Ah, Go Roast Some Chestnuts, You Friggin' Losers

My good friends the Minister of War and Johnny Red are perturbed by this story...

The latest salvo in the "war on Christmas" has been fired — this time over the lyrics to the venerable Christmas carol "Silent Night."

Many who believe Christmas has been overly secularized are pouncing on a Wisconsin school that will present the tune with different words, under the title "Cold in the Night."

The controversy began when the father of a student at Ridgeway Elementary School in Dodgeville, Wis., was upset with the lyrics his child brought home to learn. He told the non-profit group Liberty Counsel they are: "Cold in the night, no one in sight, winter winds whirl and bite, how I wish I were happy and warm, safe with my family out of the storm."

Offended by the new words, he was unable to convince the school not to perform the song and contacted Liberty Counsel, which provides free legal assistance in religious freedom cases.

"We first try to educate a lot of people who are confused over the law," said Mathew Staver, president and general counsel of Liberty Counsel. "This kind of a situation is not so much confusion as it is an insensitivity and an attempt to secularize Christmas, because here they're actually taking a song and mocking it, in my opinion."

Dodgeville School District officials say traditional, unaltered carols will also be sung, and that "Cold in the Night" is part of a decades-old Christmas play that students have performed in years past, and is not an attack on the religious nature of the holiday.

...The incident is the latest this season in what has become a contentious debate over how Christmas should be celebrated, with some religious leaders and media commentators alleging there is an all-out war on the holiday. Liberty Counsel, with help from evangelical leader Jerry Falwell, has launched a "Friend or Foe Christmas Campaign," which Staver said aims to educate about how Christmas can be publicly celebrated and litigate for changes. Similarly, the Alliance Defense Fund has created its Christmas Project "to spread the message, 'Merry Christmas. It's okay to say it,'" according to the group's Web site.

And the Catholic League launched a boycott against Wal-Mart for replacing "Merry Christmas" with "Happy Holidays," and yesterday resolved a dispute it had with the Lands' End clothing catalog for using the word "holiday" instead of "Christmas." Various municipalities have been criticized for lighting public "holiday trees" rather than Christmas trees.

When it comes to schools celebrating Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa, the widely held standard is a 1980 court ruling, Florey v. Sioux Falls School District, which was upheld by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The ruling says that religious songs can be a part of school concerts as long as secular songs are, too. So "Oh, Come, All Ye Faithful" would have to be followed by something like "Frosty the Snowman" or "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer."

"It's fine for the public schools to observe the religious holidays in an academic and objective manner," said Jeremy Leaming, spokesman for Americans United for Separation of Church and State. "It's not fine to do so … in a way to advance a specific religion."

"You can include 'Silent Night,'" he added. "Just don't put on a concert that looks like something your local Baptist church would be putting on. Public schools serve kids of many different religions and no religion at all."

Okay, everyone. Settle down. Your favorite relatively agnostic supposedly Hindu blogger is here to help.

The biggest problem here is that we live in a society where people are determined to be offended by innocent expressions. The second biggest problem is that we live in a society where people who are offended often run to court. The third biggest problem is that courts are stupid enough to take the cases.

I wish plenty of people "Merry Christmas." I'm not a Christian, but if they take offense to it, it's their own damn fault. If you say "hello" to me, how do you know that I don't take offense to your use of a term popularized by the British when they subjugated my people? I'm making that up (frankly, many of my fellow Indians probably would disown me), but it tends to make the person taking offense look like an idiot.

I tried explaining this once to a friend in law school, who told me that as a kid, she took great offense to people wishing her a "Merry Christmas." She was Jewish and wore a Star of David on a necklace around her neck, which she believed should have clued others in as to her faith. She particularly found it offensive when teachers or busdrivers for her school said it to her, since they were employees of the government.

What I tried to explain to her was that acting like this made her look like a complete freaking jerk. Okay, I didn't use that language, but I patiently explained that telling someone "Merry Christmas!" isn't, in most cases, an attempt to impose one's faith on her. It's an expression of good will toward one's fellow man, hoping that they have a good day. To be fair to her, she did understand it and took it in the spirit it was intended, but apparently still felt offended.

I don't understand why people feel particularly aggrieved, but I'm sure some of them have legitimate reasons for feeling put upon (the rest are grim, humorless weirdos who probably don't have any friends). But I feel put upon by the fact that no one hands me large sums of cash for sitting at home on the couch eating nachos and watching TV. I could complain about it, but that would make me look like a moron (moreso than usual). Similarly, complaining about people telling you "Merry Christmas" makes you look like a jackass.

As to the specific case above, I don't think there's a good reason to change the song, although the school seems to think they're telling some sort of story in the pageant with it. The real question is whether they changed it an effort to be less offensive, or in an effort to comply with the idiot jurisprudence mentioned in the article. Seriously, why is a court dictating the playlist for Christmas pageants? Doesn't this strike everyone as patently silly? I don't know that stores wishing people "Happy Holidays" are really worth getting excited about either, although it's patently stupid to call a Christmas tree a "holiday tree." Can't we all exercise a little common sense?

I thought Jonah Goldberg hit the nail on the head recently on this topic...

Just this week, the Capitol performed its own minor Christmas miracle of transubstantiation. At the beginning of the week, House Speaker Denny Hastert unveiled a "holiday tree." But a few days later, after some entirely predictable bah humbugs, he rechristened it a "Christmas" tree. (Similarly, when the city of Boston tried to unveil its official "Holiday tree," the premier of Nova Scotia, which had provided it as a gift, called it a nifty trick since, "when it left Nova Scotia, it was a Christmas tree.")

...What I think secularists don’t appreciate is how unfair this feels to religious people who believe that the secularists have, for all intents and purposes, a moral faith of their own. For example, back in the Dark Ages when John Ashcroft ruled with an iron fist, and decent people everywhere quaked at the prospect of borrowing Catcher in the Rye from the library lest they land in the gulag under the Patriot Act, Ashcroft was unable to ban a Gay Pride Month celebration at his own Department of Justice. I don’t think that celebrating Gay Pride Month would lead to the end of civilization, but I don’t think Christian Pride Month would either. And yet we all understand that Christian pride is a nonstarter on government premises.

...Liberals use the state to impose their morality all the time, and they get away with it because their faith isn’t called a religion.

Yet conservatives should be wary of launching a backlash. Just as it is counterproductive for a secular liberal to take offense at a well-intentioned “Merry Christmas,” it doesn’t help if a conservative says “Merry Christmas” when he really means “Eat yuletide, you atheistic bastard!” If you’re putting up a Christmas tree in order to tick off the ACLU, you’ve really missed the point.

That's about right. Look, I'm a barely practicing Hindu who knows jack squat about my own religious faith. My wife is a practicing Catholic, but her maternal grandparents are Jewish. But if you see us out in public, feel free to wish us a "Joyous Ramadan" (not now, since I think it's over) or "Blessed Kwanzaa" in addition to wishing us a Merry Christmas, a Happy Hannukah, and a Happy Diwali. I'll take all the good wishes I can get. So should the rest of you.

This Makes Me Feel Better About Our Public Schools

Faithful reader RB lets us know that other than serving as our ally in the War on Terror, Pakistan's government is busy with other tasks...

Pakistani teachers have been told to rip out a page from 11th-grade English textbooks after authorities determined that a poem there is a cryptic tribute to President Bush. The first letter of each line spells out his name, e.g., "Going forward and knowing he's right / Even when doubted for why he would fight." AP reports that Pakistan plans an official inquiry into how the offending ode got into the curriculum.

And you thought our government wasted money.

A Real Tragedy, and A Real Cause

It would be nice if all the people working for clemency on behalf of notorious gang leader Stanley "Tookie" Williams (including the celebrity idiotocracy of Hollywood) spent some time working on cases of true injustice. Say, like this one, reported by Radley Balko...

Over the course of researching my paper, I came across the case of Cory Maye. Maye today sits on Mississippi's death row, convicted of capital murder for shooting police officer Ron Jones. It's probably worth mentioning that Jones is white, and Maye is black. It's probably also worth mentioning that at the time of his death, Jones' father was police chief of Prentiss, Mississippi, where the shooting took place. It's probably also worth mentioning that the jury who convicted Maye was white.

...Sometime in late 2001, Officer Ron Jones collected a tip from an anonymous informant that Jamie Smith, who lived opposite Maye in a duplex, was selling drugs out of his home. Jones passed the tip to the Pearl River Basin Narcotics Task Force, a regional police agency in charge of carrying out drug raids in four surrounding counties. The task force asked Jones if he'd like to come along on the raid they'd be conducting as the result of his tip. He obliged.

On the night of December 26, the task force donned paramilitary gear, and conducted a drug raid on Smith's house. Unfortunately, they hadn't done their homework. The team didn't realize that the house was a duplex, and that Maye -- who had no relationship with Smith,-- rented out the other side with his girlfirend and 1-year-old daughter.

As the raid on Smith commenced, some officers - including Jones -- went around to what they thought was a side door to Smith's residence, looking for a larger stash of drugs. The door was actually a door to Maye's home. Maye was home alone with his young daughter, and asleep, when one member of the SWAT team broke down the outside door. Jones, who wasn't armed, charged in, and made his way to Maye's bedroom. Because police believed Maye's side of the duplex was still part of Smith's residence, they never announced themselves. Police said at trial that they did announce themselves before entering Maye's apartment -- Maye and his attorney say otherwise... Maye, fearing for his life and the safety of his daughter, fired at Jones, hitting him in the abdomen, just below his bulletproof vest. Jones died a short time later.

Maye had no criminal record, and wasn't the target of the search warrant. Police initially concluded they had found no drugs in Maye's side of the duplex. Then, mysteriously, police later announced they'd found "traces" of marijuana and cocaine. I talked to the attorney who represented Maye at trial. She said that to her knowledge, police had found one smoked marijuana cigarette in Maye's apartment. Regardless, since Maye wasn't the subject of the search, whether or not he had misdemeanor amounts of drugs in his possession isn't really relevant. What's relevant is whether or not he reasonably believed his life was in danger. Seems pretty clear to me that that would be a reasonable assumption.

It apparently wasn't so clear to Mississippi's criminal justice system. In January of last year, Maye was convicted of capital murder for the shooting of Officer Jones. He was sentenced to death by lethal injection.

There's no doubt that the dispute over whether the cops announced themselves is important, but there's still a huge question as to why this guy is sentenced to die. Look, I know a cop was killed, and as the only death penalty opponent who thinks Mumia should be sento the world beyond as soon as possible, I understand that the murderers of cops should be among the first lined up to receive capital punishment, if it should exist.

But take a look at this case, and tell me how fair it is. A man's asleep at home with his baby daughter, and someone breaks into his home. Whether they announce they're the cops or not, what would a law-abiding citizen do? The normal person would probably be fearful of what these men are doing here, and why they're here. In a moment of fear, they reach for the gun they own -- one they keep near the bed for expressly this type of situation -- and fire at the intruder that they believe is about to do them harm.

Yes, a great tragedy resulted in this case. But I find it hard to fault Maye here. Even if he should be found at fault for committing a crime, I find it impossible to believe that the offense is a capital one. Perhaps he deserves jail time -- although the facts as presented don't warrant it in my opinion -- but there's almost no way I can believe he should be sentenced to die. Officer Jones' death is a terrible tragedy. I can't see how compounding that tragedy by executing another man serves any purpose.

Instapundit has far more here. In the meantime, somebody call Snoop Dogg and tell him there's a real tragedy taking palce in Mississippi.

A Date Which Will Live In Infamy

Michelle Malkin has a great post that remembers Pearl Harbor. I particularly enjoyed this spoof, but she has much more somber links regarding a date that Americans must never forget.

Starbucks Evil Reign of Terror Continues

Once again, those evil podpeople from Starbucks are taking down the small businessman...

A judge has told Sam Buck that she can't call her coffee shop Sambuck's. The judge ruled the name violated the trademark of coffee giant Starbucks. (NASDAQ:SBUX)

But there is a silver lining for the small business owner. Buck won't have to pay Starbucks' legal fees, even though it could under the ruling by U.S. District Judge Ancer Haggerty.

A Starbucks representative said the company never planned to ask Buck to cover its legal costs.

"It's not about David and Goliath," said May Kulthol, manager of media relations for Starbucks Coffee. "We try to deal with these types of situations amicably and to come to a good conclusion for both parties. The defendant is not required to pay legal fees nor did we seek damages from her."

Starbucks has two weeks from the Nov. 29 ruling to present a "bill of costs" to the court, which would include a request for attorney's fees, although Kulthol said the company won't pursue it.

Once that two-week period is up, Buck will decide whether to appeal. She has 30 days from the ruling date to make her decision.

May Kulthol? What kind of a name is that? Does anyone else think the word "kult" appears in her name by accident?

It's quite clear that Starbucks is one of the great dangers facing civilization. It's a wonder that I'm one of the few who sees it. Of course, most everyone else has had their mind addled by the coffee.

A Little Sound Advice for Liberals

Jonah Goldberg has some great advice for liberals...

The liberal Center for American Progress was founded explicitly to be the Left's answer to the conservative Heritage Foundation. The lefty radio network, "Air America," was launched to copy the success of Rush Limbaugh & Co. Today, deep-pocketed liberals are scrambling to copy conservative foundations, even though liberal foundations have always had more money.

Most conservatives I know snicker at all this. It's not that talk radio, think tanks, and foundations haven't been essential to the rise of American conservatism in the last five decades. They have been (see my colleague John Miller's excellent new book, A Gift of Freedom: How the John M. Olin Foundation Changed America, for a window into that effort). But liberals are emphasizing hardware because they don't want to question the validity of their very outdated software.

Look, conservatives would love to switch places with liberals. We'd get the universities, Hollywood, the Rockefeller, Ford, Carnegie and Pew Foundations, the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, the New York Times, National Public Radio, Time, Newsweek, The New Yorker, CBS, including 60 Minutes and Dan Rather's thousand-fingers massage chair, and so forth. Liberals, meanwhile, would get the Washington Times and Fox News, along with a few conservative foundations. I guess National Review and The New Republic would switch offices, which is fine by me. It'd make my commute easier.

And that sort of makes the point: Not only does the Left have better stuff, but even if that weren't the case, the Left's problem isn't a lack of mechanisms to "get their message out." Megaphones matter, but not as much as what you say into them.

If liberals really want to emulate conservative successes, I have some advice for them: Get into some big, honking arguments — not with conservatives, but with each other. The history of the conservative movement's successes has been the history of intellectual donnybrooks, between libertarians and traditionalists, hawks and isolationists, so-called neocons and so-called paleocons, less-filling versus tastes great. Liberals would be smart to copy that and stop worrying how to mimic our direct mail strategies.

It's essential to liberalism that it rediscover a few things -- their belief in the fundamental decency of their own country would be a start. But to get there, they need to have an internal debate and quit shouting at the moderates and conservatives. The moderates don't really care (they want peace and quiet) and the conservatives aren't going to be convinced by volume. But as Goldberg notes, the Dems seem obsessed with the size of their megaphones.

And no, that was not a veiled reference to Bill Clinton.

Great -- Now GM Might Run Health Care Into The Ground

Professor Bainbridge tells us why big business is likely to support the next effort to get nationalized health care -- so they can pass the buck for health care costs on to taxpayers...

Wagoner mentioned health care in answers to 5 questions, including one that asked what GM's problems were other than health care costs!

Remember the old saying, what's good for GM is good for the country? It was never really true, but it hid a deeper truth; namely, that what GM thinks is good for it will soon become national policy.

Public choice theory teaches us that legislation is a commodity sold by politicians to well-organized interest groups (to grossly oversimplify things). In 1994, Hillarycare died because powerful interest groups were lined up on both sides of the issue, with the main business lobbies lined up against it. So there was no sale.

I predict that the next time a universal single payer plan gets to the policy table, however, that business will be first in line to back it. When you read interviews like the one Rick Wagoner gave the Journal, one can but conclude that business is itching to shift health care costs off their books and onto the American taxpayer.

Now there's a scary thought for you. At a time when we're hoping to finally move the Ponzi scheme called Social Security back toward a free market solution, it looks more likely that health care will become another entitlement for all... with better service for none, of course.

The Eagles Have Crash Landed

Yes, I've stayed away from commenting on the Eagles debacle of a season, which continued Monday night with what could charitably be called the Monday Night Massacre. The Philly papers are awash with recriminations. The QB position needs an overhaul, the head coach is screwing up as both coach and GM, the team quit on us...

And I'm calm.

Maybe that's a bad call on my part. Maybe this is the beginning of the decline back to our traditional mediocrity. Maybe this team needs the full facelift. Maybe the best team from the last 50 years of Eagles history, one that visited the playoffs five consecutive years, the NFC Title Game 4 straight times and made the franchise's second visit to the Super Bowl... maybe they're done.

I tend to doubt it, but I can give them a thank you even if it is, because it's been one hell of a ride.

Maybe the reason was partly because I watched the stuff surrounding the ceremony for the late, great Reggie White. Seeing the Eagles from that era -- a group of Eagles who won a grand total of one playoff game -- made me feel nostalgic for that team, because it was the one that I recall from my childhood. And yes, they broke my heart (repeatedly), but they also gave me so many great memories that I cherish. Rich Hofmann expressed this thought in Monday's Daily News...

Buddy Ryan was there, the coach who turned them into a team. About 20 of White's teammates were there, too, united by Reggie's memory. He has been dead for nearly a year now, and it still doesn't seem possible in a lot of ways, just as it doesn't seem possible that this group has buried both Jerome Brown and Reggie White. But here they were, together again - Seth Joyner and Clyde Simmons and Byron Evans and Eric Allen and the rest.

"You know how I'm close to Pepper Johnson," Keith Byars was saying, referring to the former Giants linebacker who was his teammate at Ohio State. And Byars told the story about how, in the offseasons, Johnson would hang around with Byars and some of his Eagles teammates.

"And he would say, 'I won a couple of Super Bowls [in New York], but I just worked with those guys. You guys truly love each other.'

"City of Brotherly Love - must be something," Byars said. "We had a bond that can't be broken... Football brought us together. Football will never tear us apart."

When they unveiled the number at a pregame ceremony, music blared from loudspeakers and spotlights shone on the "92" on the wall. The players watched and applauded, and the emotion flowed among them - for all of the obvious reasons, for a man who died too young, but also for the time in which they came together.

People who didn't live it don't understand. You look at the numbers and the affection doesn't entirely compute. The team made three playoff appearances under Buddy Ryan but didn't win a postseason game - and then Ryan was fired, and then free agency came, and then they all scattered to the league's various precincts.

It was a time of unfulfilled greatness, a time that ended too soon - like Reggie's life, tragically. From this distance, you would think that the frustration of it all would color the memory, but it doesn't. They were the days.

I remember those Eagles teams fondly -- Randall doing flips into the end zone, Byers and Jackson catching pass after pass over the middle, Reggie and Clyde terrorizing QBs, Jerome Brown stuffing Emmitt Smith, Andre Waters and Wes Hopkins delivering decapitating hits, "Arkansas" Fred Barnett making deep circus catches, Seth Joyner's ferocity. I remember some great games -- the Pork Chop Bowl, the Bounty Bowl, the House of Pain Game ("They brought the house, and we brought the pain"), the amazing comeback from 20-0 down at RFK, Miracle at the Meadowlands II (Simmons grabs a field goal try blocked by the Giants and runs it in for a TD to win a game in OT), the Fog Bowl, the BodyBag Game. I remember specific moments and plays, like Randall's 93 yard punt, the 95 yard bomb to Barnett in Buffalo, Vai Sikahema turning the goalposts at the Meadowlands into a punching bag, Reggie stripping Doug Williams of the football and rumbling 75 yards, the defense sacking Troy Aikman 11 times, Buddy rubbing it in to Dallas with the fake kneeldown, Buddy saying he was offended by Jimmy Johnson calling him fat because "I've been on a diet".

Being a true fan of a sports team will create a lot of disappointment -- and in Philly, that feeling of disappointment has been about all we've had for the last twenty years. But we should cherish what we did receive. Hey, look, this doesn't change the fact that we haven't won the Big One. I still want that feeling, I still want that parade. But even if this team isn't the one to give us that feeling, the last half-decade hasn't been a waste. The memories listed up there are great ones -- and there will be great memories from this team that we will look back on fondly as well.

Yeah, my heart's been broken by this team, repeatedly. But bad seasons happen. Brian Westbrook's season-ending injury was almost expected by now. This is a bad year. I tend to think we have a future for this team, because they will rebuild the components with a lot of promising youth, in key spots like the O-line and in the defensive secondary. But hey, that's next year.

For now, we'll take the crap and deal with it, in anticipation that someday, it will all be worth it. Bill Conlin put it this way...

Each generation of Eagles fan will have a moment of humiliation so shattering, they will pass it down to their children as reminder that the life of a Philly pro sports fan is a bleep sandwich and every season you take another bite.

As for me, I think back to what I posted the day after the Super Bowl, and the quote from my favorite modern-day philosophers, the inimitable creators of South Park, Mssrs. Parker and Stone, as part of the wonderful South Park movie...

The Mole: I can't help you. I'm grounded in my room for the next three days.

Kyle: So are we. Our parents think we're home right now.

Stan: Why are you grounded?

The Mole: Why? Because God hates me, that's why. He has made my life miserable. So I call him a c***-s****** a******, and I get grounded.

Someday, the misery will lift. Until then, I'll watch some Nova basketball and give another team a chance to break my heart.

Paging Patrick Fitzgerald

As some folks are asking, where's the special prosecutor this time?

ABC News is blowing their ‘EXCLUSIVE’ horn again in an ongoing investigation to ‘out’ a handful of secret CIA prisons where alleged “enhanced interrogation techniques” are authorized for use by 14 CIA officers. Officially, the CIA has declined to comment on the existence of these prisons, let alone the intensity of interrogation tactics used at any such facility. President Bush has said plainly that the U.S. does not use torture as a means of extracting information from captured terrorists. But…

ABC News has access to information which they believe will prove otherwise. And how does ABC News assume any confidence in their investigation?

Current and former CIA officers are leaking information, confidentially of course.

Hey, I'm sure this isn't important at all, compared to whether Valerie Plame was outed and Karl Rove was responsible. Priorities, people, priorities.

I Pity The Fool Who Buys This

Our old friend KS sends us the word regarding how Mr. T's making a living...

Believe it or not, getting yelled at and berated by Mr. T actually becomes boring pretty quickly.

Everything he tells you to do -- everything -- starts with "Hey, Fool!" That's true even when he's telling you to do something dumb, like drive onto the lower level of the Queensboro Bridge when the upper level is the one you need.

California company NavTones has contracted with Mr. T and the actors Burt Reynolds and Dennis Hopper to record voices that can be loaded into navigation systems, giving your driving directions a little extra personality. More voices are coming, the company said.

Another company, TomTom, offers John Cleese's voice along with several "fictional" characters that include a New York City cab driver and a Freudian psychoanalyst.

Other companies are also creating customizable voices for navigation systems, said Anne Louise Hanstad, vice president of marketing for TomTom.

"The potential here is as great and as wide as downloadable ringtones," she said.

For the record, I'm waiting for the Homer Simpson version.

Charlie's Back

Well, it wouldn't have been the first time CBS made a programming mistake...

When CBS bigwigs saw a rough cut of A Charlie Brown Christmas in November 1965, they hated it.

"They said it was slow," executive producer Lee Mendelson remembers with a laugh. There were concerns that the show was almost defiantly different: There was no laugh track, real children provided the voices, and there was a swinging score by jazz pianist Vince Guaraldi.

Mendelson and animator Bill Melendez fretted about the insistence by Peanuts creator Charles Schulz that his first-ever TV spinoff end with a reading of the Christmas story from the Gospel of Luke by a lisping little boy named Linus.

"We told Schulz, 'Look, you can't read from the Bible on network television,' " Mendelson says. "When we finished the show and watched it, Melendez and I looked at each other and I said, 'We've ruined Charlie Brown.' "

Good grief, were they wrong. The first broadcast was watched by almost 50% of the nation's viewers. "When I started reading the reviews, I was absolutely shocked," says Melendez, 89. "They actually liked it!"

And when the program airs today at 8 p.m. ET on ABC, it will mark its 40th anniversary - a run that has made it a staple of family holiday traditions and an icon of American pop culture. The show won an Emmy and a Peabody award and began a string of more than two dozen Peanuts specials.

There's something almost quaint with the complaint that "You can't read from the Bible on network television" in today's context. But that aside, A Charlie Brown Christmas is probably my third favorite Christmas special, behind the claymation Rudolph and the always-enjoyable Grinch. I'm glad CBS didn't succumb to the stupidity of programming executives.

Of course, they're now supposedly trying to hire Katie Couric to anchor the Evening News, so perhaps I should note that the 1965 decision was probably an exception rather than the rule.

Dr. Dean Makes Another Bad House Call

Karl Rove seems to have re-activated that chip that makes Howard Dean say stupid things...

Saying the "idea that we're going to win the war in Iraq is an idea which is just plain wrong," Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean predicted today that the Democratic Party will come together on a proposal to withdraw National Guard and Reserve troops immediately, and all US forces within two years.

Dean made his comments in an interview on WOAI Radio in San Antonio.

"I've seen this before in my life. This is the same situation we had in Vietnam. Everybody then kept saying, 'just another year, just stay the course, we'll have a victory.' Well, we didn't have a victory, and this policy cost the lives of an additional 25,000 troops because we were too stubborn to recognize what was happening."

Dean says the Democrat position on the war is 'coalescing,' and is likely to include several proposals.

Dr. Demento later said that the Democrats aren't advocating withdrawal, but "strategic redeployment." I fail to see the difference, since whether we withdraw the troops to Afghanistan, another country in the Middle East, or stateside, they're withdrawing from Iraq. Maybe Dean thinks withdrawal is just one of several different options with the same goal, but I think he's confusing arguments on birth control with arguments on the war. And even in the context of birth control, withdrawal (or "strategic redeployment") is a questionable way to accomplish your goal.

When I first saw this quote, I realized that the Democrats have now adopted what I will heretofore call the "Adrian Balboa" strategy. For those of you unfamiliar with the greatness of Rocky IV, it features the annoying wife of Rocky deciding to tell her man, "You know how strong he is. You can't win" when discussing his upcoming matchup with Russian superhuman Ivan Drago.

We hear that Stallone's making Rocky VI. Maybe Howard Dean is trying out for the part of Adrian.

The John Kerry Post of the Day

My latest discovery about my favorite cheese-eating surrendermonkey-looking Ketchup King cum former Presidential candidate:

As noted before, this is no longer a regular feature. But give the Ketchup King points for trying to bring it back -- he doesn't want to give up.

Over at Captain's Quarters, Ed Morrissey takes note of the Kerry's latest attempt to go retro while criticizing the Iraq War...

From page 3-4 of the CBS transcript, emphasis mine (h/t:CQ reader Dave Z):

SCHIEFFER: All right. Let me shift to another point of view, and it comes from another Democrat, Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut. He takes a very different view. He says basically we should stay the course because, he says, real progress is being made. He said this is a war between 27 million Iraqis who want freedom and 10,000 terrorists. He says we're in a watershed transformation. What about that?

Sen. KERRY: Let me--I--first of all, there is so much more that unites Democrats than divides us. And Democrats have much more in common with each other than they do with George Bush's policy right now. Now Joe Lieberman, I believe, also voted for the resolution which said the president needs to make more clear what he's doing and set out benchmarks, and that the policy hasn't been working. We all believe him when you say, `Stay the course.' That's the president's policy, which hasn't been changing, which is a policy of failure. I don't agree with that. But I think what we need to do is recognize what we all agree on, which is you've got to begin to set benchmarks for accomplishment. You've got to begin to transfer authority to the Iraqis. And there is no reason, Bob, that young American soldiers need to be going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children, you know, women, breaking sort of the customs of the--of--the historical customs, religious customs. Whether you like it or not...

SCHIEFFER: Yeah.

Sen. KERRY: ...Iraqis should be doing that. And after all of these two and a half years, with all of the talk of 210,000 people trained, there just is no excuse for not transferring more of that authority.

Kerry thinks that the American soldiers are the terrorists in Iraq, applying that unique gift of his for moral relativity once again to indict an entire deployment of soldiers as criminals of the same order as our enemy. And Bob Schieffer sat there, without even raising an objection to Kerry's smear.

Schieffer works for CBS News, so I'm guessing that's his excuse. But Kerry has drawn the first true parallel to The-War-I-Refuse-To-Mention: just like in 1971, John Kerry is demeaning the efforts of American soldiers. They're now terrorizing innocent Iraqi women and children. I guess this is a step up from the accusations he made in the 1970's -- we're no longer acting like Genghis Khan by cutting off body parts. I guess Kerry is maturing.

Another 30 years or so, and he might be a viable candidate for public service.

Can Someone Find a Serious Second Party?

Mark Steyn wonders why Jack Murtha's statements got so much coverage, while Joe Lieberman's decision to actually go to Iraq and return with good news received about the same amount of coverage as your typical Tampa Bay Devil Rays game. As usual, Steyn cuts through with some incisive analysis...

It must be awful lonely being Joe Lieberman in the Democratic Party these days. Every time he switches on the news there's John Kerry sonorously droning out his latest pretzel of a position: Insofar as I understand it, he's not calling for a firm 100 percent fixed date of withdrawal -- like, say, Feb. 4, 2 p.m.; meet at Baghdad bus station with two pieces of carry-on. Don't worry, it's not like flying coach on TWA, you'd be able to change the date without paying a surcharge. But Kerry drones that we need to "set benchmarks" for the "transfer of authority." Actually, the administration's been doing that for two years -- setting dates for the return of sovereignty, for electing a national assembly, for approving a constitution, etc, and meeting all of them. And all during those same two years Kerry and his fellow Democrats have huffed that these dates are far too premature, the Iraqis aren't in a position to take over, hold an election, whatever. The Defeaticrats were against the benchmarks before they were for them.

These sad hollow men may yet get their way -- which is to say they may succeed in persuading the American people that a remarkable victory in the Middle East is in fact a humiliating defeat. It would be an incredible achievement. Peter Worthington, the Canadian columnist and veteran of World War II and Korea, likes to say that there's no such thing as an unpopular won war. The Democrat-media alliance are determined to make Iraq an exception to that rule. In a week's time, Iraqis will participate in the most open political contest in the history of the Middle East. They're building the freest society in the region, and the only truly federal system. In three-quarters of the country, life has never been better. There's an economic boom in the Shia south and a tourist boom in the Kurdish north, and, while the only thing going boom in the Sunni Triangle are the suicide bombers, there were fewer of those in November than in the previous seven months.

Meanwhile, Iraq's experiment in Arab liberty has had ripple effects beyond its borders, pushing the Syrians most of the way out of Lebanon, and in Syria itself significantly weakening Baby Assad's regime. Saad Eddin Ibrahim, who's spent years as a beleaguered democracy advocate in Egypt, told the Washington Post's Jim Hoagland the other day that, although he'd opposed the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq, he had to admit it had "unfrozen the Middle East, just as Napoleon's 1798 expedition did. Elections in Iraq force the theocrats and autocrats to put democracy on the agenda, even if only to fight against us. Look, neither Napoleon nor President Bush could impregnate the region with political change. But they were able to be the midwives."

...So Bush has chosen to embark on a project every other great power of the last half-millennium has shrunk from: the transformation of the Middle East. You can argue the merits of that, but once it's underway it's preposterous to suggest we need to have it all wrapped up by Jan. 24. The Defeaticrats' loss of proportion is unworthy of a serious political party in the world's only superpower. In next week's election, the Iraqi people will shame them yet again.

That is, if the Democrats are capable of shame. I think the Republicans are worthy of criticism for not executing as well as they should, on both domestic and foreign policy. But I think the Democrats as a whole show no vision, no courage and no strength, either as a party or as leaders in articulating a successful future for our nation. The fact that a man like Joe Lieberman is the exception rather than the rule within his party says much about it.

We need a serious second party to challenge the GOP leadership to do better. It's a shame the Democrats aren't up to the task.

The First Nova Update

We know you were waiting for the first round of gloating from this blogger regarding his alma mater's men's basketball team, currently ranked #4 in the country.

Hey, we like to live up to expectations.

Seriously, it's a shame that Curtis Sumpter's preseason injury has folks doubting Villanova's ability to make a run at the national title. I agree that Sumpter would have made us a cinch for the Final Four, but I'm hoping transfer Shane Clark can fill some of the gap when he becomes eligible. Andy Katz has a nice article about Jason Fraser's comeback as well. Even without Sumpter, our four guards can run anyone in America out of the building, as they did with #5 Oklahoma Saturday. The nice thing with these guys is that it's hard to imagine all four of them coming in cold on the same day. In addition, all of them have demonstrated that they can beat the opposition from the outside and take the ball to the hoop. In past years under Steve Lappas, Nova had guards who could one of the other, but not both (with the exception of the sublime Kerry Kittles). Foye and Lowry look like no one can stop them when they want to take the ball to the hole. And Foye's performance in last year's Sweet Sixteen game against UNC can no longer be viewed as a one-time thing; he's now a big-time scorer capable of doing that (and more) any time his team needs it.

The great thing about the OU game was watching our team apply pressure and force turnovers, rather than the opposite. I spent many of my college and post-college years wondering why the opposition didn't employ the press against us more; most of the time, we would burn timeouts, Lappas would pull on the lapels of his jacket like that meant something, and we would end up with someone dribbling the ball off their foot. Now, we have four guards who can handle and apply pressure; it's a bonus when you consider that Villanova fans in the mid-90's would have had to watch replays of the 1985 title game to see a guard in our uniform handle pressure well (Gary McClain, riding that train, in one of the best (and oft-forgotten) point guard performances in Final Four history).

Now, it's on to a game against a very dangerous Bucknell team on the road. For those of you laughing, I'm serious. The Bison already beat Syracuse at the Carrier Dome, and these guys have had the guts to schedule a game at Duke later this season. They play a deliberate style that's guaranteed to slow the game down and keep it close. I'm glad the game's probably not on TV, because I'd be reaching for the Maalox.

But then again, it's not like our guards fear anything.

Really, Everyone Can Have His Own Blog

Here's one blog that I hope keeps getting updated: that of our friend Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. A quick excerpt lets us into the thinking of the leader of the Iraqi insurgency...

I get a lot of email from homies who just don't want to wait for their virgins; they need to bust a nut right now! Well, as you know, dating for the contemporary Jihadist can be a dangerous minefield in which to tread, but there's an option you may have not considered. Allow me to break it down for you.

Now, see, Allah is definitively not down with gayness, but when you're chillin' in the garage with your fellow Jihadis, sometimes you get a little frisky. This is normal. The good news is, Mohammed never said anything specific about not jabbing each others' poo, if you know what I mean. Just remember, though; don't go falling in love with another man, because, well, that's totally gay.

You know, it's almost enough to make you hope we don't kill him.

Next, Let's Put Up a Statue for Him

As usual, Ann Coulter's wit has more than a grain of truth to it...

When Democratic Rep. John Murtha called for the withdrawal of American troops in the middle of the war, Republicans immediately leapt to action by calling Murtha a war hero, a patriot and a great American.

I haven't heard Republicans issue this many encomiums to one man since Ronald Reagan died. By now, Murtha has been transformed into the greatest warrior since Alexander the Great and is probably dating Jennifer Aniston.

In response to Murtha's demand for the "immediate withdrawal of American troops" — as The New York Times put it — President Bush called Murtha a "fine man, a good man" who served with "honor and distinction," who "is a strong supporter of the United States military." He said he knew Murtha's "decision to call for an immediate withdrawal of our troops ... was done in a careful and thoughtful way."

Vice President Dick Cheney called Murtha "a good man, a Marine, a patriot."

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Murtha is "a fine man, I know him personally ... and it's perfectly proper to have a debate over these things, and have a public debate."

...During the House debate on Murtha's insane proposal to withdraw troops in the middle of the war, Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., said Murtha deserved an "A-plus as a truly great American," and Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., said "none of us should think of questioning his motives or desires for American troops."

On the House floor, both Republicans and Democrats repeatedly gave Murtha rousing standing ovations. There was so much praise for Murtha that one of his Democratic colleagues asked him if he still had to attend Murtha's funeral.

What is this? Special Olympics for the Democrats? Can't Republicans disagree with a Democrat who demands that the U.S. surrender in the middle of a war without erecting monuments to him first? What would happen if a Democrat were to propose restoring Saddam Hussein to power? Is that Medal of Freedom territory?

...We also know what Rep. Randy Cunningham, R-Calif., did to earn his medals. One of only two American Navy aces that the Vietnam War produced, Cunningham shot down five MiGs, three in one day, including a North Vietnamese pilot with 13 American kills. Cunningham never did something as insane as proposing that we withdraw troops in the middle of a war, but this week he did admit to taking bribes.

And yet, no Democrat breathed a word of Cunningham's unquestioned heroism before rushing to denounce him as "the latest example of the culture of corruption" — in the words of Rep. Nancy Pelosi.

I'm not asking Republicans to be uncivil. But perhaps answering the Dems without sending bouquets their way first might help the argument.

Dante's Dim Inferno

It's not like we need to spend that much time discussing the media's inability to report the war correctly. But the left-wing artists who've decided to comment on the war at least provide us with perspective that the media's only lazy, while the artists are ignorant and stupid.

Latest cases in point: Joe Dante's new movie, Homecoming, which receives a fawning review in the Village Voice (surprise, surpise) (hat tip: Instapundit), where Dante is hailed for making "a righteous blast of liberal-left fury" that "uncorks the rage that despondent progressives promptly suppressed after last year's election and that has only recently been allowed to color mainstream coverage of presidential untruths and debacles." Please -- the left-wing's outrage has never been suppressed, no matter how idiotic their claims have been, for the past five years. The only thing so-called Progressives have suppressed during the past five years might be their sense of decency.

The Mechanical Eye spends some time reviewing the film's premise, which has dead soldiers climing out of the grave to remove the GOP from office...

Like Michael Moore's portrayal of US soldiers as not-too-bright grunts in Farenheit 9/11, these descriptions reveal a pitying kind of contempt for the subjects the writers and directors are supposedly championing. Soldiers are merely another class of victim, the subject of pity rather than the object of their own intelligent decisions. They're shell-shocked, they're zombies, children, the unknowing kill-bots who apparently march straight into enemy fire or landmines (since they make no decisions!). Voiceless dupes.

Zombies aren't known for their elocution - so others speak for them, it would seem.

Then we have Grady Hendrix' review in Slate, which contains this rather condescending passage...

Today, zombies are the perfect metaphor for our soldiers in Iraq: They're shell-shocked, anonymous, and aren't asked to make very many decisions. Unless you personally know a soldier, the war in Iraq has been a zombie war, fought by an uncomplaining, faceless mass wrapped in desert camo and called "our boys." We talk about them all the time—supporting them, criticizing them, speaking for them—but we don't really have a clue as to what's on their minds. They often seem like disposable units sent to enforce the will of our country. But what if they come back and they're different? What if they come back and don't want to follow orders anymore?

You know, I'm not going to pretend to know whether soldiers would find it flattering to be metaphorically portrayed as zombies. But Vodkapundit responds beautifully to Hendrix...

My brother-in-law served in the Iraq invasion, and spent a year after that getting shot at in Balad. A year later, he went to Afghanistan, and he's back there now, having just returned from a two-week leave. He got to see his youngest son at Thanksgiving, after missing eight of the first nine months of the little guy's life (he missed the second year of his older son's life while in Iraq). Matt is a polymath who holds a couple of advanced degrees, and is one of those people who knows something--and usually a lot--about nearly any topic. His list of hobbies is exhausting for me to even think about, not even mentioning his actual job. In a battle of wits, I feel very secure in flatly declaring that he'd bury Grady Hendrix, or any other elitist mediot snob, in much the same way that USC demolished UCLA this afternoon.

Makes me wonder if Grady has ever actually met any soldiers. No, wait, I don't wonder about that. Based on the above, I think I'm safe in assuming that the majority of this guy's knowlege of the US Army came from watching a rerun of "Platoon" in his dorm room, in between bong hits. His herd-following denunciation of people with more guts, more brains, and more character than, well, virtually everybody in journalism isn't terribly surprising, now that I think about it.

Judging by this and other insipid and rote mediot dismissals of intelligence in the military, if there are any brainless zombies walking around loose today, they're most likely to be found in newsrooms, not in the armed services.

Liberal elitists tried mightily to pretend Michael Moore's last brain-fart would impact votes; no matter how much they spun the numbers, the votes went the other way. Now they want to pretend that Dante's horror-flick, which will air on Showtime, might make a difference. I know, does anyone actually watch Showtime? normally, no... but this is a free "preview" weekend, where you can watch stuff like the movie from Dante... not to mention Fahrenheit 9/11.

You gotta give the execs in the entertainment industry this -- they don't hide their bias, and they're even willing to give it away for free. Of course, you get what you pay for.

Give Them A Two Minute Penalty For Excessive Stupidity

You know, global warning activists might do a tad bit better if they ditched the sensationalism. We might take them more seriously if they didn't trot out stunts like this...

Activists at the U.N. climate change conference in Montreal shot straight for the Canadian heart on Thursday by warning of the unthinkable -- the end of ice hockey due to global warming.

Players in the "Climate Change Classic" faced off in a game set in the year 2020. Having become too warm for ice, Canada's national obsession became a frustrating exercise of trying to pass the puck while sloshing in ankle-deep water.

The action-slowing practice of firing the puck to the opposite end of the rink was no longer known as icing, but "slushing."

Finally, players dropped their sticks and gloves and gave up, declaring that global warming had succeeded in doing what even the 2004-5 National Hockey League lockout failed to do -- kill hockey.

A tearful memorial service followed.

First of all, I doubt Canadians are stupid enough to have their minds changed by this display. A Canucks or Oilers fan who didn't care about global warming is unlikely to see this ans suddenly decide Kyoto is a good idea, when previously they didn't care.

Second, the NHL plays indoors. Just in case the morons who designed the demonstration haven't figured it out, they play ice hockey in Montreal (not to mention Tampa Bay) in June now. No matter what climate changes the Earth undertakes, we tend to doubt that global warming will suddenly destroy our capability to build and maintain large indoor rinks in the next 15 years.

Third, as a hockey fan, the game being played in ankle-deep water sounds a lot like watching a Devils game in the mid-90's, when their style of play made other teams adopt and employ the neutral-zone trap. It didn't kill hockey then, and this owuldn't kill hockey if it happened in the future.

By the way, who spoke at the "tearful" memorial service? Did they have any highlight reels from the next 15 years? Any of the Stanley Cup results? Inquiring gamblers want to know.

You know, I always thought PETA activists were the ones who engaged in the silliest publicity stunts. Glad to see there's some competition.