The Nigh Seen Creeder

Visit the current events section in any local bookstore and you'll find more anti-Bush screeds than you can shake a stick at. There are books in which each and every member of the Bush Administration is portrayed as either a crook or a liar -- or both. There are also books in which the president is not only attacked for the slow federal response to Hurricane Katrina, he's blamed for the hurricane itself. And you can find books in which President Bush is portrayed as the most amiable of Republican amiable dunces.

So what's unique about John Egerton's new book (see this week's Nashville Scene)? Nothing, of course. All Egerton's done is take the America's a Right-Wing Hellhole argument and spin it as a political fairy tale. But I'm willing to bet a dollar to anyone's dime that a left-wing press somewhere has already churned out an allegorical fantasy taking aim at the high crimes and misdemeanors of one George W. Bush.

Even Edgerton's feeble attempt at whimsy is nothing new. Egerton names one of his characters Colon O'Scoppy (how clever), but even the anti-Bush potty humor is so yesterday (apologies to Hilary Duff). Kurt Vonnegut recently told Rolling Stone how pissed he is that he must live in a country governed by a "Colon, a Dick and a Bush." Since Edgerton claims to be incapable of cynicism, perhaps he should team up with ol' Kurt, who fancies himself quite the satirical cynic, to tell us how George W. Bush the Dumbass was able to mastermind the greatest criminal conspiracy in U.S. political history.

President Bush will be speaking in Nashville today at a fundraiser for U.S. Senate candidate Bob Corker. You can bet that a large contingent of protestors will be on hand to greet the president.

Since President Bush will be speaking at the Loews Vanderbilt Hotel, we can expect a gaggle of 19, 20, and 21-year-old liberal Vandy students - all of whom have the world's problems all figured out - to be all frontin' and protestin'; but we can also expect the hardcore/hair-head left-wingers to be on full display as well. Thus, I feel it's only appropriate that I re-publish a letter, penned by moi, that the Nashville City Paper saw fit to print nearly three years ago. To wit:

Am I the only one who finds it disturbing that the establishment press has failed to acknowledge some of the outfits responsible for organizing the most visible anti-Iraq War rallies?

On October 25 [2003], a group of protestors met in Washington, D.C. to demonstrate against U.S. military operations in Iraq. C-Span featured live coverage of the event, and brief blurbs were printed in the next morning's papers. If it was mentioned at all, press stories revealed that International ANSWER organized the march. But that's where the story ended.

ANSWER, which stands for Act Now to Stop the War and End Racism, is an auxiliary of a Marxist-Leninist organization, the Workers World Party, which in its past history has supported the Warsaw Pact invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the Chinese massacre in Tiananmen Square. Not one major U.S. news service mentioned the fact that a Communist front group sponsored the Oct. 25 protest.

Can you imagine what would happen if an organization affiliated with, say, the John Birch Society or the Ku Klux Klan organized a large pro-war rally? And if a Republican presidential candidate happened to show up at said event (Al Sharpton was a featured speaker at the ANSWER rally), the left's outrage would reach a fever pitch.

Nashville Republican Judy Campbell tells the Tennessean that Bob Corker may not be "conservative enough" to receive her vote in the upcoming contest to replace Senator Bill Frist. Thus, Ms. Campbell may very well vote for Harold Ford the Second, or Junior as I, the Nigh Seen Creeder, like to call him.

I have news for Judy Campbell: If she's entertaining notions of voting for Junior, she's not a "dyed-in-the-wool" member of the GOP.

A couple of weeks ago, this blog cogently took issue with the canard that Junior is a conservative Democrat. In my bill of particulars, I mentioned Junior's trips to California to shake down Hollywood leftists for campaign cash. Last week, during an interview on Hardball with Chris Matthews, Junior admitted he was at it again:


CHRIS MATTHEWS: U.S. Congressman Harold Ford Jr. is running for the Senate in Tennessee. Tonight we have him on the air from Los Angeles. Are you raising money? What are you doing out there, congressman?

JUNIOR: We are out raising money.


Again, Junior is not a conservative; and no self-respecting conservative, or dyed-in-the-wool Republican, will vote for the Fancy bastard come November.

If ignorance is a virtue, Larry Daughtrey is the most virtuous SOB in the city of Nashville. Daughtrey, the Tennessean's premier left-wing hack, has demonstrated time and again that he doesn't know jack about economics or international relations (or politics for that matter, even though writing about politics is his day job). Daughtrey's now proved that he don't know jack you-know-what about Tennessee history.

According to Daughtrey, Henry Horton was a "capable" governor (Horton, a Democrat, served as Tennessee's chief executive from 1927-33). How capable was Horton? So capable that he damn near got himself impeached.


At the direction of Governor Horton, the state of Tennessee deposited some $6 million in banks owned by Luke Lea, a former U.S. Senator, and Rogers Caldwell, a businessman whose Kentucky-based rock asphalt company supplied asphalt for Tennessee highways. When the Lea-Caldwell banks were forced to close, Tennessee taxpayers were left holding a substantial bill.

When the Tennessee General Assembly convened in 1931, a legislative committee was appointed to draft articles of impeachment against Governor Horton. Horton's allies were able to defeat the articles of impeachment when the issue made its way to the floor of the house and senate. Horton's name had thus been sullied, and he decided against a bid for re-election.


How capable is a journalist who favorably name-checks a former governor who lost a big chunk of state money and was almost tossed from office? Not very, in my opinion.

The Tennessean would do its readers a great service if it made use of a fact-checker to police the letters to the editor page.  If such a step were taken, the Tennessean's readers would be spared the innacuracies of the kind that were printed Carey Moore's letter.

Implying that Ronald Reagan was responsible for the 10 percent unemployment rate that occured during his second term is sorta like saying President George W. Bush is responsible for Hurricane Katrina. (I'll bet one Carey Moore believes that one too.) When Reagan took office, inflation was growing at an annual rate of 12.4 percent and the prime interest rate sat at 21.5 percent. In response, Fed Chairman Paul Volcker instituted a policy of tight money that, unfortuneately, led to a deep recession and a spike in unemployment.

When Reagan announced his bid for re-election in 1983, the inflation monster had been slain and an era of unprecedented economic growth began. Indeed, the economic boom lasted 92 months without a recession, from November 1982 to July 1990, the second-longest period of sustained growth in U.S. history.

Also in need of a quick fact-check is the assertion that Ronald Reagan handed his successor, George H.W. Bush, an "economic mess." To wit:

Under President Reagan's watch, the American economy grew by about one-third in real inflation-adjusted terms. This was the equivalent of adding the entire economy of East and West Germany or two-thirds of Japan's economy to the U.S. economy.

From 1973 to 1982, real economic growth in the U.S. averaged only 1.6 percent. During the Reagan economic boom, the economy averaged 3.5 percent in real growth from the beginning of 1983 to the end of 1990.

19.9 million jobs were created from 1983-1990. By comparison, 16.4 million jobs were created during the Clinton years.

It's not difficult to find left-wingers who're willing to dump on Ronald Reagan and the Reagan Economy. When the Tennessean ran a favorable profile of former Reagan Administration economist Art Laffer, it was inevitable that a few anti-Reagan nuts would spark up their word processors. Since puttin' a fact-checkin' on these ignorant you-know-whats is something the Tennessean apparently doesn't want to do, I'm more than happy to do it ... for free.

I was accosted on West End Avenue last week by an individual who was imploring me to vote against adding an amendment to ban gay marriage to the state constitution. Standing nearby was another "vote no" individual who was holding a sign upon which was a slogan implying that voting for the amendment will somehow be an affront - or assault - on gay folks' human rights.

The pro-gay marriage crowd has been trying to turn their pet issue into a civil rights/human rights crusade for quite some time now. Leave it to Thomas Sowell - one of the smartest SOBs 'round - to show that the various Gay Marriage Now! campaigns are neither human rights nor civil rights issues ... they are bogus issues:

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said that the life of the law has not been logic but experience. Vast numbers of laws have accumulated and evolved over the centuries, based on experience with male-female unions.

There is no reason why all those laws should be transferred willy-nilly to a different union, one with no inherent tendency to produce children nor the inherent asymmetries of relationships between people of different sexes.


http://www.townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2006/08/15/gay_marriage

After reading Elyssa Durant's anti-standardized testing harangue in the Nashville City Paper ("Equity in Education," Aug. 21), I was not at all surprised to learn that the author is a product of a graduate-level education program. Schools of education have long taught future teachers - and other members of the education establishment - to blame everyone but themselves for children not being able to read, write, and do simple math.

The assertion that the ACT and SAT are racially biased is pure poppycock. A student's score on the ACT or SAT is an excellent measure of his or her ability to do college-level math, science, and writing. If a student cannot solve a simple algebraic equation, or if the same student has but a rudimentary grasp of the rules of grammar, the test that points out the student's shortcoming should not be impugned. Instead, the parents, teachers, and educrats who allow students to march toward graduation without receiving a proper education are the ones who deserve derision.

Furthermore, Durant's contention that standardized tests "do not accurately predict academic performance at the college level" is in desperate need of qualification. Some 40 percent of college freshmen require remedial courses in reading, writing or mathematics. These courses, according to Harvard education professor Bridget Terry Long, "are intended to address academic deficiencies and to prepare students for subsequent college success." Thus, high school students who a generation ago would have been forced into the workforce are given a fifth year to complete their high school coursework. And let's be clear: remedial classes may be, well, remedial classes; but students enrolled in such classes are expected to learn the material or face the consequences, i.e., a quick and inglorious end to their college experience. For many - nay, most - remedial students, it is the first time in their academic careers that they are forced to learn.

If many Americans today ... believe that the words we celebrate on July 4th represent an amoral blank check - that liberty is compatible with license and happiness unconnected to virtue - it is because they have not been properly taught, or taken the time to teach themselves. [emphasis mine]

-- Douglas A. Jeffrey in the current Claremont Review of Books

In the current issue of the New York Times Magazine, the ugliest woman in America, aka Whoopi Goldberg, is asked the following question:

Didn't you lose your contract as a SlimFast spokeswoman after denigrating President Bush at a Kerry-Edwards fund-raiser?

Whoopie replies that she didn't "say what [the press] said I said." What didn't she really say? Well, she claimed that her bush, meaning her mound of short and curlies, is smarter than President Bush.

When SlimFast announced that it was dumping Goldberg, she issued a statement in which she stated that her humor isn't for everyone. She didn't attempt to clarify her anti-Bush nitwittery, nor did she claim that she'd been taken out of context. Indeed, she stood by her remarks and simply said goodbye to SlimFast.

So, as you can see, Whoopi is just plain full of shite. We knew that already, though, didn't we?!

I just finished reading The French Betrayal of America, by veteran investigative reporter Ken Timmerman. In this powerful book, Timmerman uncovers the ugly details of France's corrupt bargaining in world affairs; and he makes a compelling case that France can no longer be considered an American ally. Ned "Cut 'N' Run" Lamont, John "Droopy" Kerry and the rest of the fools in the Democratic Party who think that France should have a veto over U.S. foreign policy should read this book -- twice.

During the diplomatic haggling in the run-up to Gulf War II, the French flat-out lied to the United States. According to Timmerman's sources, Jacques Chirac assured the United States that France would support the U.S. when the decision was made to go to war. This is what "gave the president the confidence to keep sending Colin Powell back to the U.N." According to a source familiar with the conversations Bush had with Chirac, "They also explain why the administration has been going after the French so aggressively ever since. They lied."

Timmerman also reports how French business and government worked for decades to develop deep ties to Iraq and to benefit from Saddam Hussein's regime. Deals were negotiated that would provide billions "to the French state owned-oil company Total and huge kickbacks to the French politicians who greased the skids," Timmerman reports. As it turns out those protest signs barking "No War for Oil" are right on the mark - it had become official French policy.

Timmerman, who worked as a journalist in France for 18 years, demonstrates in striking detail how France morphed into an exceedingly corrupt corporate state: fascism with a friendly face. The French willingness to put its corporatist interests above all other concerns resulted in their encouraging Saddam Hussein to wipe out the Marsh Arabs at the behest of French contractors. The French refused to send engineers into an area where they might be kidnapped, "so they suggested that the Iraqis 'clean up' the area ahead of time," Timmerman reports. The Iraqis did just that and "some three hundred thousand marsh Arabs were sent into forced exile in Iran, their way of life gone forever."

I confess: Bishop John Shelby Spong, the quasi-atheistic Episcopal author, is one of my favorite theologians. While I reject most of his thoughts concerning God's impact on the world around us, I agree with his crusade to foster a better understanding of the manner in which the Old and New Testament were handed down through the ages.

Perhaps to reinforce his reputation as a "liberal" theologian, Bishop Spong often dips his toe into the stream of contemporary politics; and, without fail, he aligns himself with the denizens of the loony left. Thus, it comes as no surprise that Bishop Spong has explained away Islamic terrorism as an understandable (if not heroic) lashing out of the oppressed.

First of all, if the Islamic world is indeed a land of "perpetual" poverty, as Spong submits, it is a self-inflicted state of being. The West has pumped billions into the region, much of which has been squandered by corrupt leaders. (It was recently revealed that Yasir Arafat, head of the Palestinian Authority, has skimmed enough from aid payments to become a millionaire.) Furthermore, governments in the Middle East refuse to modernize their economies, knowing full well that economic liberalization is a first step toward political pluralism. If people in the Middle East are so downtrodden that they feel compelled to "lash out," it is not the West that should be targeted.

Second, and this is something that's not discussed much in left-wing circles, Osama bin Laden is, and the September 11 hijackers were, hardly destitute. Bin Laden is the scion of a wealthy Saudi construction magnate; the 9/11 terrorists were all decidedly middle and upper-middle class. To say that "poverty" or "oppression" motivated them is laughable. No, what motivates Islamic fascists to this day is a hatred of all that we in the West hold sacred: Economic and political freedom; freedom of religion; freedom of thought; gender equality; and the idea that Jews should have the right to live peacefully within the state of Israel.

Not unlike a whole host of so-called "experts," Bishop Spong's acclaim as a media-friendly theologian compels him to comment on subjects about which he knows little. That's sad, really. A learned man, indeed, Spong should stick to his attempts to explain the complexities of the Bible -- and leave discussions of international relations to people who know better.

Ned Lamont, left-wing nut and wannabe U.S. Senator, has taken a lot of heat for his recent chumminess with "Reverend" Al Sharpton. When Larry Kudlow pressed Lamont to explain why in God's name he'd seek - let alone accept - the support of the race-hustling, race-baiting Sharpton, ol' Ned said he admired Sharpton's "good message."

Not only has Al Sharpton uncorked a great many anti-Semitic remarks over the years, e.g., “If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house," he helped perpetrate an insidious racial hoax ... and to this day he refuses to apologize for his actions.

This is the Al Sharpton Message:

His greatest infamy came in 1987, with the Tawana Brawley hoax. As the journalist Nat Hentoff has put it, this is Sharpton’s “Chappaquiddick.” To recall the horrid affair: A girl named Tawana Brawley, after staying away from home for several days, smeared herself with dog feces, scrawled racial epithets on her body, and hopped into a garbage bag. Then she claimed that six white men, including a police officer, had raped and otherwise tormented her. All of America sat up in alarm. Bill Cosby, who was at the height of his fame and popularity, offered a large monetary award for information leading to arrests. And Al Sharpton, of course, was on the spot. Acting as the Brawley family’s adviser, he urged them not to cooperate with the authorities, including the state attorney general, Robert Abrams. To cooperate with Abrams, he said, would be “to sit down with Mr. Hitler.” A Sharpton sidekick, Alton Maddox, added, “Robert Abrams, you are no longer going to masturbate looking at Tawana Brawley’s picture.”

One of those whom Sharpton and his partners accused was an assistant district attorney, Steven Pagones, who was, needless to say, innocent (the crime never took place). After he was cleared, he held a press conference, which Sharpton, in his theatrical fashion, attempted to crash. “Your accuser has arrived!” he bellowed. Sharpton had said before, “We stated openly that Steven Pagones did it. If we’re lying, sue us, so we can go into court with you and prove you did it. Sue us — sue us right now.” Oddly enough, Pagones did. He spent a decade of his life pursuing a defamation case against Sharpton and his accomplices, finally winning that case one glorious, cleansing day in July of 1998. His life had been a hell-of death threats, illnesses, and assorted other agonies. He said to an interviewer in 1997, “I know that Sharpton doesn’t care how I feel. [But] I will follow him and make sure he pays up as long as I live. Wherever he goes, he’ll find me waiting for him.”

Sharpton now owes Pagones $65,000 in damages, money that the victim will probably never see.At the heart of any case against Sharpton-and against the notion of a New Sharpton-is his persecution of Steven Pagones. It has been, to use the word for which there is no substitute, evil. He has never apologized for his deeds, and nothing piques him more than to be reminded of them. “If I saved the Pope’s life,” he has sniped, “the media would ask me about Brawley.” In soft moments, he has come close to apologizing (“I have regrets”). In harder ones, he is angrily defiant (“Never, ever!”). Liberal journalists — white — patiently explain that, for a black leader, an apology is a complicated matter: a question of politics and tactics, not of right and wrong. As Sharpton himself has said, to apologize would be “all about submission.” White folk “are asking me to grovel. They want black children to say that they forced a black man coming out of the hardcore ghetto to his knees.” Jesse Jackson gained nothing by apologizing for his “Hymietown” remark, so why should he? Only last year, Sharpton said of his role in the Brawley case, “If I had to do it again, I’d do it in the same way.”

Howard Meek criticizes the Bush Administration's "naive, simplistic approach to ... foreign issues" (see "A cut 'n' run compromise," Nashville City Paper, August 15). He goes on to suggest that our War President should simply tell Iraq's leaders to "stop the ethnic killing or we're out of here." If this isn't a simplistic and naive way to handle a complex foreign policy issue, I don't know what is.

Republicans have not accused those advocating retreat from Iraq of cowardice. Republicans have instead questioned the judgment of those who wish to pull out of Iraq before the nation's military and police are prepared to move beyond the areas in the Kurdish north and Shi'ite south which they control to provide security for the whole of the country. Commencing a withdrawal from Iraq, with the mission unfinished, will only embolden the various ethnic militias and place the country on a fast track toward open civil war.

I hate to be blunt, but those who've suggested that U.S. forces should leave Iraq before the job there is complete have demonstrated a lack of intelligence and nuance in their foreign policy proposals.

Slate.com economist (?!) Daniel Gross says in today's New York Times Economic View that job growth in the United States has "risen steadily -- albeit not impressively." Oh, really?

Since August 2003, the U.S. economy has created more than 5.4 million new jobs -- more than Japan and the 25 nations of the European Union combined. America’s unemployment rate is 4.6 percent, below the average of each of the past four decades ... and slightly below the level at which economists consider the economy to be operating at Full Employment. (Source: U.S. Department of Labor)

If those aren't impressive statistics vis a vis job growth, what would/can/could be?

The city of Chicago has banned the sale and consumption of a foodstuff that's been enjoyed by gourmands the world 'round for hundreds of years:

Chicago's Foie Gras Ban Going Into Effect

"They're going too far when they're telling you what to eat, what not to eat," said Mario Lara, a 43-year-old sales rep who was concerned enough about the issue to buy a table for four at a foie gras fundraiser at Cyrano's Bistrot & Wine Bar. "This is America."

Indeed.

It would appear that Willie Nelson has wrenched his braids one time too many. Or, perhaps, he's smoked one joint too many. Either way, it's pretty clear that Sir Nasal Twang has gone completely off his rocker.

In 2004, Nelson travelled to Plains, Georgia, to tape CMT Homecoming: President Carter in Plains. I happened to catch a few minutes of this CMT "special" last night, and I had the opporunity to hear Willie Nelson say this:

[Jimmy Carter] did a great job as president.

I guess Willie has forgotten about double-digit inflation, gas lines, hostages in Tehran, charred helicopters in the Iranian desert, "malaise," the Olympic boycott, Soviet encroachment across the globe (Afghanistan, Angola, Nicaragua, etc.), the energy crisis, scandals involving Bert Lance and Billy Carter ...

Great job? Hardly.

Jimmy Carter's presidency can only be described as an abject failure. The only "achievement" to which Jimmy Carter can lay claim, i.e., the Camp David Accords, was eventually exposed as a hollow accomplishment when Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was murdered by a gang of Islamist thugs. Indeed, Islamic fascism might never have become a gloabal threat if Jimmy Carter had authorized a fear-of-God military assault on the then-weak mullahs of Tehran.

Unfortunately, history's view of Jimmy Carter is slowly being tempered by his post-presidential activities. From the day he left office, Carter has cagily endeavored to make us all forget what a crappy president he was. He's built houses; he's supervised elections across the globe; he's written soupy poetry and prose; and he shamlessly campaigned for the Nobel Peace Prize until he won the freakin' thing. None of these do-good measures, however, can make up for his four-year presidential effort, during which he knocked America's **** soundly into the dirt.

Jimmy Carter did a great job as president? You'd have to be high to believe that.

Wait ... we are talking about Willie Nelson.

Leave it to the folks running an independent minor league baseball team to do something entertaining, funny, and tauntingly satirical all at the same time:


Following up on the international success of Britney Spears Baby Safety Night, the Newark Bears Professional Baseball Club announced they will host Scientology Night at Bears and Eagles Riverfront Stadium on Friday, August 11. ...

All fans who dress as a celebrity Scientologist will receive FREE admission at the box office. Fans can also look forward to the opportunity to win copies of L Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics and DVD copies of Battlefield Earth.


Perhaps the Nashville Sounds should emulate this promotion ... a Make Fun of a Faith Night, if you will!

As the 2006 U.S. Senate race heats up, Harold Ford the Second, aka Junior, is going to perform a political cross-dressing routine the likes of which voters in this state have never seen.

Junior fancies himself a conservative - or, at the very least, a solid moderate - Democrat, and his amen corner is busy spreading palm leaves touting him as such. Last Sunday, the Tennessean's Larry Daughtrey mentioned Junior's "right of center" voting record.  Daughtrey's comment comes fast on the heals of a statement released by Junior Spokeswoman Carol Andrews in which she not only calls her boss a "conservative Democrat," she says Republicans by God "know" he's a conservative, too.

The views of Junior's sycophants notwithstanding, Junior is not a conservative.  Oh, sure, he's been talking like a conservative for the past year or so; however, a quick glance at his voting record and financial statements shows that the individuals who're cheerleading for Junior the Conservative are simply propagating a rather pernicious myth.  To wit:

The members of the Club for Growth are a decidedly conservative lot who lend financial support to pro-growth candidates for state and federal offices.  The Club for Growth's "policy goals" include the following:

Making the Bush tax cuts permanent
Death tax repeal
Cutting and limiting government spending
Social Security reform with personal retirement accounts
Expanding free trade
Legal reform to end abusive lawsuits
Replacing the current tax code
School choice
Regulatory reform and deregulation

The Club for Growth's most recent congressional rating gives Junior a lifetime score of 5 out of a possible 100.  (Even left-wing nut-jobs like Jim "Baghdad" McDermott, Henry Waxman, and Cynthia McKinney fared better on their Club for Growth scorecards.)

Since 1971, the American Conservative Union's congressional rankings have been listed in all major political almanacs and reference guides.  The ACU does a pretty good job of identifying who is and who ain't - and who's almost - a conservative.  Junior's lifetime ACU score rests at 19.  By comparison, Tennessee Congressman Lincoln Davis, another self-proclaimed conservative Democrat, has a lifetime 62 ACU score.

Finally, the National Journal, tagged recently by Newsday columnist James Pinkerton as a "prestigious and soberly low-key weekly," ranks Junior the eighth most liberal member of Tennessee's 9-man delegation in the U.S. House of Representatives.
 
Add to Junior's bad 'port cards the fact that he's taken money from Hollywood lefties Larry David, Rob Reiner and Norman Lear, and it's hard to make a convincing argument that Junior is indeed a conservative.

In a Tuesday letter to the editor, Oscar Harward asks the following question:

When will the Muslim community demand an end to terrorism and their style of calling for the “taking of all life” in the Judeo-Christian community who disagree with their interpretation of the Koran?

The late Golda Meir, Israeli PM from 1969 - 1974, answered Mr. Howard's question some 35 years ago:

We will have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us."

Indeed.

If you'd like to read an astute political observation, check out the comments section on the Clinton-in-Nashville post.

Looks like I'm hitting a nerve already.

Cheers!

MEMO

TO: Paleconservatives (Pat Buchanan, Taki Theodoracopulos, et al.), Denizens of the Loony Left (The Nation, International ANSWER, CP-USA, et al.), and Howard Dean's footsoldiers (John Dingell, John Conyers, Nick Rahall, Pete Stark, Neal Abercrombie, et al.)

FROM: Joltin' Django, Esq, Edward Kaplan, PhD, and Charles Small, PhD

SUBJECT: Votre anti-Semitism

Yale University scholars Edward Kaplan and Charles Small have published a paper in which they produce solid statistical evidence to show that the harsher one's views of Israel, the likelier one is to be an anti-Semite. Here's the abstract:

In the discourse surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, extreme criticisms of Israel (e.g., Israel is an apartheid state, the Israel Defense Forces deliberately target Palestinian civilians),coupled with extreme policy proposals (e.g., boycott of Israeli by academics and institutions, divesting from companies doing business with Israel), have sparked counterclaims that such criticisms are anti-Semitic (for only Israel is singled out). The research in this article shines a different, statistical light on this question: based on a survey of 500 citizens in each of 10 European countries, the authors ask whether those individuals with extreme anti-Israel views are more likely to be anti-Semitic. Even after controlling for numerous potentially confounding factors, they find that anti-Israel sentiment consistently predicts the probability that an individual is anti-Semitic, with the likelihood of measured anti-Semitism increasing with the extent of anti-Israel sentiment observed [emphasis mine].

"I want [Junior] to go there so bad, not because [Junior] is a hardcore Democrat, but because [Junior] is a hardcore thinker."

-- President Bill Clinton heaping praise on U.S. Senate candidate Harold Ford, Jr., aka Junior, in Nashville on August 3

During the effusive roar that erupted when ol' Bill uncorked this praising praise, if you will, several witnesses on the scene claimed the former president said "hardcore" yet a third time ... and qualified his statement by name-checking Nashville's Metro News, the "world's largest adult bookstore."

For the next three months, folks in and around Nashville can look forward to seeing the visage of Bob Rochelle on their TV screens as the former state senator seeks to return to Tennessee's upper legislative chamber. I - lucky me - spied my first Rochelle for Senate TV spot just hours before he was declared the winner in the District 17 Democratic primary. After cogitating a bit on the political ad in question, I simply must say this:

Bob Rochelle has a set of brass you-know-whats the size of basketballs.

I'm not bothered by Bob Rochelle's on-air by-the-book Democratic nitwittery, i.e., he's gonna "protect" these while "fighting for" those, etc. No, what irks me is the fact that Rochelle's campaigning as if he were still in office ... and he wants us all to forget that he dropped his 2002 re-election bid when it became clear that his big ass was going to be defeated.

Sen. Bob Rochelle was Waterboy Number One for the state income tax proposed by Gov. Don Sundquist during Tennessee's 2001-02 budget battle. When it became clear that he was going to lose his legislative seat due to his staunch support for said income tax, Rochelle quickly scuttled his re-election bid 'cause he and his had been subjected to innumerable death threats.

Of course, no credible evidence was unearthed to verify that Bob Rochelle had indeed been the subject of death threats; and to this day Big Bob's yet to acknowledge that he did in fact pussy-out of the 2002 campaign. Now he thinks he deserves his old job back. Puh-leez.

As far as Tennessee's current state of political affairs is concerned, Bob Rochelle is a dinosaur (and for once I'm not alluding to his ample girth). Rochelle is a tax and spend liberal who continues to hope and pray that his leftist/statist views will be muted when he opens his "country-boy" pie-hole. No amount of baritone bombasity, however, can hide the fact that Bob Rochelle is a quitter, pure and simple. Instead of defending his actions and ideas in the political arena in 2002, he decided to tuck-tail and run.

Only in Tennessee could Democratic voters find it within themselves to vote for a quitter. Andrew Jackson is probably spinning in his grave.

Former NBA star Charles Barkley is abandoning the Republican Party. As a dues-paying, card-carrying member of the GOP, I can only say this: Don't let the door hit you in your very ample ass, Mr. Barkley.

It seems Charles "I Just Love a Buffet" Barkley wants to be governor of Alabama. He's been prattling about running for governor of Alabama since he first began dashing - albeit very slowly - up and down various NBA b-ball courts some two decades ago. 'Round 1995 or so, Barkley said he was considering running in 1998 as a Republican, but the Barkley for Gov'nor campaign never materialized.

Now Barkley's joinin' up with the Democratic Party. (We Republicans, you see, have apparently "lost [our] minds.") And he's once again floating the Barkley for Gov'nor (2010) trial balloon. Alabama Dems have said nary a word 'bout the Rotund One's future gubernatorial campaign, but they're welcoming him into the party with open arms: "[We]welcome Charles Barkley," said Alabama Democratic Party chairman Joe Turnham.

Charles Barkley joins a long list of celebrities who've deluded themselves into thinking that living rich and smiling for a paparazzo's camera makes them experts on public policy. (Tennessee resident Tim McGraw, another proud member of the Democratic Party, recently stated that he'd make a fine governor of Tennessee 'cause he could "make some decisions and change some things." Yes, Sir Plugs-A-Lot actually uncorked that bit of inanity.) Mr. Barkley's hubris, however, is not his most objectionable character trait ... oh, no. Indeed, Mr. Barkley's propensity to dispense diarrhea-of-the-mouth inanities will soon be the bane of Democrats in the state of Alabama and beyond.

Now, I've not a single iron in the fire of Alabama politics, but I'd like to say this to one Joe Turnham:

Carefully consider those whom you "welcome," sir. You may very well regret your welcoming, er, welcome.