Only the Good Die Young

"You might have heard I run with a dangerous crowd... We ain't too pretty we ain't too proud..." Senator Robert C. "Clorox" Byrd (D- Burning Cross, West Virginia), at 87 the oldest and whitest member of the U.S. Congress, this week won passage of a bill that would provide $10 million toward a memorial to slain civil rights leader, Dr. Martin Luther King. "So what?" you ask. King was a good enough guy, the feds take our money for stuff like that all the time and everyone knows Byrd produces more pricey pork every year than Jimmy Dean. So, really, $10 million is chump change in the grand scheme of things. The better question to ask is, "Are you kidding me?" Aided by a complicit press, Byrd has spent a public lifetime covering up his private one as a "Kleagle" (paid recruiter) and "Exalted Cyclops" (Keeper of the Silver Zippo and the Gas-Soaked Kross in the Garage) for his Ku Klux Klan chapter back home. He admits to joining the Klan in 1941 "for about a year" because it was a good way to fight communism. Byrd says he left because he lost interest in the organization, he wasn't crazy about the pointed hats and he kept forgetting the secret handshake. But a paper trail and years of bloviating bigotry on the public record (if not in The Washington Post) belie his cover. Over a so-far-47-year self-serving Senate career, Byrd has defended the Klan against blame for its part in generations of racial violence across the South. While many were marching in Selma, Byrd did his part for freedom with a 14-hour filibuster against the 1964 Civil Rights Act. And he has demonstrated his discrimination is indiscriminate by making bad history as the single senator opposing the nominations of both the liberal Thurgood Marshall AND the conservative Clarence Thomas... the only two black Justices ever to ride the big bench. So why, after all these years, is this hateful old gasbag now wrapping his arms around the memory of Martin? Is Byrd simply an old bigot making amends for a rotten record before he meets his maker? Or is he filling his Depends with worry that the voters of West Virginia are finally ready to swap him out for a senator they can respect? We may never know. We do know that the King family has yet to comment on this week's news. Maybe it's because a Robert Byrd-sponsored MLK monument makes about as much sense as a Yasser Arafat Synagogue.... "They say there's a heaven for those who will wait... Some say it's better but I say it ain't..." Especially if it means an eternity listening to the prattling and preaching of Jimmy Carter. The historically least of our presidents was dispatched overwhelmingly by voters after one ruinous term that ended in 1980. Under his lack-of-leadership, the country experienced double digit inflation, double digit unemployment, double digit interest rates and the disrespect of friends and foes around the world. Jimmy himself invented something called "The Misery Index" so we could all measure the suffering of the country on his watch. We the people always hoped and assumed he would head back to rural Georgia after losing to Ronald Reagan, humbled-but-wiser for his failure, and perhaps quietly fill his remaining days doing something that wouldn't hurt him or us. But as president, Jimmy Carter embraced dictators, made bad decisions and advanced anti-American interests whenever he could. Those are the things he always did best. And even today, this 81-year-old crank gets pain-in-the-ass-pity-press whenever he takes his everything-everywhere-is-holier-than-anything-in-America show on the road. Like the other day in Birmingham, England when the former president did the wrong thing once more in criticizing an ongoing war effort while standing on foreign soil. He whined about the wisdom of the Iraq war and said that it gives terrorists an excuse to attack the United States. Among his uninformed observations was this whopper: "What has happened at Guantanamo Bay... does not represent the will of the American people" and "the camp is an embarrassment." Wrong once again, Jimbo. According to a June 25 Rasmussen Report survey, only 20% of Americans (mostly members of the ACLU, some traitors in Congress and the reporters at Newsweak) believe prisoners at Gitmo have been treated unfairly. Seven-out-of-ten adults believe the prisoners are being treated "better than they deserve" (36%) or "about right" (34%). The Rasmussen Report did not ask respondents if Jimmy Carter embarrassed them. However, 58% of those surveyed think the former president is brain-damaged because he has been "using his forehead to pound nails into wood" (37%) or because he "fell off a ladder onto his head" (21%) while building houses for the needy. 12% of those surveyed said, "Jimmy who?"....

Under the Big Top

Casting Call for Candidates. Four hundred Springer-Americans representing the Democrat Leadership Council gathered in Columbus, Ohio this week to frighten the locals, stiff waitresses and anoint Hillary Rodham as the best candidate they can come up with to lead the circus back to the White House in 2008. But they also acknowledge even their best can't do it without duping enough dummies into believing their party represents "the mainstream" of America. The DLC spent two days telling each other their Alpo-of-ideas will taste like an ice cream sundae to plenty of stupid voters if it is just packaged a little differently. For her part, Rodham is running as fast as she can to the middle. But so far, it looks like those thick ankles are slowing her down. Both liberals and conservatives agree that Bill's enabler is clearly the former. The American Conservative Union gave her a score of 0 (zero... zip... nada out of 100) for her 2004 voting record. Her "Progressive (read liberal) Punch" score of 91.63% ranked her as the 11th most liberal of 100 Senators....Labor Pains for Her Heinous? Don't worry, Hillary's not spawning again. (Insert your favorite Web-Hubbell-is-Chelsea's-real-father joke here.) The excitement swirling around Hillary's ascension to leadership of the "centrist" DLC was greeted with a snort and a "See ya!" from the Teamsters as well as the Service Employees International Union when both bolted from the AFL-CIO on Monday. Other unions are rumored to be following soon. These defections of shrinking-but-still-important traditional Democrat labor allies portend potential problems for the party's future. Why did they leave? According to Teamster President Jimmy Hoffa, Jr., "Hey, we've got a strong stomach for extortion, lies, bribery and physical intimidation... we'll even wack somebody now and then. That's business. But even we have limits to corruption. This lockstep alliance with the AFL-CIO and the Democrat Party is ruining our good name. Besides, our people work for a living. What do we have in common with people like John Kerry or Hillary Clinton?".... "Who loves ya, Baby?" In the case of Chelsea Clinton-Rodman, it's a love-struck African government official. News sources tell us this week that Godwin Kipkimoi Chepkurgor of Kenya has offered the disgraced, impeached president (D.I.P.) Bill Rodman 40 goats and 20 cows for his daughter's hand in marriage. At last report, the negotiations continue with the DIP holding firm to his demand for the barnyard animals plus a new Callaway driver and sixteen replacement tires for his Presidential Library.... Happy birthday, Mary Jo Kopechne, you would have been 65-years old this week and eligible for the many benefits your killer is peddling in today's Senate. For those of you under 40 and hamstrung by an irrational reliance on information from the lamestream media, former Kennedy-staffer Mary Jo suffocated slowly in the trunk of Democrat Ted Kennedy's Oldsmobile in 1969 as the "Lion of the Left" swam-like-Spitz to save his own political viability. The entire unseemly event cost Uncle Ted more than the 40 goats and 20 cows Mr. Chepkurgor offered for the Klintons' kid. It cost the family a Camelot-redux and whatever they had to pay the surviving Kopechnes to klam up....

"If I was the President..."

"...things would sure be different around here." C'mon, tell me you haven't thought about it. At least a little bit. Maybe there are even some of us who think about it a little too much. Be that as it may, let's play a game of pretend. The premise is simple: You wake up tomorrow as the President of the United States. Your party controls both the Senate and the House. Your allies in both of those bodies are selfless, loyal patriots and courageous leaders (I told you we were pretending). You have political capital and the support of the public. The New York Times circulation is below 12,000 (and CNN viewership is even lower). You're surrounded by smart people and you don't have to worry about being re-elected; you can get your laws passed and your ideas enacted. What would you do? Here's a to-do list of legacy-builders for the first week of my administration.... Establish a foreign policy that will comfort our friends and soften some stools in Syria. We will engage, aid and enter treaties only with peaceful democracies. And we won't use Jimmy Carter's definition of "democracy," either. We'll be out of the nation-building business. Instead, we'll employ a global policy of decapitation. Leaders of governments that foment or export terror, WMDs and/or drugs will think twice about those things when they know they are apt to catch a Tomahawk or two in their hot tub tonight (see Moammar al-Qadhafi). And we're not going to replace the hot tub. The U.S. Air Force will play whack-a-mole with any rogue nation's bad leaders until a good one pops up. It goes without saying, this foreign policy will require us to pull out of the UN by Monday afternoon. A reasonable 90-day eviction period will have those terrorists, freaks and criminals out of Manhattan and in a new-but-not-air-conditioned, Halliburton-built pole-building headquarters in Darfur by Halloween. The closest those people will get to America again will be Gitmo.... Produce a two-page Tax Code a public school student could read. We'll have a one-rate national sales tax on all goods and services except food, medicine and essential health care. You'll pay your tax as you spend your money. No more social-engineering through tax breaks and deductions that divide Americans and enable gaming of the system. You want to run a church? Fine. Do it with your own dough and pay taxes like everyone else. The rest of us aren't going to pay for it. No breaks if you buy a house or get married or have kids or abort kids. No breaks if you run a "not-for-profit" business or a business that makes a profit (or not). The IRS will be a phone bank of ten terse old ladies answering toll-free calls for the most-stupid-among-us until they can finally figure it out. "Gee, it sounds like I'll have more control of what I earn," you say, "But even rich guys like George Soros and Michael Moore will be able to keep and control a lot more of their money, too." Sure... but that's alright. We'll take care of them with the new and improved House Un-American Activities Committee.... Produce public school students who can read a two-page Tax Code. The successful American school child is a more endangered species than the snail darter or the spotted owl. The conspicuous failure of our schools is more than a mere disgrace. It's a threat to the future of the republic. Lip-service to student non-achievement and empty promises to pour more dollars-that-don't-exist into long-failed schools aren't working. I will issue an Executive Order nationalizing the lower-performing half of all school districts. The national teachers' union, too. When they squeal and strike, I'll fire them... just like Dutch did to the Air Traffic Controllers in 1981. Competent teachers could apply for high-paid merit-based teaching positions and keep their jobs as long as they produce successful students. Discipline will return to the classroom and teaching will be easier as we deal with behavior problems. Corporal punishment will be back. And consistently-disruptive kids will be placed under "house arrest," chained to at least one parent or guardian inside the nearest Chuck E. Cheese until attitudes change. Then they can go back to class. A high degree of emphasis will be placed upon English (particularly reading comprehension and writing), History (American and World) and Math. Dodge ball will be a requirement at every grade level. As they experience success in school, more kids will want to learn more. And we won't let money get in their way. Every academically-qualified student will be automatically eligible for a no-interest loan to cover the cost of higher education. This program will be funded by eliminating federal spending on PBS, the National Endowment for the Arts and less than half the pork Robert "KKK" Byrd sends home to West Virginia every year.... Well, there you have the highlights of my first week in Washington. The heavy lifting ought to be done by late Thursday afternoon. I might have the Polish Ambassador over for dinner that night. Friday, I'll take Marine One up to Camp David for a photo op of me walking, deep-in-thought, on a wooded trail with a golden retriever. Then I'll probably shoot some sporting clays with Scalia, sign an order to drill for oil on Barbra Streisand's estate and review some preliminary sketches of something I call "Mt. Rushmore done right." Saturday, I'll skip the radio address to the nation. No one ever listens to it anyway. Instead, I'm having Condi, the Cheneys and the Joint Chiefs up for steaks and whiskey. We'll smoke some cigars, tell French military jokes and figure out how to tighten up our borders without steaming the Mexicans or honkin'-off the Hosers. Sunday, I'll do a little light reading, maybe work on the old memoirs and lay out the schedule for "Week Two." There's still a lot to be done....

Holy shit.

The religion of peace kills again. Muslims in England (and many citizens of Hollywood, Boston and Dearborn) are concerned about bigotry and backlash this week in the aftermath of their brethren bombing innocent Brits for the unholy crime of commuting to their jobs on Thursday morning. Bodies are still buried in London's Underground as liberals and other terror supporters in blue states and around the world blame the blasts on everything from American SUVs and Halliburton to Gitmo and global warming. But for reasonable people, at least two things are apparent in the aftermath of this cold-blooded attack on our most loyal ally. First, the muslims picked the wrong target. The British people aren't the spineless Spanish or the Vichy French. They've endured and overcome Irish bomb-throwers and the Nazi blitzkrieg. While they may not be able to raise an edible cow, the English are made of stiff stuff and they won't be bowing to Mecca anytime soon. And second, it's time to have an honest conversation about the nature of our enemy in the War on Terror. And I'm not talking about the newsroom of The New York Times. I mean radical Islam... All Praise to Google. A product of public schools well-before 9/11 (and even before Al Gore invented the internet), I grew up thinking Muhammad was a heavyweight boxer with a quick jab and a quicker tongue and that Medina was a nice little town south of Cleveland. I did know enough about the Middle East to be armed with some keywords to feed the browser. Starting with "low-aspiration civilizations comprised of bitter, unaccomplished and unattractive people" I found quite a few links to helpful information about the Columbia University faculty as well as a few sources for some straight poop on the perpetually pissed-off Palestinians and other dyspeptic desert-dwellers. And I found some stuff about Islam. Apparently, the number two guy in Islam (Allah is their god and ranks #1) is a prophet named Muhammad who was born c. 570 in Mecca and died 63 years later in an Arab Peninsula oasis called Medina (which, it seems, is nowhere near Cleveland). Muhammad, like our own John Kerry, made his fortune by marrying a rich, old widow. But while Kerry has been content to preach class warfare from a plush perch of political privilege, Muhammad made his place in history the holy way. As a 40-year-old merchant sitting in a cave, he claimed to have "visions" that made him special. He became a preacher, recruited a wacky cult of followers and began robbing caravans, building a legion of believers and waging war on his neighbors in the region. Along the way, he found time to marry a nine-year-old girl (as well as another nine or ten women) and even serve as the subject of an important book. It documents Muhammad's "visions" and lays out the rules for the old world order. It is called The Qur'an.... Read it and weep. You don't have to spend a lot of time reading the revelations and rules in the Qur'an to see it includes toxic themes providing the gameplan and playbook of global terror for those inclined toward evil. Spend a little time with it, and you'll see how the blind believers think, the nature of their agenda and what they really want to do to you, me and our way of life. Here's one of my personal favorites: (Qur'an 8:59) "The infidels should not think that they can get away from us. Prepare against them whatever arms and weaponry you can muster so that you may terrorize them. They are your enemy and Allah's enemy.".... Here's a question for all you "infidels".... When does a "legitimate" religion become a "hate group" ? Or at least a violent criminal enterprise? We're not talking about a TV evangelist scamming an old lady out of a pension check to pay for his new Cadillac. We're talking about millions of radical zealots exporting global violence and oppression because they don't approve of the way we live. They resent our freedom and they're not content to live among 'non-believers' while they aspire to greater things through education and hard work. They say they will kill us or make us like them, however long that takes. We don't have to wait for the now-over-burdened Scotland Yard to crack this case. Whether or not all muslims are terrorists, all terrorists in this war have been muslims. If we're going to save our freedom and our skins we had better start profiling the real problems, paying attention to our borders (and our neighbors), protecting ourselves (and our friends) by taking off the gloves and praying to anyone but Allah that we can stop these crazies before they can kill us by the millions.... and a question for you "true believers." Where are the powerful clerics, Islamic community leaders and mainstream muslims who should be condemning all this senseless killing? If muslims are indeed peaceful people seeking a positive, productive role in a diverse modern world, someone had better speak up pretty soon. Because with terrorists screaming louder and louder for more blood in the name of Islam, it's getting harder and harder to hear the belly-aching about "bigotry and backlash." Clean your house.

Advice and Consent

Ted Kennedy weighs in this week with some unsolicited advice for the President as the country awaits the pick that will replace the retiring Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor: "The-uh-President had-uh bettah float his nominee past the-uh minority pahty... the-uh Democrahts, and not just drive... I-uh, I mean dive... in to the-uh shallow but tricky waters of the cahnfirmation process with a uh-conservative young waitress, for exahmple, who very well might-uh be unacceptable and-uh find herself trahpped in the flooded Oldsmobile of senate gridlock while the uh-President is-uh forced to swim away to save himself. Has-uh anybody seen... where is my-uh drink?" With his usual eloquence, the most corpulent Kennedy has thrown down the gauntlet like it was three fingers of scotch.... From Sots to Sows. While Uncle Ted headed to happy hour in Hyannisport, 800 nags from NOW were gettin' nasty at their annual meeting in Nashville. The news of an imminent Bush nominee had the ugly-mean-or-otherwise-unpopular-girls-from-your-high-school snorting and stomping their hooves in pre-emptive disapproval of any SCOTUS-nominee they deem politically to the right of Rosie O'Donnell.... WARNING: The following question is graphic. What strange phenomena has a band of female-like gender-champions sharing a bed with Ted Kennedy? After all, the guy's a killer of at least one woman and a serial abuser of many more. But what's a little misogyny among friends? They all have common cause and a greater purpose. Abortion. It's all about abortion, all the time. While many reasonable people view "Roe v. Wade" as the ultimate example of judges legislating from the bench, over-reaching and enabling infanticide, other reasonable people make a case for the privacy, health and personal freedom of the mother. Regardless of your stance on the most divisive issue in America, this much is clear: Abortion... free, frequent, at any age, anyplace and in-your-face... has become the glue that binds the Democrats' Felini-cast of a coalition. Abortion has become the 'rats litmus test for all people in power, especially Supreme Court judges. Not competence, ideas, integrity or intellectual honesty. Abortion. And it's the single-biggest reason their lights are dimming. Because at the end of the day, if your party has no higher purpose than to protect an indecisive someone's "right" to drive a spike into a baby's skull when he's old enough to grab a pacifier, your party is over.... Some Advice for the Right. Abortion was around before Roe v. Wade and repeal ain't going to make it go away. It will only make it more dangerous. The best we can all hope for is to make it a small, sad-but-safe business.... Some advice for both ends. We don't want a Court to make stupid laws, drive political or moral agendas or grow the role of the government. That's the work of the arrogant pinheads "we the people" send to Washington. We want a Court full of people smart enough to read the Constitution, understand the words as written and keep the pinheads from taking our stuff and running our lives.