Submitted for your approval

The Watchers Council nominations are up for this week. If fact they were up a couple of days ago. One of the side effects of how full my schedule has been the past couple of months has been my slacking off on my duties to the Council.

One of my New Year's resolutions, which I am implementing early, is a promise to take my membership on the Council seriously and do the things which are required to keep the Council successful.

Now here are this week's submissions:

The Watchers Council wishes everyone a Happy Thanksgiving!!

Please enjoy this weeks submissions:

Council Submissions

• Mere Rhetoric - Obama’s Top NSA And CIA Picks: Harsh On Israel, Sympathetic To Iran And Hezbollah
• Soccer Dad - Well, duh
• The Colossus of Rhodey - Culture of Whine (a rant)
• The Glittering Eye - Official History
• Joshuapundit - Zero Hour…Iran Now Has Material For First Nuclear Bomb
• Cheat-Seeking Missiles - Sunday Scan
• The Provocateur - Some Perspective on PNC, Fraud, and the Bailout
• Bookworm Room - Halting the Schism

Non-Council Submissions

• Submitted By: Mere Rhetoric - Defense Tech - The Big Three/National Security Risk Myth
• Submitted By: Soccer Dad - Israelly Cool - The despicable Lauren Booth
• Submitted By: The Colossus of Rhodey - Times Higher Education - Nine out of ten dogmas
• Submitted By: The Glittering Eye - Serendipitous altruism - American troops in Afghanistan through the eyes of a French OMLT infantryman
• Submitted By: Joshuapundit - Serendituous Altruism - American troops in Afghanistan through the eyes of a French OMLT infantryman
• Submitted By: Cheat-Seeking Missiles - National Review Online - Party of Privilege
• Submitted By: The Provocateur - The Daily Beast - No Stimulus From Government Spending
• Submitted By: Bookworm Room - Jewish World Review - Why Reporters — and Judges and Professors — are Biased

Miss Ann is talking

That means that YOU are listening!

I thought the rest of the world was going to love us if we elected B. Hussein Obama! Somebody better tell the Indian Muslims.

As everyone but President-elect B. Hussein Obama's base knows, many of the Guantanamo detainees cannot be sent to their home countries, cannot be released and cannot be tried. They need to be held in some form of extra-legal limbo the rest of their lives, sort of like Phil Spector.

And now they're Obama's problem.

If Obama wants his detention of Islamic terrorists to be dramatically different from Bush's Guantanamo, my suggestion is that he cut off -- so to speak -- the expensive prosthetic limb procedures now being granted the detained terrorists.

Far from being sodomized and tortured by U.S. forces -- as Obama's base has wailed for the past seven years -- the innocent scholars and philanthropists being held at Guantanamo have been given expensive, high-tech medical procedures at taxpayer expense. If we're not careful, multitudes of Muslims will be going to fight Americans in Afghanistan just so they can go to Guantanamo and get proper treatment for attention deficit disorder and erectile dysfunction.

After being captured fighting with Taliban forces against Americans in 2001, Abdullah Massoud was sent to Guantanamo, where the one-legged terrorist was fitted with a special prosthetic leg, at a cost of $50,000-$75,000 to the U.S. taxpayer. Under the Americans With Disabilities Act, Massoud would now be able to park his car bomb in a handicapped parking space!

No, you didn't read that wrong, because the VA won't pay for your new glasses. I said $75,000. I would have gone with hanging at sunrise, but what do I know?

Upon his release in March 2004, Massoud hippity-hopped back to Afghanistan and quickly resumed his war against the U.S. Aided by his new artificial leg, just months later, in October 2004, Massoud masterminded the kidnapping of two Chinese engineers in Pakistan working on the Gomal Zam Dam project.

This proved, to me at least, that people with disabilities can do anything they put their minds to. Way to go, you plucky extremist!

Massoud said he had nothing against the Chinese but wanted to embarrass Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf for cooperating with the Americans. You know, the Americans who had just footed -- you should pardon the expression -- a $75,000 bill for his prosthetic leg.

Pakistani forces stormed Massoud's hideout, killing all the kidnappers, including Massoud. Only one of the Chinese engineers was rescued alive.

As a result of the kidnapping, the Chinese pulled all 100 engineers and dam workers out of Pakistan, and work on the dam ceased. This was bad news for the people of Pakistan -- but good news for the endangered Pakistani snail darter!

In none of the news accounts I read of Massoud's return to jihad after his release from Guantanamo is there any mention of the fact that his prosthetic leg was acquired in Guantanamo, courtesy of American taxpayers after he was captured trying to kill Americans on the battlefield in Afghanistan.

News about the prosthetic leg might interfere with stories of the innocent aid workers being held captive at Guantanamo in George Bush's AmeriKKKa.

To the contrary, although Massoud's swashbuckling reputation as a jihadist with a prosthetic leg appears in many news items, where he got that leg is almost purposely hidden -- even lied about.

"Abdullah Massoud ... had earned both sympathy and reverence for his time in Guantanamo Bay. ... Upon his release, he made it home to Waziristan and resumed his war against the U.S. With his long hair, his prosthetic limb and impassioned speeches, he quickly became a charismatic inspiration to Waziristan's youth." -- The New York Times

He's not a one-legged terrorist -- he's a freedom fighter living with a disability. I think we could all learn something about courage from this man.

"He lost his leg in a landmine explosion a few days before the fall of Kabul to the Taliban in September 1996. It didn't dampen his enthusiasm as a fighter and (BEGIN ITALS)he got himself an artificial leg later, says Yusufzai."(END ITALS) -- The Indo-Asian News Service

Where? At COSTCO?

"The 29-year-old Massoud, who lost his left leg in a landmine explosion while fighting alongside the Taliban, often used to ride a horse or camel because his disability made it painful for him to walk long distances in hilly areas." -- BBC Monitoring South Asia

Side-saddle, I'm guessing. And you just know those caves along the Afghan-Pakistan border aren't wheelchair accessible.

"He was educated in Peshawar and was treated in Karachi after his left leg was blown up in a landmine explosion in the Wreshmin Tangi gorge near Kabul in September 1996. He now walks with an artificial leg specifically made for him in Karachi." -- Gulf News (United Arab Emirates)

Karachi? Hey, how do I get into this guy's HMO?

They can't lick leprosy in Karachi, but the Gulf News tells us Massoud got his artificial leg at one of their specialty hospitals.

Anyone who thinks the Guantanamo detainees can be released without consequence doesn't have a leg to stand on.

I'm of two minds about this. On the one hand I figure that the nation voted for Obama and so they deserve to get him, good and hard and with neither condom nor K-Y Jelly.

But on the other hand I remind myself that Obama only won by 4 points and there are tens of millions of children who were too young to vote so most of the country isn't responsible for Obama.

So I find myself hoping that someone will get to him and keep him from doing stupid things like turning our current recession into a depression by raising taxes and closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay.

How about that, I'm caught up in his theme of hope and change. I hope that he will change.

Somehow I don't think that is what he had in mind.

The ignorance of hope

One of the things I've been wanting to draw you attention to was the Zogby poll of Obama voters (pdf of poll results here). The poll was commissioned by John Ziegler. Mr. Ziegler was filming a documentary about the 2008 election and was dismayed at the level of ignorance from those who had voted for Obama:

The 12-question, multiple-choice survey found questions regarding statements linked to Republican presidential candidate John McCain and his vice-presidential running-mate Sarah Palin were far more likely to be answered correctly by Obama voters than questions about statements associated with Obama and Vice-President–Elect Joe Biden. The telephone survey of 512 Obama voters nationwide was conducted Nov. 13-15, 2008, and carries a margin of error of +/- 4.4 percentage points. The survey was commissioned by John Ziegler, author of The Death of Free Speech, producer of the recently released film "Blocking the Path to 9/11" and producer of the upcoming documentary film, Media Malpractice...How Obama Got Elected.

"After I interviewed Obama voters on Election Day for my documentary, I had a pretty low opinion of what most of them had picked up from the media coverage of the campaign, but this poll really proves beyond any doubt the stunning level of malpractice on the part of the media in not educating the Obama portion of the voting populace," said Ziegler.

Ninety-four percent of Obama voters correctly identified Palin as the candidate with a pregnant teenage daughter, 86% correctly identified Palin as the candidate associated with a $150,000 wardrobe purchased by her political party, and 81% chose McCain as the candidate who was unable to identify the number of houses he owned. When asked which candidate said they could "see Russia from their house," 87% chose Palin, although the quote actually is attributed to Saturday Night Live's Tina Fey during her portrayal of Palin during the campaign. An answer of "none" or "Palin" was counted as a correct answer on the test, given that the statement was associated with a characterization of Palin.

Obama voters did not fare nearly as well overall when asked to answer questions about statements or stories associated with Obama or Biden -- 83% failed to correctly answer that Obama had won his first election by getting all of his opponents removed from the ballot, and 88% did not correctly associate Obama with his statement that his energy policies would likely bankrupt the coal industry. Most (56%) were also not able to correctly answer that Obama started his political career at the home of two former members of the Weather Underground.

Nearly three quarters (72%) of Obama voters did not correctly identify Biden as the candidate who had to quit a previous campaign for President because he was found to have plagiarized a speech, and nearly half (47%) did not know that Biden was the one who predicted Obama would be tested by a generated international crisis during his first six months as President.

In addition to questions regarding statements and scandals associated with the campaigns, the 12-question, multiple-choice survey also included a question asking which political party controlled both houses of Congress leading up to the election -- 57% of Obama voters were unable to correctly answer that Democrats controlled both the House and the Senate.

I doubt this comes as too great a shock to most conservatives. We all know that to be a left-liberal you have to be either stupid, ignorant or evil.

What is obvious from the survey is that most Obama voters (and since Obama won we have to say most voters in general) use the mainstream media as their primary source for information (that and Saturday Night Live). This is surprising since the readership/viewership for the MSM is in a nosedive with little chance of a recovery.

So how is it that they were able to exercise so much power?

My best guess is that those who don't normally follow the news realized that they needed to learn something about the candidates for the upcoming election and so they turned on the TV and watched whatever network news program they used to watch or remember their parents watching back when they were kids. That and picking up a copy of the local paper when they saw something about the election on the front page.

This means that we have our work cut out for us. We know that nearly everything that issues from the MSM is a lie (anything about global warming or Sarah Palin), a coverup (their coverage of the Obama campaign) or propaganda (again, their coverage of the Obama campaign).

The question is how we get the great mass of uninterested and uninformed people out there to know this as well.

I'm afraid there's no easy answer but the place to start is by doing what we bloggers do every day. Pick apart the MSM's coverage of anything and everything. Expose their lies like Charles Johnson did with Dan Rather's forged National Guard documents. And just as important hold them up to ridicule. Almost every adult knows enough about something to be considered an expert in that area. Ask them to think about the last newspaper or television news story they saw about that thing that they are an expert in. Then ask them if the newspaper or TV reporter got it right.

Chances are they'll say that the news item had serious mistakes or omissions. Then ask them why, if the media has proven itself to be consistently wrong about something that they know enough about to call the media on its errors, they are willing to believe the media on things about which they do not have specialized knowledge.

Many people will ignore this evidence but in many other people this will plant a seed of doubt.

Who not to listen to

Now that I have some time off I can get to a few things that I've been wanting to talk about. The first is this column by Chris Cillizza which appeared in last Friday's Washington Post. Mr. Cillizza spoke to some GOP "movers and shakers" about who looked good for the 2012 nomination. Chris begins by explaining why he left someone off of his list:

The most notable omission is that of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. While we expect the former vice presidential nominee will be on this Line in the coming months, she doesn't make it this time around because it is not yet clear how she will find a way to remain in the national dialogue from her far-away outpost in the Last Frontier. Palin is also VERY lightly regarded by many of the opinion leaders and establishment types within the GOP, making it tougher for her to command a leading role.

This pretty much explains why nothing else he says is to be taken seriously. The fact is that the "opinion leaders and establishment types within the GOP" are the geniuses who have led the Republican party to its devastating losses in the past two elections.

Further it was these "wizards of smart" (as Rush calls them) who have been telling us for years that "Reagan was dead" and that the only hope for the party was to move sharply leftward. These are the people who assured us that John McCain was the ideal candidate to broaden the appeal of the GOP to new constituencies, like Hispanics, and eat into the Democrat party's advantage among the "moderates" and independents.

Well we saw how well that worked out, didn't we?

So now that their fantasy of a center-left GOP led by the grand master of "reaching across the aisle" has been demonstrated to achieve nothing but devastating losses at the polls the "go left" crowd is desperately seeking to make Governor Palin the scapegoat for McCain's defeat.

Their first attempts to slime Mrs. Palin were almost unbelievably crude and stupid and backfired on them badly. Now the "party line" on the Governor is that she is simply a lightweight who tried her best but just couldn't hold up her end of the campaign.

This isn't going to work either. The average Republican in the street knows that the "Republican" leaders who are telling anyone who will listen that Mrs. Palin isn't to be taken seriously are the same people who took the GOP from a growing majority party to a shrinking minority party in just a few short years.

We are finished listening to these people and the fact that they don't like Sarah makes us love her even more. The FACT, not speculation or wishful thinking, is that the only time that McCain moved into the lead was right after his announcement of Governor Palin as his running mate. The FACT, again not speculation or wishful thinking, was that McCain had to take Palin on the campaign trail with him in order to draw a crowd of any size. The FACT is that when ordinary Republicans are polled (rather than elite Washington-Manhattan axis RINO's) Sarah Palin is the most highly regarded living Republican.

The fact is that Mrs. Palin will have no trouble staying in the public eye. She is one of the most sought after politicians in the world with offers for book deals, movies, speaking engagements and interviews pouring in from around the world. Her only real problem will be avoiding overexposure.

In conclusion I would just remind everyone that the same class of RINO elites who despise Sarah Palin also despised Ronald Reagan, and for exactly the same reason. The same people who call Governor Palin "uninformed" or an "airhead" also called President Reagan an "amiable dunce" and implied that he was borderline senile.

History shows us how utterly wrong they were about both Ronald Reagan and John McCain so why on earth would anyone trust their judgement about anything else ever again?

It is time, and past time, that we broom these liberal Trojan horses out of the party once and for all. The GOP's tent should be big enough to cover every social, fiscal and national security conservative in the nation, and not one square inch larger.

If we set ourselves to making that happen we will find that the tent is large enough to cover a majority of Americans.

Three years old today

Sorry about not posting today but due to the holiday I have the next two days off. But I still have the same amount of work so that means 60% of the time to do 100% of the work and that means not so much time for blogging.

However I could not close out the day without taking note of the fact that HBT is three years old today.

Happy birthday to me
Happy birthday to me
Happy birthday, happy birthday
Happy birthday to me

If you had told me back on Nov. 25, 2005 that in three years the president elect would be a know-nothing, done-nothing, Marxist Chicago street agitator whose only qualifications for the job are the ability to read a teleprompter and an African father I would have thought you insane.

So that shows you what a difference 36 months can make.

I'm back

Contrary to the rumors that some have been spreading (thank's Liz, you will get yours one day) I was neither in jail nor "drying out" in a private facility in Virginia.

Mother Calhoon was in for the weekend so my schedule was not my own.

As I return to the computer to check the news I see that congress has pledged up to 7.7 trillion in handouts to "stimulate the economy" by bailing out poorly run businesses.

Friends, this is an incomprehensible amount of money which the federal government does not have and which the economy cannot afford to have sucked out of the private sector and "redistributed" to losers who have fraked up their balance sheets so badly that they need the moral equivalent of armed robbery to keep their heads above water.

We are literally looking at the end of the United States of America here.

And the tragedy here is that it in no way had to happen.

We were not conquered by a stronger nation nor we brought down by plague or famine. Ecological upheavals did not render our land unproductive and resource depletion did not steal our ability to make the things we need to defend ourselves and maintain our lifestyle.

We simply chose to commit national suicide.

Miss Ann is talking

That means that YOU are listening!

With Time magazine comparing Obama to Jesus, I guess we should be relieved that, this week, liberals are only comparing him to Abraham Lincoln.

The one thing every liberal on TV seems to know about Lincoln is that he put rivals in his cabinet, as subtly indicated in the title to historian and plagiarist Doris Kearns Goodwin's book: "Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln." Like Lincoln, Goodwin is always open to contributions from her rivals, although Lincoln was better at crediting their words.

And hasn't Obama talked to former rival Hillary about becoming his secretary of state? Hasn't he had a sit-down with Sen. John McCain? Did I imagine this, or is he even now brokering peace talks between Joy Behar and Elisabeth Hasselbeck?

Ergo: Obama is a genius.

Indeed, historians have just named Obama the best president-elect ever.

I don't recall the media swooning when President George W. Bush reached out to rivals, such as Sen. Teddy Kennedy, who was asked to co-write Bush's education bill. In fact, the way I remember it, Bush is liberals' most hated president ever (only because they can't remember George Washington or they'd hate him, too).

And yet no modern president has ever done more to bridge partisan divides and show respect to his opponents than George W. Bush. I do not say this with admiration; it is simply a fact.

Throughout the year and again in his convention speech during the 2000 presidential campaign, Gov. Bush bragged that he had "no stake in the bitter arguments of the last few years. I want to change the tone of Washington to one of civility and respect."

(As a side note: Bush would never have been elected president if not for the "bitter arguments of the last few years," in which Republicans exposed and impeached Bill Clinton, which then killed Al Gore's presidential ambitions. So you're welcome.)

But the point is: Bush was massively chummy with his enemies -- Democrats, communists and the Congressional Black Caucus. So chummy that even they began to wonder if he was a little daft.

In his first few weeks in office, Bush met with more than 150 members of Congress, half of them Democrats -- including five events with America's leading liberal menace, Sen. Teddy Kennedy.

Bush's very first social event at the White House was movie night with the Kennedy family to watch "Thirteen Days," a falsely heroic portrayal of JFK's disastrous handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis. This suggests to me that Obama's first social move as president will have to be to invite Lindsey Graham over to a screening of "Larry the Cable Guy Saves Christmas."

Naturally, Bush also had primary rival John McCain and his wife, Cindy, over to dinner at the White House.

Bush was the first president in memory to attend the congressional retreats of the opposing party. After two weeks in office, a Wall Street Journal column noted that Bush's charm offensive was "disorienting the local Hatfields and McCoys." (Again: You're welcome.)

Bush even made a special point to meet with the Congressional Black Caucus upon taking office, which -- given their feelings toward Bush -- would be the equivalent of Obama holding a special meet-and-greet session with the upper management of the Ku Klux Klan.

Bush invited the Democratic black mayor of the District of Columbia to the White House, attended a majority black District church service and appointed the first black secretary of state.

And that was all before Feb. 1, 2001. (By the end of his presidency, he would have appointed the first two black secretaries of state.)

Though it was small potatoes after all that palling around with Teddy Kennedy, this is the same George W. Bush who had Muslim "spiritual leaders" to the White House a week after 9/11.

Bush also famously said of then-Russian president, former KGB agent Vladimir Putin, that he looked him in the eye and "was able to get a sense of his soul."

(This made Bush's critics almost as apoplectic as if he had said, "I looked into Putin's eyes and, frankly, I just don't trust the guy." No matter what Bush did, liberals were incensed.)

As president, Bush scuttled the playing of "Hail to the Chief" in his honor and repeatedly reminded his staff to act humbly.

This is as opposed to Obama, who I believe is the first president-elect in history to have his own "Office of the President-elect" seal commissioned.

Like I always say, even if you don't like the current president-elect, you should still have some respect for the office of the presidency-elect.

In the long term historians will be very kind to George W Bush. When Islamists brought their war against the West and its ideals of human freedom and dignity to our doorstep he responded forcefully and with courage. He took the war to the enemies homeland and thereby transformed the battleground in the current world war from our cities to theirs. By doing this he has kept the American homeland safe for the past seven years and by making the primary actors against the terrorists our military rather than our law enforcement agencies he has seen to the killing of tens of thousands of our enemies rather than the capture and jailing of at most a few hundred.

President Bush has done this despite the fact that the public turned against him and the war. When it could have doubled his job approval numbers by cutting and running from Iraq he held to his course because he knew it to be the right course.

However for those of us living in the short and mid term we have to face the fact that despite Mr. Bush's steadfastness on the war (for which we do owe him our thanks) in most other ways he has been a disaster. And Miss Ann has hit the nail on the head as to why.

During a time when the other party has turned the political process into a no-holds-barred knife fight George W Bush walked into the arena essentially unarmed.

Mr. Bush reached across the partisan divide to extend a hand of friendship to the Democrats and they repaid him by breaking his arm and he was apparently too dull to even feel the pain.

George W Bush failed to recognize that the Democrat party, or at least its left-wing, is just as much this nation's enemy as al Qaeda (even if they use legislation rather than bombs to do their damage) and act accordingly.

President Bush's insistence on placing all his attention on the battle against America's enemies overseas and none of it on the battle against America's enemies at home played a major part in his party's loss of direction. His willingness to sign almost any piece of legislation no matter how unwise, unwarranted or unconstitutional enabled the congressional spending spree which cost the GOP its reputation as the party of fiscal responsibility. Just as his failure to provide conservative leadership made it very much harder for congressional Republicans to run for reelection on principal and left them scrambling to buy votes with taxpayer dollars.

As I said, history will be kind to George W Bush because historians who are not yet born will note that either his approach to fighting the war against the Islamofascists was followed by his successors and led to victory or was abandoned, resulting in defeat. But those of us who have to live with all the consequences of his conduct in office have a gigantic mess to clean up.

So let the historians of the 22nd century praise him for saving Western Civilization. Right here, right now it is far more important to take a hard look at his mistakes so that we can avoid making them again.

There is a coup in progress

Keep an eye on this one:

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - California's highest court has agreed to hear legal challenges to a new ban on gay marriage, but is refusing to allow gay couples to resume marrying until it rules.

The California Supreme Court on Wednesday accepted three lawsuits seeking to overturn Proposition 8. The amendment passed this month with 52 percent of the vote. The court did not elaborate on its decision.

All three cases claim the ban abridges the civil rights of a vulnerable minority group. They argue that voters alone did not have the authority to enact such a significant constitutional change

If the California Supreme Court overturns a constitutional amendment then the last pretense that the state of California is governed by anything other than a judicial dictatorship is out the window.

State's rights advocates do not like the idea of the federal courts involving themselves in the internal affairs of the states however if this degree of judicial usurpation is allowed to stand then democracy in all of America is dead, to be replaced by a black robed aristocracy.

Think this through carefully. Courts are supposed to apply the law and the supreme law in a state is the state constitution just as the supreme law in the USA as a whole is the federal constitution. Even when activist courts have legislated from the bench they have at least attempted to cloak their activism in constitutional language. For example the majority in Roe v Wade pretended to find a constitutional "right to privacy".

If the California court gets away with simply declaring a legally adopted amendment to the state constitution to be illegal then nothing will be off limits to an activist judiciary. If the people of California acting either through the referendum process or through their elected representatives ever attempt to limit the power of the judiciary then the judges can simply declare those limits null and void.

If the California court overturns a constitutional amendment there is literally nothing to stop them from overturning the portion of California law which requires them to stand for election, thus making themselves judicial dictators for life. If the California court gets away with this then what stops them, or any other state's Supreme Court from simply deciding to award that states electoral votes to the candidate they like rather than the one the people of the state voted for.

This is, after all, what almost happened in Florida in the 2000 election. The left-wing activist state Supreme Court didn't like the fact that more people in Florida voted for George W Bush than Al Gore so they tried to rewrite the state's election laws in the middle of the election in order to give the presidency to the candidate they preferred.

This is why this must be brought to the US Supreme Court if the California justices attempt to declare themselves sovereign monarchs. Otherwise kiss whatever is left of your freedom goodbye.

This is what you do to pirates

An Indian navy warship has sunk a Somali pirate "mother ship" in the Gulf of Aden, the world's most treacherous waterway, after the renegades threatened to attack the frigate.

The clash happened as pirates claimed to begin negotiations over a ransom for the Saudi super-tanker that was seized nearby on Saturday with two Britons aboard. The Sirius Star, which is carrying at least $100 million worth of oil, is the biggest ship ever to be hijacked.

INS Tabar, an Indian frigate dispatched last month to the area to protect the country's merchant fleet, sighted the pirate vessel late on Tuesday. Indian officers said they spotted pirates moving on the deck with rocket propelled grenade launchers and automatic weapons.

"On repeated calls, the vessel's threatening response was that she would blow up the naval warship," the Indian Navy said in a statement.

I've been listening to a bunch of hand wringing from nations saying that there really isn't anything that can be done about these Somali pirates.

Bull crap.

The civilized world used to know exactly what to do about piracy. You engage pirates on sight and destroy them.

The only regrettable thing here is the indians feeling the need to justify themselves by talking about self defense.

Nice try

SACRAMENTO, Calif.- A former opponent of Barack Obama's has come back to haunt him over questions regarding Obama's citizenship.

According to a press release from the American Independent Party, former presidential candidate Alan Keyes and other members of the party have filed suit in California Superior Court in Sacramento to stop the state from giving its electoral votes to President-elect Barack Obama until documentary evidence is provided to prove Obama is indeed a natural born citizen of the United States. A copy of the writ can be found here.

Too little, too late.

Still, it's an interesting thought experiment. What if undeniable evidence was produced that the little messiah was not a US citizen?

The people who make up the Democrat party base don't think the constitution is relevant (except for the parts that aren't actually there like abortion rights and gay marriage) so they wouldn't care.

But what about the rest of us? What about the courts? What about the GOP, would they even try to do anything?

Or should anyone try to do anything. Obama may be a hard socialist but there is evidence that he has a brain. Biden is a soft socialist but he most definitely doesn't have a brain.

It's like the question that one of the camp inmates posed in Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago
if the mother's a whore and the father's an idiot will the children be fed or go hungry?

A Polack and an African-American socialist president walk into a bar. . .

Poland has been forced to deny its foreign minister 'joked' that President-Elect Barack Obama's grandparents were cannibals.

In an episode that could potentially strain relations between Warsaw and Washington, Radek Sikorski, an Oxford-educated politician who has lived in the US, was reported to have made the jibe by an opposition politician, Ryszard Czarnecki.

Writing in his blog, Mr Czarnecki, an MEP, quoted the foreign minister as saying: "Have you heard that Obama may have a Polish connection? His grandfather ate a Polish missionary."

A spokesman for the Polish foreign office conceded that Mr Sikorski had made the controversial comment, but denied that the foreign minister had intended to insult Mr Obama, whose father was Kenyan.

Here's the thing. While Western Europe, also known as Old Europe or Dying Europe, is out dancing in the streets over America's election of B. Hussein Obama to the presidency Eastern Europe, also known as New Europe or Recently Free Europe and formerly known as the Warsaw Pact, is worried and frightened.

You see people in nations like Poland know politicians like the little messiah well. They watched America from behind the Iron Curtain as one weak liberal politician after another enabled the Soviet Union until, finally, a leader with a spine stepped up and toppled the Soviet Union and broke the chains of slavery which had bound Eastern Europe.

And, not incidentally, as a nation that was squeezed between Nazi Germany and the USSR the Poles have learned to be wary of creepy personality cults as well.

There is little to endear Obama to those who have recently lived under the kind of totalitarian government that he and his party have historically sought to appease so we shouldn't be surprised to find that he is the butt of their jokes.

Get used to it. By the time he's finished with America he's going to be the butt of a lot of our jokes as well.

Keeping your enemies closer

According to the British newspaper The Guardian Hillary Clinton is planning to accept the little messiah's invitation to be his Secretary of State:

Hillary Clinton plans to accept the job of secretary of state offered by Barack Obama, who is reaching out to former rivals to build a broad coalition administration, the Guardian has learned.

Obama's advisers have begun looking into Bill Clinton's foundation, which distributes millions of dollars to Africa to help with development, to ensure that there is no conflict of interest. But Democrats do not believe that the vetting is likely to be a problem.

Clinton would be well placed to become the country's dominant voice in foreign affairs, replacing Condoleezza Rice. Since being elected senator for New York, she has specialised in foreign affairs and defence. Although she supported the war in Iraq, she and Obama basically agree on a withdrawal of American troops.

Clinton, who still harbours hopes of a future presidential run, had to weigh up whether she would be better placed by staying in the Senate, which offers a platform for life, or making the more uncertain career move to the secretary of state job.

From Obama's perspective it offers him the chance to de-fang the only Democrat who would be likely to challenge him for his party's nomination in four years. I'm sure that he's also thinking that she would be far less likely to attempt to sabotage his administration if she is a part of it, but he should remember the way that Colin Powell and his buddies at the State Department did everything in their power to undermine President Bush.

From Hillary's point of view this gives her a far more prominent stage to act upon than being the junior Senator from New York. However her fortunes are now going to be chained to a man of little experience and fewer real accomplishments.

When things start to go south in the Obama administration she - and Bill - are going to find ways to communicate the fact that it isn't HER fault while Obama will be seeking to place the blame on anyone other than himself.

Expect hijinks.

More on the Great GOP Civil War

More on the GOP "old boy" network and its hatred for Sarah Palin:

Attacks on Gov. Sarah Palin by McCain campaign staff at first appear to be a case of making her a convenient scapegoat, but the attacks have a more devious motive. This post-election barrage is the first volley of the campaign to choose the Republican nominee in 2012. The Washington, D.C. based establishment that rules the GOP wants her career over now. She threatens them.

Firefighting 101 teaches it is easier to stomp out a wildfire when it is small. Don’t allow the fire to grow, spread and become an inferno. Sarah Palin was the spark of McCain’s reform campaign. She ignited the campaign and gave the reform message legitimacy.

Those knifing Palin are the old-guard Republicans who don’t want to see her as the nominee in 2012. The old-guard GOP candidates are likely Gov. Haley Barbour or former Gov. Mitt Romney.

Sarah Palin brought a vibrant, fresh face to the Republican Party. The GOP elitists saw how she easily connected with voters. Palin drew huge crowds of up to 30,000 people anxious to see and hear her. The crowds flocking to see Gov. Palin bond with her culturally. She has the potential to garner Obama- or Reagan-like devotion.

The Republican Party needs this grassroots energy and her reform agenda after a decade of broken promises and the disappointing Bush presidency.

Looking back at history, you see resemblances of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan in Palin. Both Thatcher and Reagan were dismissed and insulted by their own party stalwarts. “Useful idiot” was a term once leveled at President Reagan.

Palin hails from Wasilla, Alaska; Margaret Thatcher grew up in the apartment over her family’s grocery store in a small town in England. Thatcher’s father taught her never to do things because other people were doing them. He said, “Do what you think is right and then persuade others to follow you.” Like Thatcher, Palin’s political philosophy and economic policies emphasize reduced government intervention, free markets and entrepreneurialism.

Margaret Thatcher was willing to take a hard line and earned the nickname “Iron Lady” for her tough-talking rhetoric defiantly opposing the Soviet Union. Likewise, Palin is tough enough to stand up to present-day threats. While Thatcher earned the moniker of ‘Attila the Hen,” Palin calls herself a “Pit-bull with Lipstick” and others dub her “Sarah Barracuda.”

Human, likeable, personable and witty like Reagan, with loads of common sense and confidence, Sarah Palin lives what she believes. And the camera loves her as it loved Ronald Reagan.

Grass-roots efforts are sure to encourage Palin to run in for president in 2012. Meanwhile, she trusts a higher power, saying she is, “Putting my life in my creator’s hands---that is what I always do.” She also said, “I’m like, God, if there is an open door for me somewhere, this is what I always pray, …don’t let me miss the open door…And if there is an open door in ’12 or four years later, and if it is something that is going to be good for my family, for my state, for my nation, an opportunity for me, then I’ll plow through that door.”

This rising star is now too bright to be extinguished by attempts at sabotage. She has addressed the criticism, setting the record straight concerning the purchase of clothes for herself and her family by the Republican National Committee, saying, “Those are the RNC’s clothes, they are not my clothes. I never forced anybody to buy anything. I never asked for anything more than maybe a Diet Dr Pepper every once in a while.” And then there’s the ridiculous rumors regarding the debate prep about NAFTA and Africa. Palin summed it up well, calling it “cruel, it’s mean-spirited, it’s immature, and it’s unprofessional,” and said, “Those guys are jerks if they came away with it taking thing out of context, then tried to spread something on national news.”

Yet Palin realizes criticism is to be expected in politics. “Your life is an open book and you open yourself up to criticism and you’d better be ready to take that criticism,” she said. “In other words, don’t run for office if you can’t handle it.”

Those staffers guilty of anonymous attacks are cowards. Their agenda to control the GOP needs to be seen for what it is -- an attempt to kill the career of Sarah Palin because it threatens them. Americans can see through the falsehoods and love the real Sarah Palin. Nearly 400 letters arrive daily addressed to Gov. Palin and are now piled high in big bags waiting for her.

Given that one presidential campaign has just ended and most people are sick of politics and the general mood seems to be that we ought to just "wish the new president well and give him a chance" some people are wondering why I'm jumping into 2012 with such intensity.

Good question. Here's the answer: Do you know why George w Bush is the president right now? After Bill Clinton was reelected some Republican pundits wrote some articles saying that the Bush brothers, George and Jeb, were the men to watch for 2000. That's all it took. George was interested in the job, Jeb less so. Over the next 2 1/2 years that little bit of speculation snowballed into George W Bush's exploratory campaign taking in over 100 million dollars in, mostly small, donations.

The rest is, as they say, history.

There is no question that Barack Obama generates feelings of ecstatic adolration in many millions of people. It is true that he gives many millions a sense of hope for the future. However among many of the 48% of the American people who voted against Obama (and they were either voting against Obama or for Palin - almost no one voted for John McCain) he inspires feelings of deep misgiving and even dread.

Those people who are standing outside the Obama Euphoria Zone and looking in at what can only be described as the birth of a frightening personality cult are already looking for someone who can mount a successful challenge to Obama in four years.

Whoever leads the GOP in 2012 is going to set the tone for the Republican party for years to come. If another McCain "Republican" is chosen the GOP will be doomed to permanant minority status for at least 40 years, and maybe just doomed period.

However if an authentic Reagan-style conservative captures the nomination in 2012 the party will be reborn even if Obama manages to get reelected.

Sarah Palin isn't the only person who can do this but she is the best known and she has already forged a connection to the GOP base that any other candidate would have to spend years building. Sarah has a massive head start in name recognition and she can stand up to everything the press can throw at her. Her background has already been put under a microscope and the worst they could find about her was that her husband got a DUI 22 years ago and that her daughter was impregnated by the young man who will soon be her husband.

Governor Palin is, all things considered, the best choice for the GOP in 2012. History shows that a head start can be invaluable in constructing a winning campaign so I intend to keep beating thew Palin drum.

The Council has spoken

Here are the winners of last week's Watchers Council vote presented with the Watcher's commentary:

This weeks winners are in and it is clear that the overriding topics were concerned with the failure of the GOP and the new challenges we face going forward under an Obama administration.

Both winning entries discussed what must be done to rebuild the GOP going forward. This was echoed by many other posts. That topic alone will be a pressing issue going forward as conservatives look back on two consecutive defeats thanks to a lackluster leadership and the failure to reach independents.

Please enjoy this weeks’ winning entries:

Council Winners

• First place with 2 3/3 votes votes! - Bookworm Room - Reaching new demographics
• Second place with 2 votes - The Glittering Eye - A Prospective Obama Administration (Updated)
• Third place with 1 1/3 vote - Rhymes With Right - Something That Must Be Said
• Fourth place with 1 vote - (T*) - Hillbilly White Trash - The Great GOP Civil War
• Fourth place with 1 vote - (T*) - Mere Rhetoric - Noted Democratic Shill Begs Nutroots Not To Viciously Attack Emanuel For Being Too Jewish
• Fourth place with 1 vote - (T*) - Joshuapundit - From The Beginning
• Fifth place with 2/3 votes - (T*) - Soccer Dad - Overcoming idiocy
• Fifth place with 2/3 votes - (T*) - Cheat-Seeking Missiles - Valor and Patience
• Sixth place with 1/3 votes - (T*) - The Razor - Return to First Principles
• Sixth place with 1/3 votes - (T*) - The Provocateur - Fraud, Corruption, and Power: What Our Bailout Tax Dollars Are Really Going To

Non-Council Winners

• First place with 3 1/3 votes votes! - Big Lizards The Great Leap Forward: How the Heck Can We Win Anyway?
• Second place with 2 2/3 votes - Seraphic Secret Israel: The One Bomb State
• Third place with 2 votes - The Next Right Change.gov and the Contradiction of the Postmodern Left Netroots
• Fourth place with 1 2/3 votes - damnum absque injuria Sore Winners
• Fifth place with 1 vote - Dr. Robert Zubrin/Pajamas Media We Can Solve the Financial Crisis by Destroying OPEC
• Sixth place with 1/3 votes - (T*) - Danger Room Defense Chief: Give Us New Nukes, or Else
• Sixth place with 1/3 votes - (T*) - Real Clear Politics A Few Post-Election Thoughts
• Sixth place with 1/3 votes - (T*) - Dick Morris President Obama: Conservator in Chief

Worshiping the little messiah

Howard Kurtz documents some of the mainstream media's Obama worship:

Perhaps it was the announcement that NBC News is coming out with a DVD titled "Yes We Can: The Barack Obama Story." Or that ABC and USA Today are rushing out a book on the election. Or that HBO has snapped up a documentary on Obama's campaign.

Perhaps it was the Newsweek commemorative issue -- "Obama's American Dream" -- filled with so many iconic images and such stirring prose that it could have been campaign literature. Or the Time cover depicting Obama as FDR, complete with jaunty cigarette holder.

Are the media capable of merchandizing the moment, packaging a president-elect for profit? Yes, they are.

What's troubling here goes beyond the clanging of cash registers. Media outlets have always tried to make a few bucks off the next big thing. The endless campaign is over, and there's nothing wrong with the country pulling together, however briefly, behind its new leader. But we seem to have crossed a cultural line into mythmaking.

"The Obamas' New Life!" blares People's cover, with a shot of the family. "New home, new friends, new puppy!" Us Weekly goes with a Barack quote: "I Think I'm a Pretty Cool Dad." The Chicago Tribune trumpets that Michelle "is poised to be the new Oprah and the next Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis -- combined!" for the fashion world.

Whew! Are journalists fostering the notion that Obama is invincible, the leader of what the New York Times dubbed "Generation O"?

Each writer, each publication, seems to reach for more eye-popping superlatives. "OBAMAISM -- It's a Kind of Religion," says New York magazine. "Those of us too young to have known JFK's Camelot are going to have our own giddy Camelot II to enrapture and entertain us," Kurt Andersen writes. The New York Post has already christened it "BAM-A-LOT."

"Here we are," writes Salon's Rebecca Traister, "oohing and aahing over what they'll be wearing, and what they'll be eating, what kind of dog they'll be getting, what bedrooms they'll be living in, and what schools they'll be attending. It feels better than good to sniff and snurfle through the Obamas' tastes and habits. . . . Who knew we had in us the capacity to fall for this kind of idealized Americana again?"

But aren't media people supposed to resist this kind of hyperventilating?

Well, news media people are supposed to stand aloof from this kind of thing but PR flacks, press spokesmen and advertising copywriters are supposed to encourage it. And it is obvious to anyone with even two or three working brain cells that the mainstream media has departed from journalism and become nothing more than volunteer spokesmen for Obama and his administration.

Then Kurtz gets to the heart of the matter:

"We're celebrating a moment as much as a man, I think," says Newsweek Editor Jon Meacham, whose new issue, out today, compares Obama to Lincoln. "Given our racial history, an hour or two of commemoration seems appropriate. But there is no doubt that the glow of the moment will fade, and I am sure the coverage will reflect that in due course."

[. . .]

I am not trying to diminish the sheer improbability of what this African American politician, a virtual unknown four years ago, has accomplished. Every one of us views his victory through a personal lens. I thought of growing up in a "Leave It to Beaver" era, when there were no blacks in leading television roles until Bill Cosby was tapped as the co-star of "I Spy" in 1965. When the Watts riots broke out that year, the Los Angeles Times sent an advertising salesman to cover it because the paper had no black reporters. The country has traveled light-years since then.

But have we really come so far? If a person had said before the election that they were not going to vote for Obama because he was black he would have been correctly identified as a racist. However what does that make people who voted for Obama because he is black?

Thanks to a cooperative media who aided in the coverup Barack Obama's past, other than the heavily edited version put out by his campaign, was a mystery to most Americans. Old, or mainstream media, showed absolutely no curiosity about the kind of people that Obama has consistently chosen to associate with or the kind of books he has read or what the specifics of his positions are on myriads of critically important matters of public policy.

Despite this lack of information a majority of the American public showed a similar lack of curiosity about the presidential candidate they voted for. While I don't believe that everyone who voted for Obama was casting what amounts to an affirmative action vote the majority of those who are clamoring for Obama election special edition newspapers and magazines and who are willing to pour into Washington DC and stand in what could be single digit temperatures for hours to be at Obama's inauguration, even though they won't be close enough to actually see Obama take the oath, certainly are idolizing him primarily because of his race.

So I ask again, have we really come so far? Given that it is just as racist to vote for someone because of the color of his skin as it is to vote against him for that reason are we really a "post-racial" society?

Tonight's Music

Here is another video of The Kildares performing September, one of the most over the top love-gone-wrong songs ever written.

Submitted for your approval

The Watchers Council nominations are up and the Council welcomes two new members bringing the total back up to the sacred number of 12.

The new members are Mere Rhetoric and The Provocateur, both excellent blogs as you will see when you read their submissions.

Council Submissions

• The Colossus of Rhodey - That ‘ol “kindred spirit” argument
• The Glittering Eye - A Prospective Obama Administration (Updated)
• Bookworm Room - Reaching new demographics
• Mere Rhetoric - Noted Democratic Shill Begs Nutroots Not To Viciously Attack Emanuel For Being Too Jewish
• Hillbilly White Trash - The Great GOP Civil War
• Soccer Dad - Overcoming idiocy
• Joshuapundit - From The Beginning
• Cheat-Seeking Missiles - Valor and Patience
• The Razor - Return to First Principles
• The Provocateur - Fraud, Corruption, and Power: What Our Bailout Tax Dollars Are Really Going To
• Rhymes With Right - Something That Must Be Said

Non-Council Submissions

• Submitted By: The Colossus of Rhodey
  damnum absque injuria
  Sore Winners
• Submitted By: The Glittering Eye
  The Next Right
  Change.gov and the Contradiction of the Postmodern Left Netroots
• Submitted By: Bookworm Room
  Seraphic Secret
  Israel: The One Bomb State
• Submitted By: Mere Rhetoric
  Danger Room
  Defense Chief: Give Us New Nukes, or Else
• Submitted By: Hillbilly White Trash
  Big Lizards
  The Great Leap Forward: How the Heck Can We Win Anyway?
• Submitted By: Soccer Dad
  Seraphic Secret
  Israel: The One Bomb State
• Submitted By: Joshuapundit
  Dr. Robert Zubrin/Pajamas Media
  We Can Solve the Financial Crisis by Destroying OPEC
• Submitted By: Cheat-Seeking Missiles
  Real Clear Politics
  A Few Post-Election Thoughts
• Submitted By: The Provocateur
  Dick Morris
  President Obama: Conservator in Chief
• Submitted By: Rhymes With Right
  Right on the Left Coast
  Agency Fee Rebate

Miss Ann is talking

That means that YOU are listening!

For the first time in 32 years, Democrats got more than 50 percent of the country to vote for their candidate in a national election, and now they want to lecture the Republican Party on how to win elections. Liberal Republicans have joined them, both groups hoping no one will notice that we just lost this election by running the candidate they chose for us.

For years, New York Times columnist David Brooks has been writing mash notes to John McCain. In November 2007, he quoted an allegedly "smart-alecky" political consultant who exclaimed, in private, "You know, there's really only one great man running for president this year, and that's McCain."

"My friend's remark," Brooks somberly intoned, "had the added weight of truth."

Brooks gushed, "I can tell you there is nobody in politics remotely like him," and even threw down the gauntlet, saying: "You will never persuade me that he is not among the finest of men."

That took guts at the Times, where McCain is constantly praised by the op-ed columnists and was endorsed by the paper in the Republican primary. Even Frank Rich has hailed McCain as the "most experienced and principled" of the Republicans and said no one in either party "has more experience in matters of war than the Arizona senator" -- the biggest rave issued by Rich since "Rent" opened on Broadway.

They adored McCain at the Times! Does anyone here not see a cluster of bright red flags?

In January this year, Brooks boasted of McCain's ability to attract "independents."

And then Election Day arrived, and all the liberals who had spent years praising McCain all voted for Obama. Independents voted for Palin or voted against Obama. No one outside of McCain's immediate family was specifically voting for McCain.

But now Brooks presumes to lecture Republicans about what to do next time. How about: "Don't take David Brooks' advice"?

According to Brooks, the reason McCain lost was -- naturally -- that he ran as a conservative. If only presidential candidates would spurn polls, modern political history, evidence from campaign rallies, facts on the ground and listen to the wishful thinking of Times columnists!

If McCain lost because he ran as a conservative, then how come I knew McCain was going to lose before Brooks did? About the same time Brooks was touting McCain's uncanny ability to attract independents, I was writing, accurately: "John McCain is Bob Dole minus the charm, conservatism and youth."

Using the latest euphemism for "liberal," Brooks complains that "reformist" Republicans like John McCain are forced to run for president as smelly old conservatives: "National candidates who begin with reformist records -- Giuliani, Romney or McCain -- immediately tack right to be acceptable to the power base." (Some "tack" so far to the right they almost adopt the positions in the GOP platform!)

In another sign of how popular liberalism is, liberals have to keep changing their name, like grifters moving from town to town. Liberal Republicans used to be known as "moderates," then "mavericks" or "centrists." I guess now they're "reformists." Why, liberals are so popular they have to disguise themselves for fear of being mobbed by an adoring public!

I gather by "reformist," Brooks means liberal only on the social issues like gay marriage and abortion because -- apart from abortion and gay marriage -- Rudy Giuliani was a right-wing lunatic. He engaged in aggressive policing, cut taxes and government bureaucracies, abolished New York's affirmative action office and was repeatedly denounced as a storm trooper by The New York Times.

The same thing goes for Romney, who also cut taxes and government regulations, but promised Massachusetts voters he would not tinker with their beloved abortion rights.

Ironically, McCain was a liberal on virtually every issue except abortion and gay marriage, but he bashed social conservatives to his friends in the press, so they excused his pro-life voting record as a cynical ploy to get votes in Arizona.

So "reformist" evidently means a Republican who is liberal on social issues. My term for that is "Joe Lieberman." Whatever the merit of being liberal on social issues, both Joe Lieberman and the Republican Party's history suggest that the winning formula is the exact opposite combination.

If liberals are going to use their first majority vote in a national election since Helen Thomas was spilling champagne on Liza at Studio 54 to lecture Republicans on how to win elections, I have a tip for them based on the exact same election: Constitutional amendments banning gay marriage passed in every state they were on the ballot -- Florida, Arizona, even in liberal California.

I'll accept the results of the presidential election, if you anti-Proposition 8 die-hards in California accept the results of that vote. Earth to protestors: Most Americans oppose gay marriage. On this, even blacks and Mormons are agreed! Why don't you people go find something useful to do?

Let's see, who was avidly pro-gay-marriage? Oh I remember: The guy who's once again lecturing Republicans on how to win elections: David Brooks.

Miss Ann is, as usual, spot on.

I was alternately shouting from the rooftops and on my knees begging my fellow Republicans not to nominate that old worthless RINO because HE COULD NOT WIN. I and Miss Ann and Rush Limbaugh and so many others warned the Republican party that if the people were given a choice between a democrat and a Democrat that they would pick the Democrat.

But we let the media and, thanks to open primaries, Democrats (sorry, redundant) pick our nominee for us and we got exactly what we deserve for running a worthless RINO like John McCain.

And now the people who gave us John McCain are telling us that we need more of the same.

My advice to these people is to go ahead and switch to the Democrat party. If you think that McCain was the best man for the nomination then you are really a Democrat and you should just go ahead and make it official.

Don't let the door hit you on the ass on your way out and don't go away mad - just go away.

They so wanted it to be true

NEW YORK – MSNBC was the victim of a hoax when it reported that an adviser to John McCain had identified himself as the source of an embarrassing story about former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, the network said Wednesday.

David Shuster, an anchor for the cable news network, said on air Monday that Martin Eisenstadt, a McCain policy adviser, had come forth and identified himself as the source of a Fox News Channel story saying Palin had mistakenly believed Africa was a country instead of a continent.

Eisenstadt identifies himself on a blog as a senior fellow at the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy. Yet neither he nor the institute exist; each is part of a hoax dreamed up by a filmmaker named Eitan Gorlin and his partner, Dan Mirvish, the New York Times reported Wednesday.

The Eisenstadt claim had mistakenly been delivered to Shuster by a producer and was used in a political discussion Monday afternoon, MSNBC said.

The reason that MSDNC was so eager to report this story that they ran with it without doing any basic fact checking was that it added credence to an anti-Palin story. The fact that the source for the Palin smears is anonymous put them in doubt from the beginning and the fact that CNN (of all things) investigated them and found them to be false drives the stake through their heart.

Unless a source, placed highly enough in the campaign to know, comes forward on the record to repeat them.

The ultra-left cable channel thought they had that and so they didn't want to know that they might be false. Any more than Dan Rather wanted to know that the National Guard documents that implicated George W Bush were forgeries.

Tonight's Music

This is dedicated to the Republican party in the hope that they will "get it right next time" by nominating a true conservative like Sarah Palin.

A dangerous game

Dr. John Lott looks at the attempt by the left to steal themselves another Senate seat:

Minnesota is becoming to 2008 politics what Florida was in 2000 or Washington State in 2004 -- a real mess. The outcome will determine whether Democrats get 58 members of the U.S. Senate, giving them an effective filibuster-proof vote on many issues.

When voters woke up on Wednesday morning after the election, Senator Norm Coleman led Al Franken by what seemed like a relatively comfortable 725 votes. By Wednesday night, that lead had shrunk to 477. By Thursday night, it was down to 336. By Friday, it was 239. Late Sunday night, the difference had gone down to just 221 -- a total change over 4 days of 504 votes.

Amazingly, this all has occurred even though there hasn’t even yet been a recount. Just local election officials correcting claimed typos in how the numbers were reported. Counties will certify their results today, and their final results will be sent to the secretary of state by Friday. The actual recount won’t even start until November 19.

Correcting these typos was claimed to add 435 votes to Franken and take 69 votes from Coleman. Corrections were posted in other races, but they were only a fraction of those for the Senate. The Senate gains for Franken were 2.5 times the gain for Obama in the presidential race count, 2.9 times the total gain that Democrats got across all Minnesota congressional races, and 5 times the net loss that Democrats suffered for all state House races.

Virtually all of Franken’s new votes came from just three out of 4130 precincts, and almost half the gain (246 votes) occurred in one precinct -- Two Harbors, a small town north of Duluth along Lake Superior -- a heavily Democratic precinct where Obama received 64 percent of the vote. None of the other races had any changes in their vote totals in that precinct.

To put this change in perspective, that single precinct’s corrections accounted for a significantly larger net swing in votes between the parties than occurred for all the precincts in the entire state for the presidential, congressional, or state house races.

The two other precincts (Mountain Iron in St. Louis county and Partridge Township in Pine county) accounted for another 100 votes each. The change in each precinct was half as large as the pickup for Obama from the corrections for the entire state.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune attributed these types of mistakes to “exhausted county officials,” and that indeed might be true, but the sizes of the errors in these three precincts are surprisingly large.

Indeed, the 504 total new votes for Franken from all the precincts is greater than adding together all the changes for all the precincts in the entire state for the presidential, congressional, and state house races combined (a sum of 482). It was also true that precincts that gave Obama a larger percentage of the vote were statistically more likely to make a correction that helped Franken.

The recent Washington State 2006 gubernatorial recount is probably most famous for the discovery of ballots in heavily Democratic areas that had somehow missed being counted the first and even second time around. Minnesota is already copying that, though thus far on a much smaller scale, with 32 absentee ballots being discovered in Democratic Hennepin County after all the votes had already been counted. When those votes are added in, they seemed destined to cut Coleman's lead further.

Indeed, it is probably through the discovery of new votes that Franken has his best shot of picking up new votes. Despite the press pushing a possible replay of election judges divining voters’ intentions by looking at “hanging chads” to see if voters meant to punch a hole, that shouldn’t be an issue in Minnesota. The reason is simple: optical scan vote counting machines return ballots to voters if no vote is recorded for a contested race.

The Associated Press piece with the title “Most Minn. Senate ‘undervotes’ are from Obama turf” misinformed readers about what undervotes really imply. The Minneapolis Star Tribune headline similarly claimed "An analysis of ballots that had a vote for president but no vote for U.S. senator could have recount implications."

Voters themselves insert their ballot into the machine that reads and records their votes, and if the machine finds that a vote isn’t recorded, voters can either mark the race that they forgot to mark or didn’t mark clearly. Or if voters “overvoted” and accidentally marked too many candidates, voters can also get a fresh ballot. There should be no role to divine voters’ intentions. If a voter wanted a vote recorded for a particular race, the machine tells him whether his vote in all the races was counted.

But voters also have the right not to vote in particular races. In this election, 0.4 percent of Minnesotans didn’t want to vote for president. The number for the Senate race was only slightly higher at 0.8 percent. For congressional and state House races, the rates were 3 and 3.5 percent.

This pattern of fewer people voting in less important elections has been observed as long as people have studied elections. There are always at least a few people who don’t vote for even the most closely contested races at the top of the ballot and fewer people follow and vote for races the farther down the ballot that you go. But this is not evidence of mistakes, quite the contrary.

With ACORN filing more than 43,000 registration forms this year, 75 percent of all new registrations in the state, Minnesota was facing vote fraud problems even before the election. Even a small percentage of those registrations resulting in fraudulent votes could tip this election.

To many, it just seems like too much of a coincidence that Minnesota's one tight race just happens to be the race with the most "corrected" votes by far. But the real travesty will be to start letting election officials divine voter's intent. If you want to discourage people from voting, election fraud is one sure way of doing it.

If what has happened in the past repeats itself Democrats will be successful in stealing another election and the legal apparatus will turn a blind eye.

I don't think the left realizes what a deeply dangerous game they are playing. Americans are willing to accept the governance of politicians who they dislike and did not vote for as long as they know that those politicians were fairly elected. Take away the underpinnings of Americans' faith in the honesty of the process and their willingness to tolerate what they disagree with can also disappear.

In Florida 2000 Americans witnessed the Democrat party attempt to use the Florida courts to rewrite the rules over and over again until they finally got the outcome they wanted. They read the stories about how left-wing "community organizers" with ACORN registered one person as many as 73 times and turned in voter registration forms filled out by people with names like "Mickey Mouse". They watched the governorship of Washington state being stolen by the miraculous appearance of thousands of previously unnoticed ballots which were all marked for the Democrat candidate.

They have watched the press, another foundation of a functional democracy, abandon its duty to be accurate reporters of the truth in order to become partisan advocates. This has been going on for decades but in the recent election it became so overt that major newspapers like the New York Times and the Washington Post aren't' even bothering to deny it any more.

It has been said that there are three boxes which any free society must depend upon if it wishes to remain free. The first two are the soap box and the ballot box. As long as people are free to express their opinions and argue for their causes and the press is both able and willing to report on the debate in a fair and accurate manner the population can remain informed enough to make good choices in who will lead them.

And as long as they have the freedom to enter the voting booth and cast a ballot secure in the knowledge that it will be fairly counted and that their vote will not be diluted by fraud (ballot box stuffing, people voting more than once, people who are not legally entitled to vote being allowed to vote) they will accept the results and continue to obey the laws and give due respect to legal authority.

However if the people come to believe that the soap box and the ballot box have been corrupted and cannot be relied upon to produce results which fairly represent the will of the citizenry their last recourse will be to the third box, the cartridge box, and they resort to arms to redress their grievances.

The left has already destroyed the faith of the people in the traditional media and they are making serious (and public) plans to shut down the new media with the Orwellian "Fairness Doctrine".

If they are also allowed to destroy the public's faith in the electoral process by simply stealing (and in such an open manner) any election which they need to steal to get the number of legislative votes they need to be able to rule without effective opposition then a great many people just might start to see the cartridge box as the only remaining means of effective dissent.

If the left then pours gasoline on the fire that they have already ignited by trying to disarm the population many people are going to see the preservation of liberty through armed rebellion as a thing which they must do now or never.

If the left ever does manage to push America to the point of civil war they will lose. There simply aren't enough of them and they aren't the ones who own all the guns. We are.