A comment about blogging, civility and fevered swamp stuff

I had planned on commenting at length on Peter Di Guadio's post-election meltdown (see comments), but given intervening events I won't bother. He's pulled down his blog, and meanwhile some jackass put up a parody site making matters worse.

I'm not happy about the outcome of Tuesday's presidential election either. But silliness about "not my president" really is counter-productive and will only turn off the few people we need to reach in four years.

Besides, last I checked Obama became President-elect for the United States, not just for those that voted for him. It's not like you have to sacrifice goats to him*. You are his constituent, too.

After all, do you think the mayor of Waukesha hangs up the phone when I call just because I didn't vote for him? (Sorry Larry.) If he does a good enough job, I may even vote for him when he runs for re-election. (This is, of course, purely hypothetical.)

Talk of assassination wasn't funny when the left did it, and it's not funny now. I remember when the left would claim Vice President Dan Quayle was President Bush's insurance policy against assassination and how outraged I was when I heard it. Well, it didn't take long before I heard the same joke about Al Gore and Bill Clinton, and it wasn't funny then either.

Going deep into the fevered swamps of conspiracy theories like some did during the Clinton era (my favorite was the Little Rock cocaine cartel story) is harmful in two ways: it discredits opposition to Obama's policies and it discourages people from getting involved. Don't do it. It's just not worth it, and you can spare yourself a lot of agony and embarrassment. For the next four years I do not want to hear about how Obama is a plant by the Indonesian Al-Qaeda faction to destroy every Jewish deli in New York.

Finally, Ann Coulter recently wrote,

In the spirit of reaching across the aisle, we owe it to the Democrats to show their president the exact same kind of respect and loyalty that they have shown our recent Republican president.

Starting tomorrow, if not sooner.

In the same column she called Congressman John Murtha's constituents "retards." Gee, thanks Ann. Do you think in four years they might remember that?

I realize that it gets frustrating to see the left get away with unimaginable vitriol. But it doesn't make it easy to criticize the left when some on our side decide to fight fire with fire.

There is an alternative.

In 1992, I remember the day after the election sitting in a campaign office by myself listening to the radio. It was a disaster. Worse, it meant that not only was I unemployed, but there were probably no political jobs to be found. And quite frankly, my initial exposure to politics probably soured me on the whole process.

But Rush Limbaugh came on and he was more upbeat than ever. He gave his audience advice I have never forgotten and follow to this day. Go out and live your lives the best way you can. The best revenge is not letting the other side get to you. Raise your children well. Keep your optimism up. Fight them on ideas. Don't give in to anger and despair. Don't stoop to their level. And eventually we will prevail.

Two years later everything changed with the Contract with America.

We can succeed, and we can succeed the right away. Don't give in, but fight them with ideas, fight them in the way we live, fight them by showing we're better than they are. The double-standard is unfair. So what. We were given the higher standard; let's use it.

When Col. Oliver North came to Waukesha to campaign in 1988, the hippy-dippy left was out in full force. They were screaming and waving things and generally looked like the stereotypes we all know and love. A bunch of us showed up in suits to counter-demonstrate. We smiled at the cops and talked to them. When the cops thought one of our chants was causing more tension, we changed it. We had fun while members of the other side were giving themselves high blood pressure. A few of them got arrested for crossing the protest line. A couple even resisted. (Some advice: if that's a Waukesha deputy hauling you to the paddy wagon, don't resist or you might end up eating the bumper on your way in.)

Both sides ended up on television. Guess who looked better? (Of course, I'm always good looking.)

That doesn't mean that we shouldn't tell jokes or make fun of them on occasion. Derision works, too.

It doesn't mean we can't criticize them. We can, and we ought to. Frequently. Vociferously.

But we ought to know where the line is, and we ought to behave like the civilization we want to defend.

This country survived electing Andrew Jackson and Woodrow Wilson. It survived Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon almost back-to-back. It will survive President Obama, and it won't hurt to call him that. Pretending, and that's what it would be, that his election is somehow illegitimate will only hurt ourselves in the long run.

*yep, I'm getting four years out of this joke.

The recession will not be televised

Sorry, this year's planned recession is cancelled. (Ht: Steve Prestegard)

Maybe if the Democrats get into office we can have a really big one. Or better yet, Jimmy Carter-style malaise. Wouldn't that be cool?

One among the dozen

Idiots, idiots everywhere. On the way home this evening I saw one idiot behind the wheel of a car honking her horn because the six cars in her lane weren’t moving. When they did move, they didn’t move fast enough for her and she honked her horn again. This time the car in front of her stopped and someone got out. Since we were east of 124th street, I didn’t stick around to see the end.

There were idiots abroad. Former Chief Idiot Jimmy Carter became a useful idiot for terrorists when he declared he had achieved peace in our time. Fortunately Hamas was more truthful than Jimmy when they pointed out that they did not accept the right of Israel to exist and that they would only offer Israel a ten-year truce provided Israel retreated to it’s (strategically untenable) pre-1967 borders. After said truce Hamas would go back to killing Israelis until the last Jew was gone.

But this week the idiots were out in force in Milwaukee County where the County Board had to vote 45 times to elect a new chairman. The new chairman is the same as the old one, violent slumlord Lee Holloway. Brian Fraley has the twelve who voted for Holloway on the final ballot.

1. Gerry Broderick
2. Toni Clark
3. Elizabeth Coggs-Jones
4. Marina Dimitrijevic
5. Lee Holloway
6. Willie Johnson Jr.
7. Christopher Larson
8. Theo Lipscomb
9. Michael Mayo Sr.
10. John Thomas
11. John Weishan Jr.
12. Peggy West

But we can’t have 12 idiot politicians of the week, can we? And we won’t. Supervisor Lipscomb voted “present” the entire time until the final vote because he didn’t feel it was right for a newcomer to make such a choice. Of course, when he ran for the office it was assumed by his constituents that they were asking him to precisely do that – make choices. And not later – now. Had he voted earlier, he could have broken the tie for second place, forcing the run-off between Holloway and Schmitt that much earlier. But he failed to do the one task his constituents required of him causing the whole embarrassing mess to drag out that much longer. What’s worse, when he finally made a choice so many hours after it all began, he made the wrong choice, making the whole affair that much more embarrassing to Milwaukee County.

So congratulations Supervisor Lipscomb. On the job less than a week and already you are the Idiot Politician of the Week. Who would've thought your constituents would miss James White as their supervisor?

"Why does that idiot always call at 3:00 AM?"

What a good week for the idiots. Despite the onset of decent weather, the idiots mostly remained indoors. One of the few to venture outside was former President Jimmy Carter who continued his nostalgic tour of the Middle East and hugging the terrorists. Remember when Jimmy was King of the Idiot Politicians? He does, and this bitter old crank has been taking it out on us ever since. Of course, the rest of the world remembers, too, which is why America’s enemies greet him so warmly. The wreath laying at Arafat’s grave was a nice touch. I would have followed it up by watering the flowers.

Idiots here, there and everywhere.

From the “Idiots here” category we venture east across 124th street into deepest Milwaukee to observe some idiots in their natural habitat. The state of nature is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short, Hobbes famously observed. In Milwaukee, stupid also applies, as politicians gathered to take advantage of the anniversary of the Virginia Tech tragedy to promote their anti-gun agenda. Unless the ribbons handed out were made of Kevlar, Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm, State Rep. Jon Richards (D-Milwaukee) and State Rep. Leon Young (D-Milwaukee) should find something a little more productive to do. But I bet they felt great after their little rally, like they really accomplished something.

Further east to the tragically hip and trendy Milwaukee East Side where organic produce is not only eaten but often smoked, some students of UW-Milwaukee are squabbling over perks and pay and how they’ll be divvied up next year at their fellow students’ expense. Rather than just tell them to go play nicely in the sandbox, newly-elected Milwaukee Alderman Nik Kovac is wading into the fray. We suggest they settle the whole dispute over a kegger at Nic’s house since he apparently has plenty of time to plan a party. While the rest of the city debates what to do about more bullets flying than in a John Woo movie, he’s worrying about which college kid gets to play "grown-up."

From here to there to Washington, where Congressman John Murtha demonstrates that when it comes to idiocy, he’s “special.” Murtha accused Senator John McCain of being too old to be president. McCain is 71. Murtha is 75.

But the clear winner of the Idiot Politician of the Week award goes to Senator Barack Obama, who in the space of one week made himself the Republican choice for the Democratic presidential nominee. It was a cumulative idiocy that made him number one on the Idiot pop charts this week.

There was the flag pin controversy where he completely denied ever saying he wouldn’t wear a flag pin, even though he made a point of saying so publicly. Even Michael Dukakis wore a flag pin and had the good sense not to lie about the whole “Pledge of Allegiance” controversy.

Then Obama compared former Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers to US Senator Tom Coburn. When that wasn’t good enough, Obama’s campaign later complained that the unrepentant Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn were really mainstream Chicagoans. You know, your typical Chicago Bears fans that wanted to “off the pigs,” praise Ho Chi Minh, cause riots and blow up some buildings. Really, they’re very typical Midwestern stock, just like the kind that are so bitter and resentful that they cling to their guns and their religion rather than look for help from Washington DC. Typical white people that we should all like and respect.

Then they complained, can we please move onto some “real issues” now? These questions are hard. We don’t want to play this game, and we don’t like ABC anymore. As Jim Geraghty at National Review Online put it so well,

I thought about the contrast with McCain. The guy does town hall meetings everywhere he goes. He has reporters on the bus with him all the time. He does conference calls with bloggers.

Does he ever grumble about some questions? Oh, once in a while we'll see McCain get a bit curt with a New York Times reporter on his plane. I remember him getting surprisingly defensive in response to a question about Israel on one of those blogger calls, and I'm sure we all remember the "thanks for the question, you little jerk. You're drafted!" (which everyone at the event understood as a joke, but was easy to take out of context). But all in all, McCain's off-key answers have been pretty small potatoes. When the New York Times did that inane front-page story insinuating, but never quite coming out and accusing him of having an affair with a lobbyist, he took every question until no one had any left.

Meanwhile, Obama gets a couple questions on unpleasant topics — do you understand why your San Francisco comment bothered some Pennsylvanians? Why did you ask Jeremiah Wright to not play a role in your campaign kickoff? Why don't you wear a flag pin? Can you explain your relationship with William Ayers? — and his supporters go apoplectic, some even screaming Obama should retaliate against ABC as President. And his campaign whines that it's "gotcha politics and distractions."

Hey, welcome to the big leagues, rookie. You're gonna get some questions you're not going to like. Not everybody gets to have their main opponent's bid implode when their divorce records are unsealed and compete against Alan Keyes in a general election.

Seriously, if Barack Obama can't handle questions like this from Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopolous, maybe the portrait of the cracking-under-pressure whiner depicted in the Saturday Night Live sketch isn't as wild an exaggeration as we thought.

Senator Barack Obama, that wasn’t an earthquake in Illinois this morning; that was your reputation imploding. But that’s what happens when you’re the Idiot Politician of the Week.

I guess dissenting Chinese and Tibetans don't count

Former President Jimmy Carter explains why he would not support a boycott of the Beijing Olympics:

As president, Carter led the boycott of the Moscow Olympics in protest against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. "That was a totally different experience in 1980, when the Soviet Union had brutally invaded and killed thousands and thousands of people," he said, rejecting the idea of boycotting the Beijing games to protest China's crackdown in Tibet. He did not address whether just the opening ceremonies should be boycotted.

So you see, because the Communists don't have to invade to continue to be repressive towards their own people and the Tibetans, not too mention other Asian ethnic minorities within their borders, it doesn't really count.

Hey, idiots. The first rule of comedy is that cancer isn't funny.

Time for this week's Idiot Politician of the Week. Yep, we're moving it to Friday to give them a chance to repent over the weekend.

We have a few nominees this week that could win the prize almost any other week if we're weren't talking about politicians.

We start this week with international affairs, specifically former President Jimmy Carter's love affair with radical Palestinian terrorist groups. Carter is about to go on a trip to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip to talk with the leaders of Hamas. Just a warning to Jimmy. These Muslim fundamentalist extremists tend to take a rather dim view of homosexuality, so don't go laying a Carter-Loves-Brezhnev on them or they might just stone you. Since we doubt you're going to avoid asking them to stop firing rockets at Israel, could you at least ask them to stop killing Palestinians that disagree with them?

Closer to home some idiocy is even criminal. Kenosha County Executive and former Sheriff Allan Kehl has chosen option "B" for living off the taxpayers for awhile - as an inmate at a federal prison near you. As former State Senator Cathy Stepp put it, "I mean really, accepting money in a bag in someone's garage?! Even drug dealers are more sophisticated than that today."

This is your brain. This is your brains on drugs. This your brain if you're a politician accepting bags of cash in your garage.

Sometimes I feel like I'm writing less of a blog than I am a sort-of political Darwin Awards segment. This week's winner comes from the "I could have been a contender until I started poking fun at cancer" category. State Representative Sheldon Wasserman must've fallen off his bicycle one too many times without a helmet to not try to stop his fellow liberals from scoring the biggest "own goal" of the November election cycle so far. Democrats are putting around the story that State Senator Alberta Darling is too ill from surviving breast cancer to mount an effective re-election campaign this year. Of course, it's not true. It's also a pretty low and slimy political stunt. I don't think Democrats would have been too happy about if the situation was reversed and it was Republicans spreading the story about Attorney General Lautenschlager two years ago.

Think about how twisted this double-standard is.
Lautenschlager (D): brave, courageous.
Darling (R) : Too ill to serve.

Wait until the women in the senate district find out that Wasserman's political allies were trying to use breast cancer as an issue in the campaign. Wait until they hear Doctor Wasserman's allies were using someone's health as an issue in the campaign.

The moment Wasserman saw the mention of Darling's health in Milwaukee Magazine he should've told his side to cool it. He claims he didn't know.

Well Sheldon, you're the Idiot Politician of the Week. If you don't know what's in the press about your own campaign, if you don't know what your own side is doing, then you're the idiot. And if you did know, then you're a slimy idiot at that.

(Send your nomination for the "Idiot Politician of the Week" to Jamesmdw@yahoo.com. The idiots will be identified every Friday.)

Former President Jimmy Carter to meet with Hamas

According to Newsmax.com, Al-Jazeera is reporting former President Carter is going to meet with the leader of Hamas.

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter plans to meet Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal in Syria next week, despite U.S. efforts to isolate the Islamist Palestinian group, Al Jazeera television said.

The meeting was expected to take place in the Syrian capital Damascus on April 18, and may also include former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and former South African President Nelson Mandela.

"Senior Hamas officials have confirmed the Carter meeting but declined to speak on camera out of both political and security considerations," Al Jazeera said on Thursday.

Washington shuns Hamas as a terrorist group and has joined Israel in supporting efforts to isolate it.

For the first time a leader of Hamas will not be the person in the room most dedicated to the destruction of Israel.

Wait until Alan Dershowitz hears about his trip.

I voted

Just a wild prediction first: I predict Democrats will have higher turnout than Republicans in Waukesha.

Charlie Sykes predicted yesterday in an e-mail yesterday to National Review Online Senator McCain will win Wisconsin in November. I'll take that wager.

Now, for how I voted:

I couldn't vote for Hillary Clinton. Call it HRC derangement syndrome, but if I was responsible in any way for her becoming president, I don't know how I could face my children.

There was no strategic advantage in voting for Obama.

I was not going to throw away my vote. No vote for Fred.

I was not going to take the coward's way out and choose to vote for undesignated delegates. It was tempting.

Ron Paul? I'd sooner cast my vote for Jimmy Carter.

No. I voted for John McCain.

1) Foreign policy. As a lifelong student of foreign policy, I voted for the most qualified remaining candidate.
2) My son Will wants somebody from Arizona to be president in his lifetime. It will mean anybody can grow up to be president. Besides, I have family in Arizona. I don't know anybody in Arkansas.
3) Like Cindy McCain, I've always been proud of my country, too.

Hey, look, I voted for the guy who won!

Carter Country

Mike Mathias finds amusement in my criticisms of former President Jimmy Carter, and suggests his shortcomings were the result of President Ford. No, really.

Of course Carter, inherited the America left to him by Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford (remember Whip Inflation Now?), and he did the best that he could.

Meanwhile Professor John McAdams found this over at Scrappleface:

May 20, 2007
Bush Hails Carter as Best Former President
by Scott Ott

(2007-05-20) — Just a day after former President Jimmy Carter told reporters that the Bush administration is “the worst in history” the current White House resident called Mr. Carter “the best former president ever.”

“I know that President Carter and I have had our differences,” said Mr. Bush, “But I think most Americans will agree with me that he’s a terrific ex-president. Things have never been better since Jimmy Carter left office.”

Mr. Bush pointed to an array of improvements, including a stable growing economy, lower taxes, reduced inflation and unemployment and increased American strength and preparedness — all of which he associated with Mr. Carter’s years as a former president.

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And he did it all in one term

In this week's column for the Waukesha Freeman, I remember the 1970s: polyester clothing, disco music, really bad television, and Jimmy Carter, who could be the next Democratic nominee for President of the United States.

The good news for my friends on the left is that President Carter only served one term in office as president. That’s right. He can run again.

After all, if he isn’t going to respect the tradition that ex-presidents should say nothing about his successors, then let’s get him back into the political arena.

The political left would love it. Remember the windfall profit tax on oil? Heck, Gov. Jim Doyle is so nostalgic for it he’s trying something similar in Wisconsin.

Carter had something for everyone on the left. The sweaters he wore when he was promoting energy conservation. We had gasoline shortages with lines around the block. Scientists were even warning about a coming ice age. It was a mass transit and anti-global warming heaven.

Run, Jimmy, run! Run for President again! Run like there's a big ol' swamp rabbit chasing you!

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Tan, rested and ready

C'mon. Bring it on. After all, he's only served one term. He's eligible to run again. If the left-wing wants him so bad, run Jimmy Carter for president again. C'mon. I double-dawg, triple dare you.

His last term in office went so well.

Because if he isn't going to run again, it would be nice if he behaved in the tradition of ex-presidents and concentrated on his golf game. There's a reason why it's healthy for a republic to retire their ex-leaders, and that bitter old incompetent from Plains, GA, is a prime example.

Dershowitz at Brandeis

I just watched on C-Span Alan Dershowitz's response to former President Carter at Brandeis University. It will be on again Sunday, January 28 at 9:45 am EST and Monday, January 29 at 12:15 am EST. I strongly recommend it to anyone interested in what's happening in Israel.

Here's an excerpt:


By the way, Dershowitz repeats his offer of $15,000 to anyone who can find a prominent Jewish leader that equates criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism.

Update! Yid with Lid has Dershowitz's own reaction to the speeches at Brandeis.


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