The Breck Girl says goodbye

NEW ORLEANS — Democratic candidate John Edwards has decided to drop out of the presidential primary race, giving a speech this afternoon at the same place where he began this campaign — in New Orleans.

Throughout this season, Mr. Edwards hasn’t been able to break through the dueling high-profile candidacies of Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama. And he had not been able to raise the kind of funds that those two had early on.

Top advisers said that Mr. Edwards would not be endorsing another candidate today when he makes his announcement at 1 p.m. On Tuesday, Mr. Edwards canceled events in Alabama and North Dakota, opting instead to fly to New Orleans late Tuesday night. His press aides told reporters that he would make a “major policy speech” on poverty, in the city where Mr. Edwards announced his candidacy in December 2006.

Will he follow the rest of the Democrat pack and endorse Obama? Word on the street is that he has been offered the AG spot in an Obama administration. About the only thing Clinton could offer to top that would be the VP slot.

Campaign 2008 Scorecard, part 2

Here is the second entry in the 2008 election scorecard.

Politician: John Edwards

Nickname: The Breck Girl

Reason: John Edwards is a vain man who takes great pride in his perfect hair. He has been in the habit of flying his favorite hair stylist to him wherever he happens to be on the campaign trail. The total bill for one of these haircuts exceeded $1200.00.

John Edwards is also dumb as a box of hammers. Who else would build an extravagant mansion so expensive that it forced his neighbors to sell out and move because they couldn't afford the increased property taxes and get thousand dollar haircuts while running a presidential campaign based on your compassion for the poor?

Makes you wonder what it is exactly that he's shoveling in that top picture.

John Edwards is a pretty face, but he is nothing else than a pretty face.

Here is a video clip that tells you everything that you need to know about the Breck Girl.

If you scratch the surface of John Edwards all you find underneath is more surface.

Nickname first used by: Rush Limbaugh

Good News all around!

Good morning everyone. Let's start our day off with a double helping of good news.

From ABC:

The U.S. command said Wednesday the highest-ranking Iraqi in the leadership of al-Qaida in Iraq has been arrested, adding that information from him indicates the group's foreign-based leadership wields considerable influence over the Iraqi chapter.

Khaled Abdul-Fattah Dawoud Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, also known as Abu Shahid, was captured in Mosul on July 4, said Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner, a military spokesman.

"Al-Mashhadani is believed to be the most senior Iraqi in the al-Qaida in Iraq network," Bergner said. He said al-Mashhadani was a close associate of Abu Ayub al-Masri, the Egyptian-born head of al-Qaida in Iraq.

Bergner said al-Mashhadani served as an intermediary between al-Masri and Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri.

Notice how the bastard is already giving up information. Does anyone out there who isn't a moonbat care how they got the son-of-a-bitch to talk?

Anyone?

[crickets chirping]

Didn't think so.

Next we have this report on the latest Zogby poll from NewsMax:

. . . [F]ormer Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson, as yet a non-candidate, has climbed to the top of the GOP leaderboard, winning 22 percent support, compared to 21 percent for former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney remains in third place with 11 percent. Arizona Sen. John McCain continues his dramatic slide, from second place in late May to fourth place now, supported by 9 percent of likely Republican voters nationwide.

Thompson’s strongest appeal comes from those who consider themselves to be "very conservative,” as 35 percent in that group said they favored the former Tennessee Senator-turned-actor. Giuliani finished a distant third in that group, followed by Romney and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. McCain finishes fifth among very conservative voters.

Among mainline conservatives - the largest subgroup of GOP voters - Giuliani wins 21 percent, compared to 20 percent for Thompson, 13 percent for Romney, and 12 percent for McCain.

Zogby is the best polling organization out there and for Thompson to be at the top of the Zogby poll means that he is genuinely in the lead.

I also note that McCain is continuing to sink. I really wish he would spare himself any more embarrassment and withdraw with some dignity. Now that there is no longer any danger of him ever becoming president I feel somewhat sorry for him. He has been steadfast in supporting the war effort and for that he deserves some respect. Let him focus on rebuilding his Senate career and leave the presidential race to those who can actually win.

Zogby has some other amusing tidbits about the Democrat side as well:

Clinton has also maintained her base of support among moderates, while expanding her support among progressives to 36 percent, up from 31 percent two months ago. Her backing among progressives appears to come out of Obama’s liberal base, as he has slipped from 35 percent to 27 percent in that group.

We should stop here to translate. In modern political-speak "moderate" means Left-Liberal and "progressive" means "Crazy as a Shithouse Rat Barking Moonbat who thinks that 9/11 was an inside job and wishes the USSR was still around".

It also seems that the Breck Girl is losing support among younger voters. This is very bad news for him in that young voters were thought to be the only significant group stupid enough to vote for him in any large numbers. After all it was young voters who formed the core of support for Howard Dean and if they were that brain-dead, the thinking in the Edwards camp went, they would probably be willing to vote for a multi-millionaire who lives in a giant mansion, flies around on private jets, gets $1200.00 haircuts and is running on a poverty platform.

If you can't take the heat . . .

(06-26) 16:33 PDT Raleigh, N.C. (AP) -- Elizabeth Edwards pleaded Tuesday with Ann Coulter to "stop the personal attacks," a day after the conservative commentator said she wished Edwards' husband, Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, had been killed by terrorists.

Ann said she wished the Breck Girl had been killed by terrorists? I had not heard about this. Well all I can say to Ms. Coulter is - You go girl!

But look, being killed by terrorists is so last year. How about this:

I wish John Edwards would be eaten by chimpanzees.

I wish John Edwards would use hair jell made in China and get ethylene glycol poisoning.

I wish John Edwards would get e coli infection from eating lettuce picked by an illegal alien whose last bath was when he swam the Rio Grande 5 years ago.

I wish John Edwards would go out on his porch on the coldest morning of the winter to get his newspaper wearing only his pajamas and see his reflection on an icicle and become so enraptured that he freezes solid while admiring himself.

Can any of you think of any better ones?

Let's set the stage for WW IV!

NRO covers one of the Breck Girl's speeches:

Did you know the solutions to the climate crisis and poverty in Africa are one and the same? Just one word. Are you listening? Biofuels.

“America gets off its addiction to oil,” he posits. “We move toward biofuels. The Europeans follow. The Japanese follow. The result is, all of a sudden, [oil-rich Middle Eastern] countries have no choice. They have to develop. They have to economically develop. They have to educate their kids. The price of oil goes down. They have to politically reform. All of a sudden, the world is a safer, more secure place.”

All of a sudden. “So what happens when America moves from oil to biofuels? Well, in the United States of America, we have the land mass, we have the farms [in places like, say, Iowa], to develop these biofuels. The Europeans do not. Neither do the Japanese. So all of a sudden, they need land. Where are they likely to go? Africa. And all of a sudden, millions of children in Africa, because of the move from oil to biofuels, are lifted out of poverty.”

This is just what the world needs. European Great Powers looking for lebensraum except that in this case it will be Africa rather than Central and Eastern Europe that sees the annexation. And all the while Japan is to be rebuilding the co-prosperity sphere, except also in Africa.

Does this empty-headed twit; this shining tower of ignorance; this glittering jewel of abject stupidity have any fraking clue whatsoever what he is trying to set up?

This moron is attempting to recreate the tensions which led to both World Wars!

If you're one of the moonbats who think that the carnage of Iraq is too horrible to contemplate try to wrap your mind around the bloodbath which will come about if Europeans and Japanese start fighting among themselves again? Especially if they manage to bring the United States into the conflict?

Let me clue you into some cold hard facts. The Arabs we are fighting now are incapable, due to their culture and religion, of truly participating in the modern world, including modern warfare. The average Arab soldier or terrorist can just about manage to master the basics of an AK-47 (a rifle designed by the Soviet military to be issued to peasant recruits whose previous experience of technology was the horse-drawn plow). They can also learn the workings of the RPG (designed by the same Soviet military for the same peasant recruits) and, with some training, learn to plant a landmine and throw a hand grenade. But this is about all.

When fighting opponents of this caliber the Western nations militaries limit, foolishly in my view, the shear amount of pure living hell that they rain down upon them. This is due to a misguided sense of fairness or compassion. But when Western nations like Germany, France, the USA or Westernized Asian nations like Japan fight each other the gloves come off.

Think about the Battle of Britain or Berlin bombed to rubble or the napalming and then atomic bombing of Japan's wood and paper cities by the US Army Air Force. Think about the Blitz overrunning Poland in a month. Think about the death toll at Normandy and Iwo Jima and Corregidor and Bastogne. That's what happens when modern technically advanced nations fight each other.

You may respond that democratic nations do not war with each other, and you would be mostly right. But look closely at what the European Union is becoming. It isn't democratic. Look at what Russia is becoming. That's not democratic. China? Never been democratic. Maybe the Japanese will stay good guys, but what will they do when the overseas possessions that their economy depends upon are threatened by European, Russian or Chinese bad guys?

I repeat. World Wars One and Two were started by nations looking for land and natural resources. Africa is even more primitive and dysfunctional than the Middle East. Turning it into the next Great Power battlefield is not the way to help the Africans or anyone else.

The right people are rising and the right people are falling

From Breitbart:

Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama and Republican Fred Thompson were the frontrunners in South Carolina's first-in-the-South 2008 presidential primary, according to a poll Sunday.
The survey by the Mason-Dixon polling firm found that African-American support had pushed Obama ahead of US Senator Hillary Clinton, giving him the support of 34 percent of likely voters against 25 percent for Clinton.

Former US Senator John Edwards of North Carolina was third at 12 percent, while 24 percent of respondents were undecided.

Blacks in South Carolina, who could make up more than half of the party's primary voters, favored Obama over Clinton 41 percent to 18 percent, with about one-third of black voters in the state undecided.

In South Carolina's Republican nomination contest, Thompson -- a popular television actor and former Tennessee senator who has not yet formally entered the presidential race -- polled 25 percent. Former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani was second with 21 percent.

Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney was third with 11 percent, followed by US Senator John McCain at seven percent. Twenty-eight percent of likely Republican voters were undecided.

South Carolina's Democratic primary is tentatively scheduled for January 29, while the Republican contest has been set for February 2.


All of this is interesting, but the most important two things are this:

1. Thompson is advancing. By the end of Summer he will be the unquestioned leader on the Republican side.

2. John Edwards and John McCain are finished. Neither of them have a chance and if they are too stupid/stubborn/selfish to acknowledge that and drop out the media should start giving them as much attention as they used to give Lyndon LaRouche.

The Sanjaya Malakar of politics

From The San Francisco Chronicle:

Democrat John Edwards has eloquently established his credentials as an advocate for the poor with a presidential campaign focused on the devastating effects of poverty in America. But the former North Carolina senator's populist drive has hit a series of troubling land mines: a pair of $400 haircuts, a $500,000 paycheck from a hedge fund, and now a $55,000 payday for a speech on poverty to students at UC Davis.

The problem now facing the Democratic presidential candidate is whether the pileup of headlines, including the latest regarding hefty fees from university speeches reported Monday by The Chronicle, threatens to obliterate Edwards' dominant campaign theme. The former senator, who has been portrayed as the champion of the poor and the son of a humble mill worker, now faces the possibility that voters will have a different image: that of a millionaire trial lawyer who talks one way and lives another.

When I said that Edwards was an empty headed twit a while back I was not using hyperbole. The man is an intellectual lightweight. He just isn't very smart. He became rich as a lawyer not by being a better legal mind than his opponents but by being skilled at playing on the jury's heartstrings. As a personal injury and medical malpractice lawyer he convinced juries to give large cash awards to clients based not on the guilt of the defendants but on sympathy for the plaintiffs and the knowledge that the defendants were covered by deep pocket insurance companies.

If Edwards had been required to make a living in the legal profession as anything but an ambulance chaser he would have eked out a marginal living writing wills and drawing up powers of attorney. That is if his short attention span would have allowed him to persist in such a mundane lifestyle.

Edwards' story of being born into a family of humble means is true and like many people who begin life poor and then find themselves wealthy he is unable to resist the ostentatious display of his money. Surely a man who aspires to run for the White House on the platform of being the voice of the poor and downtrodden could have chosen to live in a more modest dwelling. But Edwards did not and in fact the connection between what his mansion, along with his $400.00 haircuts and his hedge fund employment and astronomical speaking fees, would reveal about his priorities was beyond his limited intellectual powers to grasp.

Edwards will never be ready for prime time and someone who cares about him should take him by the hand and lead him out of the limelight before he harms himself any further.

Edwards dances to his master's tune

Paul at Powerline takes a look at the Breck Girl's plans for a brighter tomorrow:

The Washington Post has a good piece about John Edwards' plans to combat poverty. Edwards has made his program to "end poverty in 30 years" in this country his signature domestic issue. The Post story, by Alec MacGillis, provides insight into both Edwards and the issue.

The centerpiece of the Edwards plan is to do away with public housing projects and replace them with one million rental vouchers through which to disperse the poor into better neighborhoods, closer to good schools and jobs. However, as the Post explains, a major federal experiment started during the Clinton administration shows that dispersing poor families in this fashion does not improve earnings or school performance. When this inconvenient truth was brought to Edwards' attention during his November 2005 symposium on poverty, he apparently had no answer.

I also wonder whether Edwards can explain (except by reference to political calculation) why he favors vouchers that would enable poor families to relocate but opposes private school vouchers. If the idea is to give poor families choices through which they can improve their lives, it's difficult to see why school choice should be off the table. Moving poor people close to good jobs they lack the skills to perform is meaningless. The key is education, but Edwards is not interested in maximizing educational opportunities. Nor, he admits, is he interested in talking, as Barack Obama, does about the need for the poor to take more personal responsibility. That message, he says, won't play well coming from him.

Given his reliance on a program that has been shown not to work, and his rejection of a program that's consistent with the general approach he espouses, one can't help suspect that, for Edwards, it's not about defeating poverty; rather it's about positioning himself to the left of his main rivals. Is there any evidence that, for Edwards, it's ever been about anything other than positioning?

The answer is simple. The Democrat Party is the bought and paid for property of the National Education Association.

Teachers, by virtue of the fact that they have plenty of free time, are the worker bees of the Democrat Party at the local and state level. Because school administrations and school boards are often left-wing it is even possible for them to engage in various political activities as part of their official duties.

They are the left's chief indoctrination agents where the nation's youth are concerned, corrupting each new generation and stealing a little more of the nation's soul with each year.

And they donate tons of money to the Democrat Party.

There is no way that a Democrat candidate will cross the teacher's union. Even black Democrats will not come out in support of any kind of educational choice despite the fact that majorities of American blacks (in the 90% range in some polls) support vouchers.

The anti-war moonbats are a powerful segment of the Jackass Party, but they are not all powerful. This is why Democrat leaders are going to take a withdrawal timetable off the table in the Iraq war funding bill after the president's veto. There is no way that the Party would abandon a piece of legislation sought by the NEA without a fight to the death.

The NEA hates vouchers because they would drain pupils and funding out of failing public schools and make manifest just how large the failure of modern public education really is. The fact that not only private schooled, but home and church schooled children consistently outperform public schooled children in every category fills them with black rage.

Their answer, however, is not to seek real improvements in public schooling, but to seek to shut down private alternatives. The fact is that they like the public schools just the way they are. Public schools which really educate students would not turn out drones who think that a narcissist like Cindy Sheehan is profound or that an empty headed twit like John Edwards is wise or that a cold-blooded rattlesnake of a bitch like Hillary Clinton really cares about them and their problems.

For the left to succeed the nation has to be dumbed down. Just as the Russian people would have easily seen through Lenin and his communists if they had been educated in economics and history the American people would easily see through Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi if they were properly educated.

The sacred mission of the NEA in the religion of the left is to keep from the common people the forbidden knowledge which would destroy their faith in the secular god of government. As long as they do this the Democrat Party will give them anything which is in their power to give.

The Breck Girl preens

NOT tonight's music.



I may vomit.

Hat Tip: Born Again Redneck

Today's belly-laugh

From Breitbart:

Former Democratic vice presidential nominee John Edwards is running for president for a second time, his campaign said Wednesday.


The former North Carolina senator plans to formally announce his candidacy Thursday from New Orleans' 9th Ward, which was hard hit by Hurricane Katrina. But his campaign got a little ahead of itself Wednesday and announced his intentions online.

No commentary is necessary.

CAPTION THIS