November 21, 2005 by s.z.

A Townhall Sampler Townhall is still in the midst of this month's fund drive, so please send them money so that they can hire smarter columnists. 1.  First, let's hear from Mark. M. Alexander.  But before we do, here's the first paragraph of his eleven-paragraph Townhall bio:    Mark M. Alexander is executive editor and publisher of The Federalist Patriot, the Web's "Conservative E-Journal of Record." His strong academic vitae in constitutional government and policy combined with his varied work experience, ensure his contributions as an essayist reflect the grassroots conservatism of the heartland revitalized by Ronald Reagan, rather than ubiquitous Beltway opinion. Okay, now that you know that his contributions as an essayist reflect the hayseed conservatism of a zombie Ronald Reagan, you're ready for "Call them what they are -- TRAITORS."  The dishonest and politically motivated accusations of Kennedy, Reid, Durbin and their ilk, however, are nothing short of -- and we don't use this term lightly -- treasonous. Here are their accusations: Reid: "We all know the Vice President's office was the nerve center of an operation designed to sell the war and discredit those who challenged it. ... The manipulation of intelligence to sell the war in Iraq ... the Vice President is behind that." (Reid, you may recall, recently called the President "a loser" while speaking to a high-school civics class.) So, while Dick Cheney's office WAS the nerve center of an operation designed to sell the war, because Reid called the President "a loser," Reid is undoubtedly a commie. Durbin: "I seconded the motion Sen. Harry Reid made last week. Republicans in Congress have refused, despite repeated promises, to investigate the Bush administration's misuse of pre-war intelligence, so Senate Democrats are standing up and demanding the truth." (Durbin, you may recall, recently compared U.S. troops to the Nazis and Pol Pot.) It's interesting that while complaining that the Democrats are a bunch of liars, that Mark would say that Durbin "compared the U.S. troops to the Nazis and Pol Pot."  (Of course, the literate know what Durbin actually said, but apparently Mark isn't writing for them, because otherwise he wouldn't offer the argument "Durbin is a traitor for asking for an investigation into the misuse of pre-war intelligence, as manifested by the fact that he disapproves of torture.") Kennedy: "The Bush administration misrepresented and distorted the intelligence to justify a war that America should never have fought." (Kennedy, you may recall, got kicked out of Harvard for cheating. In addition, you may recall, he drunk-drove his car off a bridge at Chappaquiddick, leaving Mary Jo Kopechne to drown while he went back to his hotel, called his lawyer, concocted an alibi and went to sleep.) Yes, while Kennedy may be right about the war and the distortion of pre-war intelligence, HE GOT KICKED OUT OF COLLEGE FOR CHEATING, so he's a traitor, and you shouldn't listen to anything he says now. In the end, American Patriots must call out Kennedy, Durbin, Reid, et al., for what they are: TRAITORS. How else to describe political leaders who so eagerly embolden our Jihadi enemies and erode the morale of our fighting forces in Iraq and around the world? And remember: Mark doesn't use charges like "treasonous" lightly, so if he says that the above statements by Kennedy, Durbin, and Reid constitute treason, then you can believe him -- after all, he used to sort groceries for a local produce shop in his Tennessee hometown, which has to count for something. 2.  Now, here's George Will, who just read Lynne Truss's latest book Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door.  He uses it (and a couple of anecdotes) to show that we lack "Manners and virtue in a modern world." Furthermore, it is a brave, or foolhardy, man who shows traditional manners toward women. In today's world of ``hair-trigger sensitivity," to open a door for a woman is to play what Truss calls Gallantry Russian Roulette: You risk a high-decibel lecture on gender politics You know, despite all the times I've heard about explosive feminist women who will rip a man to shreds for holding the door for her, I've never seen anything of the sort ever occur (and I've spent many years going through portals).  Where I live (2005), it's expected that a polite person of either sex won't let the door slam in your face, and that you will thank him or her for this basic courtesy.  But I suspect that neither Will nor Truss gets out much these days.  3.  Dr. Mike Adams, Ph.D. writes about one Rebecca Beach, an innocent young freshman at a  community college who received a grumpy email from an English instructor at her school.  While Dr. Mike doesn't say so, it seems that Rebecca founded the Young American Foundation chapter on her campus, and she had emailed the the instructor to ask him to invite all of his student to a YAF-sponsored speech by Scott Rutter, an Iraqi war vet (and current Fox News commentator).  The teacher, who happened to be a member of an anti-war group, didn't accede to Rebecca's request, and instead some said some mean things about the war, YAF, and Rebecca's posters --- and somehow his communication ended up being read on Sean Hannity's radio program.  And that brings us to Dr. Mike, who is all about protecting the feelings of innocent college students.  But what really bothered Dr. Mike was the instructor's grammar, as detailed in "Why Professor Johnny can’t spell." While it might prove instructive to point out some instances of Dr. Mike's previous misuse of the language, instead we'll share with you this sentence: Some people reading the above diatribe will ask why a college would allow a professor to use such harsh language while addressing a student. Of course, Dr. Mike wouldn't be among those people, since his career as a Townhall columnist began after he sent an equally harsh email to a student.  However, Dr. Mike did this instructor one better by forwarding the student's emails to some members of the College Republicans -- and two of them emailed the student, using such harsh language as "you deserve to be dragged down the street by the hair" and "you should be hit by a baseball bat TWICE"  (Interesting enough, a year or so later, Dr. Mike later married the student who made the "dragged by the hair" comment.)    Dr. Mike concludes with: I sincerely hope that the above re-statement of Daly’s philosophy helps to explain his incompetence. In the next installment, I will try to explain his anger. I wonder how many columns Dr. Mike can get out of this trivial incident.  (Maybe he can get a whole book from it, a la Annie Jacobsen.)  In any case, I can hardly wait for the next installment, since Dr. Mike seems to know all about anger. 4.  Lastly, let's hear from Michael Barone, who also accuses the Democrats of lying about poor President Bush's pre-war use of intelligence.  His column is called "The (very) big lie." It is said that a big lie can work if it is repeated often enough. For weeks, leading Democrats have been hammering away at the Big Lie that George W. Bush lied about weapons of mass destruction in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. [...] To the charges that Bush "cherry-picked" intelligence, the commission co-chaired by former Democratic Sen. Charles Robb found that the intelligence available to Bush but not to Congress was even more alarming than the intelligence Congress had. Did the Robb-Silbermann really say that?  Let's see what the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction report has to say about the differences between the Oct. 2002 NIE and the President's Daily Brief: It was not that the intelligence was markedly different. Rather, it was that the PDBs and SEIBs, with their attention-grabbing headlines and drumbeat of repetition, left an impression of many corroborating reports where in fact there were very few sources. ... In ways both subtle and not so subtle, the daily reports seemed to be "selling" intelligence--in order to keep its customers, or at least the First Customer, interested. So, per this report, one publication which Bush would have received featured dumbed-down intelligence in order to keep him interested.  However, the report says nothing about charges that Bush "cherry-picked intelligence" (and I don't think that anybody really thinks that Bush personally did the cherry picking); nor does it say that the intelligence available only to Bush was "more alarming" than the limited intelligence which Congress saw.  So, is Barone lying, or merely attempting to mislead us? At the same time, we must remember that the United States and our allies did not go to war solely because of weapons of mass destruction. There were other reasons, which Bush articulated at the time and which have been vindicated by events.  Yeah, but which reason was supposed to convey more urgency for the need for war: "America believes that all people are entitled to hope and human rights," or "Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists"? One of them was to remove from power one of the most brutal regimes on Earth. Mainstream media have enjoyed focusing on isolated prison abuses by U.S. forces and, in the past week, by Iraqis. (Have the media ever focused so closely on prison conditions in our past wars?) But these abuses are nothing compared with what the Saddam Hussein regime did every day. Rape rooms, prisoners fed into shredders, hundreds of mass graves: Do we really want to forget that the liberation of Iraq has vastly improved the lives of millions of people there? Well, sure, life wasn't improved for the dead ones, nor the ones who have been horribly injured by our bombs, chemical weapons, etc.  But the people who don't get fed into shredders now have vastly improved lives. And what if there actually weren't any shredders?  Well, you shouldn't think about that -- because the important thing is that the Democrats are lying if they claim that information was misused to lead us into war. 4:19:07 AM

And Speaking of Crazy . . . WorldNetDaily reports that "Gingrich sees Iran threat to U.S. like Nazi Germany." The threat posed to the national security of the United States by Iran was likened only to the one posed by Nazi Germany in the 1930s, by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who suggested Tehran could be planning for a pre-emptive nuclear electromagnetic pulse attack on America that would turn a third or more of the country "back to a 19th century level of development." Gingrich made the stunning statements, which echo warning of other congressional leaders and national security experts, in testimony before a subcommittee of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee last week. [...] The U.S. has no option but to seek regime change in Iran. Yes, we have no option but to invade.  Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a third of our country turning Amish. 1:28:53 AM

He Said It, Not Me From Friday's Bleat: The world would be so much simpler, and so much more comforting, if I could read this and say “well, it’s all a lie. Or if some of it’s true, it’s irrelevant.” But I cannot. Because I am nuts.   But is it nuts to find one's world view strengthened via stories of a secret Iraqi uranium processing center -- a center which was reportedly located via prayer and psychic dreams?    If it is, Lileks is proud to be crazy.  Proof of which, I suppose, can be found here, where my comments on the Hewitt show are transcribed. (Thanks, Radioblogger.) I was rather exercised, and I have a dim recollection of referring to the Senate as opportunists, boozebags, kluxers and well-oiled weathervanes. Well, if the shoe fits, drive it up their hindquarters. You could say I’m overreacting – well, I dearly hope so. Hmm, after reading his comments from the Hewitt show (if you don't want to wade through a week's worth of transcribed radio blather, here's a better link), one learns that Lileks actually thinks that he's NOT nuts, and not overreacting -- in fact, he believes that he's one of the few sane people out there, since he can recognize that keeping our troops in Iraq indefinitely is a great idea.  I've been holding my fire about this, this week, and tamping it down, but then every day, and a day like this, where I hear a speech when they're actually talking about what? About setting a timetable, and then saying we're going to have a rapid response strike force to respond exactly to what? We have them there, on the ground, right now, to accomplish the goal, which is establishing in the Middle East, a bastion from which we can continue to project a value that is more consistent with the safety of America and the region. Duh! And if I'm...me, a guy living here in Minnesota, born and raised on the planet North Dakota, reading the newspapers and the blogs, and trolling the internet like everybody else can see that as a fairly good thing to have, I don't know why, exactly, that escapes the people we've nominated into office. I was kind of surprised as his tacit admission that all that stuff about spreading democracy and freedom to the Iraqi people was just a load of bull, and the real goal of the war was to set up a permanent U.S. base in Iraq --but there you go.  I guess it just takes somebody born in North Dakota to say what we've all been thinking. I suspect that while trolling the internet he read this quote, and found himself nodding in agreement:  We need an Arab Israel over there. We can‘t keep pimping for Israel. We need a puppet government. We need to be on the ground.  And hey, you wouldn't call Ann Coulter crazy, now would you? 1:06:49 AM