In a recent Philadelphia Inquirer op-ed titled "Impeach Cheney now," House Judiciary Committee members U.S. Reps. Robert Wexler (D., Fla.), Luis Gutierrez (D., Ill.) and Tammy Baldwin (D., Wis.) state that a large number of Americans believe Dick Cheney should be impeached:

The charges against Cheney are not personal. They go to the core of the actions of this administration, and deserve consideration in a way the Clinton scandal never did. The American people understand this, and a majority supports hearings, according to a Nov. 13 poll by the American Research Group. In fact, 70 percent of voters say the vice president has abused his powers, and 43 percent say he should be removed from office right now. The American people understand the magnitude of what has been done and what is at stake if we fail to act. It is time for Congress to catch up.

43 percent of the American public want Cheney impeached?

Sorry, but I don't think that reflects reality. It just doesn't pass my common sense smell test.

What or who in the hell is the American Research Group?

The poll is here and it claims to be based on a representative sample, but I just wonder....

The indispensible A Jacksonian did some digging into the mystery man behind ARG, and while the guy doesn't seem to rise to the level of Norman Hsu, there certainly seems to be a suspicious aroma. A Jacksonian also cites a Washington Post article which consigned ARG to the graveyard back in 2004. (Hmmm.... Maybe it should be called the "American Zombie Research Group"....)

Commenters in various places are saying things like this:

ARG is a fraud. They have no boiler room and don't actually make calls. Dick Bennett is basically a pay-for-play extortionist. If you slide him some money, he puffs up your numbers.

He also did "work" for Charlie Bass. Bass was the GOP congressman who got bounced out of office by Rep. Paul Hodes, Obama's national co-chair. Bennett has an axe to grind with the Obama camp, and he's cooking up bogus numbers as a way of getting even.

Dick Bennett is a sleazy second tier pollster with a pay-for-play reputation.

Consider this. He's based in Manchester, NH. But the only candidates who have hired him (former US Rep. Charlie Bass, Manchester Mayor Frank Guinta, and former US Senator John Durkin) also hired other firms to conduct their "real" polling. Campaigns occasionally throw money at Bennett because they know that he will leak puffed up numbers to the Union Leade and Telegraph.

It's also telling that the major media putlets in NH never utilize ARG. WMUR-TV is located about a quarter mile from ARG's two room headquarters, but they generally hire UNH to conduct their polls. The Concord Monitor and Boston Globe also use other Mass/NH firms, but don't want their name associated with the con man Bennett.

I've worked in the trenches in NH politics for twenty years. I've run for office myself and run campaigns for others. I know all about Dick Bennett's act. I know the campaign operatives who paid him off the books to get a nice story in the local papers. I know about his two room office with a grand total of two phone lines. I know that nobody ever seems to receive an actual call from ARG. I know about Bennett's releasing cooked polling data while failing to reveal that he had been paid by a particular cmpaign to come up with a pre-ordained result.

ARG is a joke, and the national media are fools for giving him any credibility.

I'm chiming in on ARG because they are literally down the street from me. I know that they play some ethically shady games here at home, so I have to presume that they do the same thing in Iowa. I also leave open the possibility that ARG doesn't actually poll anyone at all.

Yet Lieberman won over Lamont handily -- with a healthy double digit lead Quinnipiac poll had reflected.

How many times is a pollster allowed to be wrong before he loses credibility?

Interestingly, from what I can see, ARG gets more criticism from the left than from the right.

I'd never heard of this outfit before, and had it not been for the Inquirer piece, my curiosity would never have been aroused.

But isn't there something odd about polls being cited uncritically when a pollster has a well-established track record of being wrong?

MORE: Don't miss A Jacksonian's post, or the comments like this one:

Thanks so much for this post. I actually came across your blog trying to get information on American Research Group myself. I follow Real Clear Politics, which captures all the various polling and noticed that ARG always has poll results way off the mark compared to other polls conducted at the same time. Something is definitely fishy. I would love to see the MSM break this story...my suspicions indicate some relation to the Clinton camp.

UPDATE: My thanks to Glenn Reynolds for the link, and welcome all!

I also agree with Glenn that it would be fun to see Cheney preside over his own impeachment, but I doubt it will ever happen.

A few weeks ago I bought Mark Steyn's America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It at Amazon.com and sent it to the Canadian Human Rights Commission at the address Glenn Reynolds and Kathryn Jean Lopez gave.

Much to my disappointment, today I received an email from Amazon.com that the book was undeliverable:

Greetings from Amazon.com.

A shipment from the above referenced order has been returned to our fulfillment center as undeliverable.

We have listed some common reasons for undeliverable packages here:

http://www.amazon.com/o/tg/browse/-/3608471#why

Since this package was undeliverable, we have returned the item(s) to inventory. If you have not already requested a replacement order, you will receive a refund for these item(s).

The following is the breakdown of your expected refund:
Item(s) Returned:
1 "America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It"
Reason: Unknown Reason
Item Details:
Price $18.45
Shipping $8.98

Total: $27.43

We'll send you an e-mail confirmation once the refund has been completed.

For your reference, the shipping address we have on file for the returned order is:

Canadian Human Rights Commission
344 Slater Street
8th Floor
Ottawa
Ontario
K1A 1E1
CA

Please take a moment to verify that the correct shipping address is listed for each open order you may have. You may view your order status online by clicking the "Your Account" link at the top of our web site.

If you would still like to receive these items, we encourage you to return to our web site and place a new order. We are unable to reship packages which are returned as undeliverable.

Thank you for shopping at Amazon.com.

is at the center of a dispute they are hearing; and

was sent by a citizen of another country who is concerned about freedom, and who believes that human rights include the right to free speech.

I noticed that the Chief Commissioner of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, Jennifer Lynch, Q.C., also serves as a Board of Governors Member at the University of Ottawa, so I decided to send the book there in the hope that she will get it.

Here's the alternative address for Commissioner Lynch:

Jennifer Lynch, Q.C.
Board of Governors
University of Ottawa
550 Cumberland
Ottawa, Ontario K1N 6N5

I know it's a workaround, but I don't like the feeling that the bureaucracy over which Commissioner Lynch presides may be thwarting the process they are in theory supposed to uphold, and I want her to receive the book. My hope is that a university might be more accepting of ideological and political diversity.

We'll see.

While I don't like to sound petulant, I have to say that my feelings are a little bit hurt, because I paid money for this book and intended it as a sort of educational gift as well as a way of expressing support for the much-maligned Mark Steyn. Is it too much to ask out of simple politeness that a gift -- even an unwanted gift -- not be summarily refused without so much as a comment? At Christmas? Yeah, I'm not religious, but do they know I'm not? Must they act so Grinch-like? I'm a big boy, and I'll get over it, but I can easily see how this might damage a gift-giver's self esteem.

I realize life is not fair, and of course some people can be expected to be insensitive.

But the Canadian Human Rights Commission?

I thought sensitivity was what they're all about.

If a Human Rights Commission needs lessons in sensitivity training, what is the world coming to?

UPDATE: My thanks to Mark Steyn for the link!

Adds Steyn,

If enough Americans have their copies returned by the CHRC, I suggest a class-action complaint to the CHRC about the CHRC's Yankophobia.

HT Instapundit

A lawyer in Chicago, Jay R. Grodner, appears to have been caught in the act of keying a Marine's car and it looks like he is going to get away with it. Black Five has the details.

Marine Sgt Mike McNulty is on activation orders to Iraq (second tour). On December 1st, 2007, Mike went to visit a friend in Chicago before deploying to say goodbye. In order to get to his friend's residence, and keep in mind that Chicago is a myriad of diagonal and one-way streets, the front entrance (right way) to the one-way street was blocked. Mike, being a Marine, overcame and adapted by driving around the block to the other end of the street and backing up all the way to his friend's place.

While saying goodbye, at about 11am, he noticed a man leaning up against his car. Mike left his friend's apartment and caught the man keying his car on multiple sides.

However the weasely lawyer looks like he is going to skate on the charges.

As it turns out, the man is Chicago lawyer Jay R. Grodner, who owns a law firm in the city and has offices in the suburbs.

After sending the car to the body shop, it was determined there is $2400 in damage, making this a felony. Mike went to court Friday morning to collect the damages against Mr. Grodner and file felony charges. Though the damages are over $300 (the amount which determines felony or misdemeanor) Grodner offered Mike to pay his deductible, $100, and have Mike's insurance pay for it.

The Illinois States Attorneys tried to coerce Mike into accepting the offer. Appalled, Mike said he wanted this to be a felony. The state told Mike that it was not worth pursuing felony damage against Grodner because they don't have the time. In addition, the state prosecutors told him that he would never it 'would be difficult to recover the damages' from Grodner because he is a lawyer.

Instead, the State asked Mike if he would accept probation for Grodner. Mike accepted, probation was offered to Grodner, and Grodner declined the offer, saying within ear shot of Mike, "I'm not going to make it easy on this kid". Mike's next court date is tomorrow, Monday, December 31st, to pursue misdemeanor charges against Grodner.

Mike's leave is over on January 2nd when he reports to Camp Pendleton before heading to Iraq.

Jay Grodner knows this and is going to file for a continuance until Mike is gone and cannot appear in court.

By account of the Illinois State's Attorneys, Grodner is likely to get away with defacing Mike's car with no penalty because, 1) Mike is about to deploy to Iraq and will not be available to appear in court, and 2) Grodner is a lawyer and can get out of this very easily.

So, does anyone have any ideas about how to proceed? All peaceful and rational ideas are welcomed. We are contacting the media about this, too.

blackfive
at
gmail
dot
com

A commenter at Black Five suggested contacting Mr. Grodner who appears to be a paternity lawyer:

Law Offices of Jay R. Grodner

Principal Office-Deerfield
625 Deerfield Road -Suite 406
Deerfield, IL 60015
Phone: (847) 444-1500
Fax: (847) 444-0663

Downtown Chicago
30 N. LaSalle St. - Suite 1210
Chicago, IL 60602
Phone: (312) 236-1142
Fax: (312) 236-6036
Email: jayrg8@aol.com
Web: http://www.jaygrodner.com

Be as nice as you can. After all he is a lawyer.

Might I also suggest having a look at what other Black Five commenters have recommended?

Search Google for Jay R. Grodner. It appears that Jay is getting a lot of - shall we say - interesting press.

Update 01 Jan 008 0944z:

It appears that Mr. Grodner is in a bit of legal trouble with the Illinois State's Attorney. A Black Five reader provides this eye witness account of yesterdays court proceedings.

I am writing to produce an update of the results of Sgt McNulty's case against Jay R Grodner. I was present in support of Mike and thought you may be interested in an update for this story.

Sgt McNulty was called forward by the State's Attorney in order to discuss the case. I am not sure what transpired behind the closed doors, however, I overheard the State's Attorney expressing her intent to prosecute this guy to the fullest extent. It seems as if BlackFive is the sole catalyst to this story getting out and I am sure Sgt McNulty has probably heard the effect of yours and other blogs from the results of today's proceedings to include several Marines and civilians who showed up in his support.

Jay R Grodner was called before court and in his absence, the Judge issued a warrant for his arrest effective immediately. Sgt McNulty was departing the court when Grodner rolled in to the courtroom more pathetic than anyone I had ever seen. The Judge had questioned him on his tardiness and he explained that traffic had been busy and he 'made a wrong turn'. The Judge chastised him for his tardiness, pathetic excuses, and that he was lucky the warrant had not been executed prior to his arrival.

It seems the blogosphere has put the ball in Sgt McNulty's court. Furthermore, it is also apparent that the State's Attorney's Office has decided to take this matter on a much more serious level. A new and very aggressive State's Attorney seems to have a genuine interest in pursuing this case to the extent that it warrants.

Update: 03 Jan 008 0629z

The Chicago Tribune has more details on the story.

H/T Instapundit

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Have you ever wondered what it must have been like to cross the prairies and the Rockies, then make the truly perilous trip through the snowy mountains to California during the first half of the 19th Century?

Celia Hayes (best known to the blogosphere as "Sgt. Mom") has written a great book -- To Truckee's Trail: the Greatest Adventure... Never Told -- which will take you on this harrowing journey in a way that reading history can't. What's unusual about this is that unlike many historic novels it has a documentary feel to it (it is loosely based on real characters and events). The action is punctuated by diary entries, and a (fictionalized) 1932 interview of one of the members of the party who lived into his late 90s and recalls his childhood memories.

It is a riveting read. Close calls with Indian war parties, political treachery, near starvation and freezing to death, and inevitable illnesses and deaths. It's truly amazing that they made it.

Some great observations along the way. I loved this one:

A good wife will re-load for you, a great one will take up a knife and slit your enemies' throats.

I found myself wondering how so many of their descendants came to evolve into the soft people we've become today.

Don't miss this book. It's a real treat. I loved every page.

UPDATE: Thank you, Glenn Reynolds for the link, and welcome all!

I have to say, it renews my faith to know that the quote above refers not just to nameless women in in the 1840s, but to Dr. Helen!

UPDATE: I'm delighted to see that Sgt. Mom has linked this post -- and even more delighted to see that thanks to Glenn's link there's a resulting uptick in sales!

If you have lost Islam and need to find it, Finding Islam can help.

Schools. Colleges. The local Muslim Student Association. Islamic Centers. The Koran. Hadith. Fiqh and Fatawa. It is all there. Be nice. There is plenty to learn.

If you meet any Muslims during your researches you might want to ask them what they think of Muslims Against Sharia. Just to get an idea of the lay of the land so to speak.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

I try to be fair, and I like to think that I don't suffer from regional bias.

However, I'm afraid that my Northern regional bias might have been exhibited in several posts in which I repeatedly compared Hillary Clinton to Lurleen Wallace.

I also compared both Hillary Clinton and Lurleen Wallace to Peronist wives...

For using Lurleen Wallace to criticize Hillary, I might owe Lurleen Wallace an apology. Whether I owe the Peronistas or their wives an apology is more complicated, as it depends on what moral standard should be used in judging Third World regimes -- a topic beyond the scope of this post.

More properly, maybe I owe Glenn Reynolds's mother an apology, for this is what she said:

"I remember Lurleen Wallace. I was a citizen in Wallace's Alabama. And Hillary Clinton is NO Lurleen Wallace!"

I never really studied Lurleen Wallace, although I'm sure that she and Hillary are politically dissimilar enough that the point is well taken. My focus was not on political similarities so much as on the circumvention of constitutional provisions. In the case of Lurleen Wallace it was the Alabama Constitution:

Wallace devised a plan in which his wife, Lurleen, would run for governor while he controlled the policies and procedures of the governorship in the background, duplicating the strategy in which Ma Ferguson won the 1925 election for governor in Texas.

Wallace's attempt to change the succession rule before the 1966 campaign failed. However, using his wife as his electoral surrogate succeeded, and Mrs. Wallace won the Democratic nomination for governor in 1966. She was elected Governor of Alabama in November 1966, and was inaugurated in January 1967.

Whether the voters care about the ethics is another matter, but I think it would be more honest to let them have a crack at dumping the 22nd Amendment and then simply being allowed to vote for Bill.

(I wish some GOP prankster would get Maria Shriver to run on Arnie's behalf.)

Interestingly, Jane Fonda called Clinton "a ventriloquist for the patriarchy with a skirt and a vagina." Ann Althouse correctly perceives some problems with Fonda's comparison, but I'll take it at it's face value and add that actually, I do think Hillary could quite possibly be a ventriloquist, but only for that portion of the patriarchy with a skirt and a vagina.

Just don't expect me to PhotoShop such gruesome details.

Burt Prelutsky takes a look at a frustrating question much on everyone's mind -- what's so special about Iowa and New Hampshire?

Don't ask me. We should probably all be grateful that the first primary isn't held in the city of Philadelphia (where in the last mayoral election the Republican whats-his-name got a full 17% of the vote).

It's a ridiculous and artificial situation which Prelutsky analogizes to flipping a coin:

how was it decided that those two improbable states would be given so much importance? I understand that for reasons I can't quite fathom they get to kick off the primary season, but so what? To me it makes about as much sense as inflating the importance of winning the coin toss at the start of a football game.

Here here!

On another pet topic, Prelutsky asks another excellent question:

How is it that people who drive around with bumper stickers that read "War is Not the Answer" aren't the least bit embarrassed to be seen in public?

Don't get me wrong. I have nothing against violent contact sports. It's just that I'm enough of a realist to agree with Orwell:

"Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence. In other words: it is war minus the shooting."

But, much as the "war is not the answer" people are lacking in common sense, they turn out and vote in the primaries. Even though they are what economists and statisticians would call "outliers," under the primary system the outliers out-vote the people with common sense. Unfortunately, those who aren't outliers (and who don't sport inane bumperstickers) also tend not to drive to the primaries in outlier states.

Which is why, in the name of democracy, the rest of us are ruled by outliers in outlying areas.

The Drug Czar says says that the current cocaine price spike shows progress in the War On Druggies. NPR reports on the story.

For the past few months, the federal government has been celebrating the fact that U.S. cities are experiencing "an unprecedented cocaine shortage" due to increased law enforcement in the southwestern United States and Mexico.

But wait. NPR did some fact checking. What did they find?

But fact-checking by NPR reveals that while there are indeed spot shortages of cocaine, they are neither nationwide nor unprecedented. And the scarcity may have unintended consequences.

The price of cocaine is one of the main ways the government tallies the score in its war on drugs. The reasoning is that if prices go up, it means that agents are winning -- they're squeezing the supply. For the past three months, the federal government has been reporting that its counter-drug strategy has created an unprecedented nationwide cocaine shortage.

Walters said reports indicate that these interdictions have choked the cocaine supply in 37 cities across the country. The list included 15 major cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, Minneapolis, Milwaukee and Grand Rapids, Mich., Walters said.

NPR contacted the police departments in each of those 37 cities to find out what narcotics commanders had to say about the reported cocaine shortage.

The results suggest how difficult it is for law enforcement to create any long-term disruption in retail sales in America, which is the largest cocaine market in the world.

And they tend to confirm long-established trends: that price spikes are transitory, and that over time, dealers find other distribution routes, while users may find other drugs.

Ten of the 37 cities confirmed that the cocaine scarcity is real. Among them were the largest cocaine markets in the nation, such as New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta and San Francisco.

Lt. Daniel Simfer, commander of the vice/narcotics unit in the St. Louis Police Department, said, "In the last six months it has become less available than it was at the beginning of the year. The price has increased accordingly probably by about a third."

Four cities declined to respond to questions about the local cocaine supply; five said there was simply no shortage.

The question brought laughter from Sgt. Roger Johnson of the Detroit Police Department.

"No, we don't have a problem finding it at all," Johnson said.

In Pittsburgh, Commander Sheryl Doubt of the Pittsburgh Police Department said, "I spoke to my detectives out there in the streets making buys, and we all kind of agreed that if there's a shortage here in Pittsburgh, we are not aware of it and don't find that necessarily to be true."

John Carnevale is a former budget director in the drug-control office who served under four former drug czars. He says the office had the Rand Corporation analyze long-term cocaine price trends.

Of the findings, Carnevale said, "One, the long-term trend adjusted for purity has been one of decline. It just keeps coming down and coming down. Two, there's been occasional moments where we've seen spikes in cocaine prices, and they may last three months, four months, five months -- but eventually the trend continues to decline."

And fleeting price spikes, Carnevale said, did not meaningfully affect demand -- another point where he differs with the drug czar.

Well the Drug Czar tells us that after examining the bodily fluids of hundreds of thousands of Americans he has proof of progress that can't be denied.

Further proof of the cocaine shortage, Walters says, is that the nation's largest workplace drug-testing company has observed a 16 percent decline in positive cocaine drug tests during the first half of 2007.

But in an interview, a scientist from that company, Quest Diagnostics, said that during the same period, the company also noticed a nearly 7 percent uptick in methamphetamine detection.

That phenomenon shows the nature of addiction, several police officials said. To the extent there is, or was, a cocaine shortage, they have seen regular users turn to meth, heroin, prescription drugs, and high-potency marijuana. In other words, enforcement had not appeared to curtail demand -- one of the chief aims of the war on drugs.

"The truth is, we see addicts getting drugs even in the worst times," said Sgt. Sutherland of the Washington, D.C., police. "When it's really hard to get it, they'll do just about anything to get some kind of drugs."

The USA Today has noted another positive aspect of the crackdown.

In Cleveland, police noted a contraction in drug markets in January. Homicides are up as local drug organizations vie for the shrinking cocaine supply, says Mayor Frank Jackson, who lauds a six-city, federally led task force for cracking down on local traffickers.

Mayor Jackson had some further comments on the effectiveness of the crack down.

"Interdiction isn't the cure-all. The police cannot solve this problem. It's one leg on the stool."

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Working New Hampshire police officer Bradley Jardis confronted Senator John McCain on November 25, 2007, at a Presidential Campaign stop at Franklin Pierce College in Ringe, New Hampshire, about Senator McCains's support for The War On Drugs.

Here is the transcript:

Bradley Jardis: I have served here in my state as a law enforcement officer for going on nine years now. And after nine years of working the street, I have come to the conclusion that the war on drugs is a terrible failure. I saw first hand that the war on drugs causes crime. It causes children to have access to drugs easier and it does nothing to curb the problem of drug trafficking or use--just as alcohol prohibition after the 18th amendment passed. Then we wised up and passed the 21st amendment, which curbed the violence problem within this country greatly. What is it going to take for powerful politicians, such as yourself, to realize that the war on drugs is a failure and we need to get smart about drugs? Not tough, we need to be smart about drugs.

John McCain: "Thank you sir. It is going to take a lot before I adopt your viewpoint, although I must say, (Applause) express my respect and appreciation for keeping our families and our neighborhoods in the state of New Hampshire safe and I am grateful for your service. But I've heard your comparison between drugs and alcohol. I think most experts would say in moderation one or two drinks of alcohol does not have the affect on one's judgment or manual acuity or physical abilities. I think most experts will say that the first ingestion of drugs leads to mind-altering and other experiences and effects that can lead over time to serious problems. Now I will agree with you to this extent, that too often we put first time drug users in prison. (Applause) In my home state of Arizona we a program that puts first time drug offenders, not dealers but first time drug offenders, that they have the eligibility on rehab program that is associated with very significant testing procedures. And if they successfully complete that rehabilitation course, then they are allowed to move forward with their lives. We have too many first time drug offenders in prison. I think we all know that. But I will do everything I can to help you with your work. I will do whatever I can do to help you combat these drug dealers, these terrible people that prey on America but there have been experiments in Europe; some places there where basically the use of drugs is freely and openly used and some of those places they have had to shut down those places because of the terrible effects of not restricting the use of drugs from those places. So I would like to refer you to those places where they have done that. And I don't in any way diminish the magnitude of your job and terrible affect that drugs have on Americans. And a lot of it, as you know, comes across our southern borders. And I'm happy to tell you that we seem to have a president of Mexico now who is very serious about enforcing the border and cooperating with us against drug dealers. Now I think in full disclosure, with drug cartels there is such problems that I don't think he is going to be able to do it. But my friends, I want to help him and I want to help him clean it up but that also is a big problem. Now I just want to ask one other thing, do you think methamphetamine ought to be legal?

Bradley Jardis: I think what we need to look at is the drug policy.

John McCain: Yea but you know it's one thing to talk about policy; it's another thing to talk about specific comments. With all due respect, do you think methamphetamine should be made legal?

Bradley Jardis: I don't think if someone is caught with methamphetamine we should put them in prison, period. We should be helping them. We should help people who are addicted to drugs (Applause) and not spend 69 billion dollars a year to imprison them. (Continuing applause) If you arrest somebody, it does not solve the problem. You just said there are drug cartels. There would not be drug cartels if we were to regulate drugs. In Switzerland they have public heroin clinics where people can come and get help with clean needles and to get off drugs. There is no doubt that drugs are dangerous but our policy does not do anything to help people who are addicted. If you arrest a sixteen year old for marijuana and they get a criminal conviction, you can get over an addiction but you will never get over a conviction. They loose their funding to go to college and no one can ever say, that keeping a kid from going to college because of prohibition sounds good. Not at all. Thank you very much. (Applause)

John McCain: "I'm sorry he didn't have a position on methamphetamine but I do agree with you. I do agree with you strongly. As I said, we have this program in Arizona which I would like to see adopted nation wide: the first time offender is given an opportunity to rehabilitate themselves and to have clean record. I thank you for your service and I appreciate the discussion and I look forward to continuing this dialogue because I in no way mean to diminish the magnitude of this problem and the terrible tragedies it inflicts on America everyday. Thank you and thank you for your service.

Glenn Greenwald may be many things.

But as a poof reader, his skills leave much to be desired. (Via Glenn Reynolds, who dared to utter this multifaceted four letter word.)

The way Greenwald rants, you'd almost think he imagines poof is nothing more than a synonym for Republican fear of ick.

I mean, what is this? Even Maureen Dowd is allowed to express intolerance over the slightest whiff of poof, but Peggy Noonan can't even use the word in its proper context?

Oh the hypocrisy!

In the interest of full disclosure, I had no ick reaction to the alleged poof in dispute. (Quite the opposite, in fact...)

MORE: Justin made me do this.

UPDATE: It's "poof or consequences" time!

My thanks to Glenn Reynolds for linking this post, and a warm welcome to all.

As I take a broad general view of things and really don't care who anyone is around here, all commenters -- even sock puppets -- are always welcome!

MORE: I don't know how off-topic this is, but years ago when I worked in a stodgy San Francisco law firm, I first learned the derogatory meaning of the word "poofter" from a British working class co-worker from Manchester. He complained to me constantly about the "poofters" he believed were lurking everywhere making passes at him until I finally reached the end of my patience and told him I was one too. He was horrified, but after he recovered from the shock, he stated that while I might be gay, I wasn't a "poofter." So, not only did I learn a new word, but I learned there was some sort of distinction - at least in his mind. While I don't know how accurately his usage of the term was, it was clear to me then that the closest American equivalent to the term (at that time in San Francisco) would have been the word "queen." How derogatory such words would seem to depend on context.

A Virginia activist recently won a legal battle to get the word "POOFTER" on his custom license plate.

Am I supposed to be offended?

MORE: The Washington Post's Marc Fisher digs into the details behind the Virginia "POOFTER" battle:

Then and now, Phillips found the name funny but hardly offensive. Merriam-Webster says "poofter" is "usually disparaging," and the Oxford English Dictionary calls the word "derogatory slang," but it's routinely aired on broadcast television, and Phillips says it's less disparaging than "nancy boy," which happens to have been his previous license tag message ("NANCBOY," for four years, with no complaint from the state). "Poofter," Phillips contends, "is a pretty neutral word. It gets past any e-mail filter."

UPDATE (01/13/08): My thanks to Glenn Reynolds for linking this post for a second time in a new context!

More thoughts on whether "POOF goes the Culture" (as well as Greenwald modeling theory) here.

I'll concur with Glenn Reynolds in saying "Ugh" to this sort of thing:

Mike Huckabee last year accepted $52,000 in speaking fees from a bio-tech giant that wants to research human embryonic stem cells, a non-profit working to expand access to the morning after pill and a group pushing to study whether tightening gun control laws will reduce violence.

Huckabee opposes embryonic stem cell research, emergency contraception and stricter gun laws - all of which rank high on the list of deal-breakers for many of the religious conservatives whose support he's ridden to the top of the Republican presidential field.

This morning Dennis sent me a link to another Huckabee horror. In addition to a gun control problem, he also has what's being called a "muzzle control problem":

....At one point, Huckabee's party turned toward a cluster of reporters and cameramen and, when they kicked up a pheasant, fired shotgun blasts over the group's heads.

This, friends, is dangerously bad hunting form.

Your Swamp correspondent, the son of a longtime hunter education instructor, grew up plying the corn rows and stream banks of rural Oregon with a Labrador retriever and a Mossberg 20-gauge pump shotgun. On our hunts for pheasant, grouse and quail, merely swinging a gun barrel in the general direction of another person was grounds for day-long banishment to the truck (which smelled like wet dog).

I mean, what does he have to do to get the attention of his apparently unquestioning supporters? Tap his foot in the wrong direction?

(No, I am in not implying anything about the man. It's just that sex scandals seem to be the only thing that matter enough in modern Republican politics to register real levels of disgust. Probably has to do with the difference between "Ugh" and "Ick.")

Via Glenn Reynolds, John Podhoretz reflects on the political implications of the Bhutto assassination:

American politics would dearly love to take a holiday from history, just as it did in the 1990s. But our enemies are not going to allow us to do so. The murder of Bhutto moves foreign policy, the war on terror, and the threat of Islamofascism back into the center of the 2008 campaign. How candidates respond to it, and issues like it that will come up in the next 10 months, will determine whether they are fit for the presidency.

I've remarked before about the clever way the Democrats appeal to the voters' desire to change the channel (from "war" to "peace") -- as if voting is like hitting a TV remote.

Unfortunately, human nature being what it is, such an approach might just work.

Infuriating as it is for me to admit this, blogging can, in its own way, operate as a TV remote. Yesterday, for example, I spent hours researching and attempting to analyze the fatal tiger attack at the San Francisco Zoo. It seemed that I was at war with the facts, but the facts were at war with themselves, as they kept changing. First the wall was 18 feet high and impossible for a tiger to jump. Later, the same zoo director who said the wall was 18 feet high admitted it was just over 12 feet, and denied making other statements he was quoted making. There was a disappearing shoe, disappearing blood, conflicting accounts, allegations the tiger had been provoked, a possible "copycat" incident at another zoo, and an infuriating silence by the two survivors of the attack, who it now appears lied to the dead boy's father and have police records. The zoo appears to have been negligent, and to have a lousy director. Beyond that, there's still no way to know what happened. The "news" is a shifting pile of sand. (Just skim my humongous post and useless speculations and see.)

In terms of importance, a tiger attack in a zoo is nothing compared to the assassination of a major opposition figure in the most troublesome area of the world. Yet my uncontrollable need to know what happened took over, as I cannot stand it when the facts are murky. This is why I'm not inclined towards war blogging. I like to figure things out, and when I can't, or when the facts change, I feel as if I am spinning my wheels.

Not that I can add anything to the innumerable observations which have already been made about the Bhutto assassination. That vicious Islamists killed her is no more surprising than the fact that a vicious tiger will attack.

Being prepared is what it's all about, not changing to the peace channel.

That the tiger may have been provoked by juvenile delinquents is secondary to the inherent danger posed by poor zoo security which could have prevented even a vengeful tiger from attacking.

Letting down defenses against enemies has far worse consequences.

UPDATE: Ann Althouse has eased my guilt:

it is worth analyzing the campaign commercials -- even on the day Benazir Bhutto died.

In what voters ought to be taking as the final insult, the wife Bill Clinton is using in a 22nd Amendment circumvention scheme is now refusing to answer questions:

Before the brief Christmas break, the New York senator had been setting aside time after campaign speeches to hear from the audience. Now when she's done speaking, her theme songs blare from loudspeakers, preventing any kind of public Q&A.

She was no more inviting when a television reporter approached her after a rally on Thursday and asked if she was "moved'' by Benazir Bhutto's assassination. Clinton turned away without answering.

Her daughter, Chelsea, had the same reaction when a reporter approached her with a question.

Hillary Clinton's no-question policy didn't sit well with some of the Iowans who came to see her speak.

"I was a little bit underwhelmed,'' said Doug Rohde, 46, as he left her a rally in a fire station in Denison. "The message was very generic -- and no questions.''

Clinton campaign officials said that she may take questions in the coming days.

I think it would be more fun if she gave a generic answer for all questions which displease her with the regal "we."

"We are not amused!"

If this no-questions "strategy" works, it's just more proof that P.T. Barnum was right.

(But if you think Madame Clinton will be more forthcoming after her coronauguration, think again.)

A great story and why you should support Fred

I'm glad to join Rick Moran's blogburst for Fred Thompson, which Glenn Reynolds linked yesterday.

Analogizing to Washington's perilous crossing, here's what Rick said this morning:

To be brutally frank in appraising the situation realistically, Fred Thompson's chances of winning the nomination are not good. I will not attempt to snow you, gentle readers, with the idea that the Thompson campaign is anything but a hope and a prayer at this point. But where there is a will to fight, so there is a will to win. It doesn't matter how many pundits, pollsters, and assorted "experts" have written off Fred Thompson. What matters is that there is still a chance, still life in the campaign, and still a belief that the race can be won. Your support is absolutely crucial to propel the campaign forward, to build on the momentum generated by Thompson's bus tour through Iowa by giving as much as you possibly can.

That last statement is of course a Machiavellian argument for Fred Thompson -- intended for those who consider themselves in the ABC (Anyone But Clinton) category. But Fred Thompson is the most experienced candidate the GOP has, he goes way back, and I think he has integrity. Moreover, he dares to be a Federalist -- someone who actually publicly supports the Constitution as it was written. As a strong constitutionalist who believes the Constitution has been disregarded for far too long, few things could appeal to me more. It's music to my ears. Sure, the cynic in me could argue that he's "just saying that" and "doesn't really mean it," but this is where his years of experience and political wisdom tend to kick in. Simply for being the only vocal federalist of the bunch, he deserves support.

Any readers who feel the same way, I hope you'll join in the blogburst. I say this as someone who does not usually join things or participate in blogbursts.

I also remind readers that I do not have a tip jar. Instead, I occasionally ask people to donate to one worthy cause or another.

So please, any of you who aren't into having Hillary as president and who like this blog, I hope you'll consider clicking on this link and donating to Fred Thompson.

UPDATE: My thanks to M. Simon for helping out!

This is very bad news:

Pakistan opposition leader Benazir Bhutto has died after a suicide attack at a political rally.
She was shot in the chest and neck shortly after her speech in Rawalpindi, Pakistan.

Ms Bhutto was attacked as she got into her car and the gunman then blew himself up.

"At 6.16 p.m. she expired," said Wasif Ali Khan, a member of Bhutto's party at Rawalpindi General Hospital.

"She has been martyred," said party offical Rehman Malik.

The explosion went off just after Ms Bhutto left the rally in Rawalpindi, minutes after her speech to thousands of people.

Her supports have smashed windows at the entrance to the hospital where she was being treated, some calling "Dog, Musharraf, dog,".

It is the first major attack since President General Pervez Musharraf lifted emergency rule two weeks ago.

I hope cool heads prevail.

(There have to be cool heads over there, right?)

MORE: Al Qaeda is reportedly claiming credit for the assassination -- a claim U.S. intel officials are checking out.

AND MORE: Glenn Reynolds and Pajamas Media have roundups of reports and reactions.

While it's too early to predict, this could have very serious consequences.

I don't know.

But yesterday I was very suspicious when I read that a tiger supposedly "jumped" an enclosure said by experts to be impossible for a tiger to jump.

The story is on the front page of today's Philadelphia Inquirer, and a story at the Inquirer website is now fueling speculation about human error:

Police Chief Heather Fong said the department has opened a criminal investigation to "determine if there was human involvement in the tiger getting out or if the tiger was able to get out on its own."

Police said they have not ruled anything out, including whether the escape was the result of carelessness or a deliberate act.

Fong said officers were gathering evidence from the tiger's enclosure as well as accounts from witnesses and others.

One zoo official insisted the tiger did not get out through an open door and must have climbed or leaped out. But Jack Hanna, former director of the Columbus Zoo and a frequent guest on TV, said such a leap would be an unbelievable feat, and "virtually impossible."

"There's something going on here. It just doesn't feel right to me," he said. "It just doesn't add up to me."

Instead, he speculated that visitors might have been fooling around and might have taunted the animal and perhaps even helped it get out by, say, putting a board in the moat.

A psychopathic prankster, possibly?

How about a demented activist who does not believe tigers should be kept in zoos?

Something about the timing of this statement seems a bit too, um, convenient:

San Francisco, Calif. -- In the wake of Siberian tiger Tatiana's escape and attack on visitors at the San Francisco Zoo--which left one person dead and two others seriously injured--PETA sent an urgent letter this morning to Manuel A. Mollinedo, executive director and president of the San Francisco Zoo, urging him to phase out the zoo's tiger exhibit.

Since 1990, there have been more than 220 dangerous incidents in 40 states involving big cats. Four children and 15 adults have lost their lives, and more than 50 others have lost limbs or suffered other injuries after being mauled. The animals involved are victims too--75 big cats, including Tatiana, have been killed because of these incidents.

Captive tigers are forced to spend their entire lives in barren enclosures, which, on average, are 18,000 times smaller than their natural roaming range, according to an Oxford University study. The study also shows that it is simply impossible for captive tigers to express instinctual behaviors, such as staking out territory in dense forests, choosing mates, running, climbing trees, and hunting. Oxford scientists concluded that big cats--who have extraordinarily complex physical and psychological needs--become neurotic when they are confined.

"In the past, the San Francisco Zoo made the honorable decision to close its elephant exhibit and send its elephants to a sanctuary," says PETA Director Debbie Leahy. "In light of this latest tragedy, it is time for the zoo to do the right thing once again and protect its animals and the public by phasing out its tiger exhibit."

Who knows what happened to this tiger? ... It isn't the tiger's fault. It is the fault of the people breeding these animals in the first place that leads them to be here.

Here's a report that one or more of the victims may have provoked the attack or enabled the animal to escape:

The three victims in the fatal tiger attack at the San Francisco zoo may have provoked the tiger into attacking, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Officers found a shoe and a trail of blood inside the tiger's cage...

They found it in that area between the cage gate and the 20 foot moat.

That's leading them to believe one or more of the tiger's three victim's may have climbed over the wall and dangled their feet into the cage.

What police don't know just yet is whether it was an accident or they were intentionally trying to provoke the tiger.

Police and zoo officials holding a press conference this morning at 11:30...That may give us at least some clues.

As I tried to make clear during the battle over the Philadelphia Zoo's elephants, it is well known that animal rights activists believe animals should not be in zoos.

While this is pure speculation, I don't think it is inconceivable that a group of people deliberately tried to free the tiger in the hope of accelerating the animal rights agenda, but the game plan backfired.

Hmmm...

Would that make them martyrs instead of victims?

Of course, it's entirely possible that the victims were not in any way involved with freeing the cat, and that the criminal culprit(s) are at large.

UPDATE: More on the deceased alleged victim here:

"I didn't want to believe it. It's hard to believe that your only son in such a big world is picked for death by a tiger," Carlos Sousa Sr. told the San Jose Mercury News.

"Unfortunately, he was at the wrong place at the wrong time," he added. "I miss him very much. He's all I have."

Experts on animals said that the tiger might have been taunted and possibly helped to get free. But cousin Christina Sousa-Habenicht, 27, said she couldn't imagine Carlos doing anything so dangerous.

"Carlos was not stupid," she said emphatically.

She described her tall and handsome cousin as a "normal teenager" who played football and basketball and had "a lot of good friends."

"He wanted to be a deejay," she said with a sad smile. "He took a couple of courses in school to learn how. He used to deejay out of the garage for family parties and he used to mix his father's '70s music with hip hop and rap."

AND MORE: In repeated accounts like this one, there are references to a shoe and blood having been found by police inside the tiger enclosure. They could spare everyone a lot of speculation by simply disclosing what they probably already know.

Whose blood? Whose shoes?

(Sorry, but I get a little impatient when I'm made to wait for news I know is out there.)

If the zoo closes the tiger exhibit because of this, I think it's an unfortunate sign of the times.

As there are numerous updates to this post, click to continue below.

I hate it when people imitate sock puppets.

How can you tell the real sock puppets from the fake ones when that happens?

Inspired by the discussion about Glenn Greenwald at Protein Wisdom.

H/T Instapundit

Cross Posted at Power and Control

What is it about the left and the refusal to learn from history?

In an earlier post, I wrote about the refusal to learn about the danger of appeasement, and now I see that the movement to raise taxes on alcohol has not gone away. Far from it. A New York Times report story editorial that Glenn Reynolds links all but demands major new alcohol taxes.

Great. So the great minds which refuse to learn the lessons of Chamberlain are also adamantly refusing to learn the lessons of Gorbachev.

Granted, more people know about Chamberlain's Munich appeasement folly than Gorbachev's alcohol tax folly, but would the people who know what's best for us even care that what they propose has been tried and failed?

When I clicked on the piece Glenn linked, I found not only naked advocacy masquerading as a news report, but no mention of the likely consequences of the action the writer so obviously wants:

Since the early 1990s, the federal tax on wine -- $1.07 a gallon -- hasn't budged. The taxes on beer and liquor haven't changed either, which means that, in inflation-adjusted terms, alcohol taxes have been steadily falling.

Each of the three taxes is now effectively 33 percent lower than it was in 1992. Since 1970, the federal beer tax has plummeted 63 percent. Many states taxes have also been falling.

At first blush, this sounds like good news: who likes to pay taxes, right? But taxes serve a purpose beyond merely raising general government revenue. Taxes on a given activity are also supposed to pay the costs that activity imposes on society. And for all that is wonderful about wine, beer and liquor, they clearly bring some heavy costs.

Right now, the patchwork of alcohol taxes isn't coming close to covering those costs -- the costs of drunken-driving checkpoints, of hospital bills for alcohol-related accidents and child abuse, and of the economic loss caused by death and injury. Last year, some 17,000 Americans, or almost 50 a day, died in alcohol-related car accidents. An additional 65,000 people a year die from other accidents, assaults or illnesses in which alcohol plays a major role.

Mr. Cook, besides being a wine lover, has been thinking about the costs and benefits of alcohol for much of his career, and he has come up with a blunt way of describing the problem. "Do you think we should be subsidizing alcohol?" he asks. "Because that's what we're doing."

Amazing. I always thought subsidies meant payments to producers, but never mind.... This call for tax hikes is static analysis at its absolute worst, and it reminds me of the way Philadelphia bureaucrats keep raising taxes on businesses, then wonder why businesses locate themselves outside the city limits.

By attempting to analogize alcohol to cigarettes, the article avoids any mention of a very important -- perhaps the most telling -- point.

Alcohol is -- in one very major respect -- not like gasoline or cigarettes.

As Gorbachev's commissars learned (and probably should have known), anyone can make it.

Look, I know I'm repeating myself, but I really think I need to spell it out for the static analysts, so here I go again:

Home brewing is already a fairly major industry, and if these people are serious about raising beer taxes (as they appear to be), it might be a good time to "get in on the ground floor" as the saying goes.

Who knows? If they're stupid enough to raise the beer taxes, they might be stupid enough to raise them even higher when the projected revenues don't pan out. Then home brewing would skyrocket, and then they'd really have to raise the taxes. (This process is called static analysis, and it's typical of the bureaucratic mindset.)

As far as the bureaucrats are concerned, this history lecture is probably a waste of time. Like the people who know that socialism doesn't work, these people also know that prohibition (even in the form of high taxes on alcohol) will not work.

But hey, if the program doesn't work, it's back to the drawing board for more meetings and more programs. And hiring new people to figure out how to "improve" on the old program.

If it failed before, and it fails again, we'll just have to keep getting it wrong so we can keep fixing it again.

If you don't want a program to work (but want its failures to generate more programs), why, not learning from past failures becomes part of the program.

Hmmm...

Might be a good time to invest in companies that sell brewing and home distillation equipment, and sugar.

Something good has come from Will Smith's ill-thought-out Hitler remarks.

Or can I say that? I sometimes worry that Godwin's Law may be swallowing most Hitler discussions, especially for a yakker like me, because nearly everything I might say about Hitler or Nazis contains something that might be considered an analogy or a comparison. Or (shudder!) even a moral equivalency argument. It's a shame, really. Because I've read many, many books on Hitler and the Third Reich, and I've read even more about Stalin. Yet, I don't feel my internal censor tugging and tsking at me to remove Stalin or Communist references the way I do with Hitler references.

So I have a dark but true confession: usually I edit out most of the hastily written Hitler and Nazi references, comparisons, and analogies that might initially find their way into these posts. I have to. Because not only is there Godwin's Law, but I regularly invoke Godwin's Law for implicit moral support whenever I attack other people's Nazi or Hitler comparisons. A perfect example was my ridicule of the comparison between RU-486 and Zyklon B. In general, I don't like overwrought political diatribes of any sort -- even when I agree with the conclusions, and the Hitler analogies are usually a sign of desperation. Still, to inject Hitler and the Nazis into any debate is to invite scorn and moral disapproval from anyone who might feel that his "side" is being unjustly compared. So it's best avoided -- even though in my case this means not talking about Nazis.

I've often felt that the "Hitler=Bush" stuff, while intended as an attack on Bush, actually trivializes Hitler. Trivialization of evil in this manner is a lot more harmful than attacking a hated politician, and I've often wondered whether the people making this comparison realize that to compare Bush to Hitler necessarily compares Hitler to Bush. Thus, they're really acting as Hitler apologists, because they are diminishing the evil role of Hitler in history. (If Bush=Hitler and Guantanamo=Auschwitz, then Hitler=Bush and Auschwitz=Guantanamo. But I don't feel free to say things like that, because people will accuse me of trvialization of trivialization....)

Bringing up Hitler is a rhetorical mess. Naively or not, Will Smith stepped into it when he was caught saying that Hitler tried to be (or meant to be) good.

While I think Smith was wrong, I'm glad he spoke his mind, because the remark did present an educational opportunity. When the dust settles, though, I'm afraid that the only thing learned will be along the lines of "Don't Mention Hitler Ever!"

In a very refreshing essay, Roger Kimball takes a fearless look at Smith's remarks, which he sees as symptomatic of a mindset which tends to sympathize with benevolence-based fanaticism, and what Kimball calls "the imperatives of political correctness and tyranny--between what Robespierre candidly described as 'virtue and its emanation, terror.'":

That is the conjunction that should give us pause, especially when we contemplate the good intentions of the politically correct bureaucrats who preside over more and more of life in Western societies today. They mean well. They seek to boost all mankind up to their own plane of enlightenment. Inequality outrages their sense of justice. They regard conventional habits of behavior as so many obstacles to be overcome on the path to perfection. They see tradition as the enemy of innovation, which they embrace as a lifeline to moral progress. They cannot encounter a wrong without seeking to right it. The idea that some evils may be ineradicable is anathema to them. Likewise the traditional notion that the best is the enemy of the good, that many choices we face are to some extent choices among evils--such proverbial wisdom outrages their sense of moral perfectibility.

I think it's debatable whether either Hitler or Stalin saw themselves as good. They certainly wanted to be seen that way, because it helped maintain their power. I think the primary difference between them was that Stalin was more of an opportunist, whereas Hitler was a fanatic -- a true believer in his own nonsense. Hitler was possessed of an artistic temperament, and he didn't just want to win; he wanted to be perfect. Or else. Stalin, on the other hand, would in my opinion have been willing to don the swastika and become Hitler's under fuehrer of the East rather than lose all power and his life (something which Hitler perceived quite accurately). The clash between Hitler and Stalin can be seen as a clash between rational, purely opportunistic evil, and irrational, fanatical evil. Stalin's primary mistake (the biggest one he made) was in misjudging Hitler as a rationally evil man like himself. Thus, it was unimaginable that Hitler would act against his own interest and invade Russia. (There were many things Hitler did that were against his interest and driven by sheer fanaticism -- another was to put Jew killing ahead of Germany's military necessity.)

The idea that either man wanted to truly be "good" evinces not only an ignorance of history, but a John Lennon-like "Imagine" mindset. Are they forgetting that this had been tried and had failed by Chamberlain in Munich? Or don't they even know about Chamberlain and Munich?

The notion that man is good and humans are perfectible is contradicted by the endless killings of the bad ones by those determined to build a better world. Stalin was smart enough to know better than to believe in his bullshit. Hitler was in the end a true-believing fool. Both attracted hordes of mindless dupes who believed in "goodness," in benevolence, in altruism, so much that they were willing to become executioners in order to achieve a better world.

The problem with these observations is that by having discussed Hitler in the context of "them" -- that tough-to-define group of people who want to build a better world and will shove their damned better world down our collective throats -- I have run seriously afoul of Godwin's Law.

Hmmm....

Should I take it all back? Maybe go back and substitute Pol Pot and Torquemada?

Godwin forbid that I might offend.

Maybe the best way out of this mess is to remember the rule that in the future, everyone will be Hitler for 15 minutes.

Nah, can't do that either. I'm already running the risk of trivializing the dark side. Guess I should have thought about that before attempting to grapple with the complexities of good and evil in a blog post.

(Hey, at least I tried to be good....)

UPDATE: This post by Dr. Helen makes me feel less guilty about my Godwin's Law violations (and Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism looks very interesting.)

Earlier today, Coco and I saw a Christmas wreath hanging on a door. Nothing especially unusual about that, except it wasn't a door to a type of building where people usually hang wreaths.

So we stopped and posed in front of it.

I don't think Coco fully understands product placement issues, but we can't have everything.

More words of wisdom from Ann Althouse:

I don't see myself as the candidate-endorsing sort of blogger.

However, sometimes I see myself as the opposite of the candidate-endorsing sort of blogger.

My problem is that I just want the Republicans to come up with someone who can beat Hillary (or, for that matter, Obama). And instead of doing that, they seem hell-bent to come up with Huckabee.

While it's hardly an endorsement, I did contribute money to Giuliani, and more recently, I contributed to Fred Thompson, whose federalism I find refreshing. But if they can't beat Huckabee, how the hell are they going to beat Hillary?

I guess I'm beginning to hear my Christmas prayer in all of this.

Dear God, please don't let it be Huckabee versus Hillary.

For starters, that would be an alliterative abomination.

(Well, at least it's not an Onomatopoetic Obamanation...)

Anyway, after considering the election horrors, Bert Prelutsky has nominated Santa Claus:

Old Saint Nick goes around bestowing gifts on those who haven't worked for them, just like the Democrats, who do the same for the chronically unemployed and illegal aliens. And just as the little people do all the heavy lifting for Santa, the Democrats have their own set of elves; namely the middle-class taxpayers. Furthermore, Santa is obviously a liberal. Even though he, himself, only works one day a year, he thinks he's entitled to decide who's naughty and who's nice.

Maybe I should rethink my policy of no endorsements....

AFTERTHOUGHT: I try to be fair about these things, and I don't like to put people down because of their physical appearance. But the fact is, we live in a cruel and superficial, appearance-based world, so a question necessarily arises.

Does this guy really have the necessary sex appeal it would take to win?

I need to get a 100ft Ethernet indoor (non-plenum) cable with connectors on both ends.

I have seen such cables on the net for around $10 or much more.

Are the $10 cables any good? If so where is a good place to buy?

A. Jacksonian has put up a political lexicon for this election season. My favorite?

A fresh face from Illinois - An individual with Chicago Mob connections running for high office before their Mob connections come to light.

Go read the whole thing.

Cross Posted at Power and Control