God's design for man, is consistent with human nature, it's consistent with the lessons of history, the lessons of ages. They found form in the Constitution I think and what our founding fathers believed. They understand that man can do great and wonderful things, but man is prone to error and sometimes do terrible things. That too much power in too few hands is a dangerous thing. That power is a corrupting thing.

Charlie Rose:

In all of that you didn't mention abortion, gay rights, all things that have been part of recent presidential elections.

Fred:

Those... Well you are talking about different things there. Those are issues that are before us, which derive FROM principles.

end clip

Rush:

Now this is just fabulous to me. This is just great. Here Charlie Rose asks Fred Thompson 'Well what is a conservative today anyway?'. And so Fred gives his definition of a conservative and Charlie says 'Well wait a minute I didn't hear anything about abortion or gay rights, all the things that have been a part of recent presidential elections.' Here's how Fred answered that, because Charlie Rose came back and said 'Principles? What do you mean principles?'.

start next clip

Fred Thompson:

Principles are what guide you in coming to positions with regard to issues. You know the Declaration of Independence said that our basic rights come from God and not from man. The founders talked about you know life, liberty and the importance of that. And that everything is based on those basic principles. And I take those principles and you know for example I come to a pro-life conclusion there. And when we had issues you know for 8 years when I was in the United States Senate about whether or not the federal government should be funding, for example, abortion related activities and things of that nature you know, the application of those principles in that instance told me the answer was no properly.

end clip

Rush:

I guarantee you Charlie Rose is clueless here. None of this...this is...he's a listening to uh you know mongolese as Fred Thompson's going through all this. [laughing] Sometimes you just have to laugh at these poor clichéd liberals who just live in the most closeted cocooned world, while thinking they are the most worldly and uh erudite among us.

I agree with Rush. Thompson's answers were not just smart, they were wise. He has thought about the difference between principals and positions. Who else among the candidates would know the difference and be able to tell people plainly what the difference is?

Pakistan: Bhutto Died of Skull Fracture

Bhutto was killed when she tried to duck back into the vehicle, and the shock waves from the blast knocked her head into a lever attached to the sunroof, fracturing her skull.

If this is confirmed, the bomb can be blamed.