Stop Me Before I Vote Again

None of these charges had any basis, of course. Yee is now a free man and his story makes quite a read.

Among Yee's persecutors was none other than Vile Chuck Schumer, democratic Senator from New York and pilotless drone of the Israel lobby. The NYRB piece notes that Schumer "seize[d] on [Yee's] arrest as evidence that radical Islamists had taken control of the recruitment of Muslim chaplains into the armed forces."

Amazingly, or perhaps not so amazingly, "Up" Chuck still has these fantasies posted on his Web site. "NEW REVELATION: CAPTAIN YEE WAS TRAINED AND SELECTED TO BE A MUSLIM CHAPLAIN BY GROUP BEING INVESTIGATED FOR TERRORISM," Chuck's headline screams. The body text is a thing of beauty -- Roy Cohn would have been proud to claim it. Vague references to "connections" among groups, "investigations" that implicitly constutitute evidence of guilt, people with "checkered pasts" and sinister links on Web sites -- it's a minor masterpiece of scattershot character assassination firmly based on thin air.

As a New Yorker, I feel about my distinguished Democratic senators pretty much as Mr Bennett, in Pride and Prejudice, feels about his sons-in-law. I admire them both highly; but Schumer is, perhaps, my favorite.

Somehow, thinking of Old Osawatomie, I just don't feel like saying anything flip or ironical. He deserves better, much better. Better than anything I have the eloquence to say.

But then, as far as I know, no American writer or thinker has even come close to giving Brown his due. Talk about a Founding Father -- and yet so strangely relegated to footnotes, when men a tenth of his stature crowd the pediments of our civic temples.

In the very limited setting of this blog, perhaps I can at least claim Brown as the great, the definitive critiquer of two-party politics. In his day the Democrats had the honor of being the greater evil. But Brown was just as stern, and as unpalatable, to the lesser. Abe Lincoln had to spend a lot of time distancing himself from the terrorist of Harper's Ferry, when his Democratic opponents were as eager to wield the tarbrush as, say, Chuck Schumer is nowadays; and Brown himself saw no hope in Lincoln's party as long as it confined itself to the politics of "yes, but..."

Brown saw to it that "yes, but" was no longer an option.

When will we follow his example?

Well, Nancy, I'd sure love to see you stare down the DLC. Time will tell.

Meanwhile, I note that you won't "call for a party caucus position on the plan by the Pennsylvania Democrat because 'a vote on the war is an individual vote.' " Now why is that -- unless you're still trying to provide some cover for the War Democrats, without losing your own cushy seat?

Okay, so the man rode in to town and the yeller-belly War Democrats are scurrying for cover like Arkansas weevils. A thing of beauty. But now what?

Well first off, Murtha is not a dove. What we're hearing from him is probably what he's hearing from his pals in the Pentagon. (Seymour Hersh has got the dope on this topic.) And the Pentagon is not yet pushing for an admission of defeat. In fact, this war will continue till it's stopped.

The ground action may well be pretty much over -- that arm got lead poisoning and needs a serious spell in rehab. But according to Sy, who has been right many times before now, the scrap will be continued by Uncle's peerless combined air arm.

Do I need to point out that's what Murtha meant by an "over the horizon" American presence? It's obvious, right? And so is the mission all us peaceniks are now stuck with completing, if we plan on a nice afterlife with Jesus and Cary Grant. We'll have to end the Phase II air war too. And believe me, the Demo goats will come charging out from under their wooly sheep costumes as soon as any "progressives" in the party try that kind of action.

And that's one more reason, if another were needed, to get these hounds out of office by any means necessary. Do not go for the old lesser-evil scam and vote for some supposedly reformed Democratic warmonger in '06 or '08. And be sure to let the party know you won't.

I personally have no hope at all for the Democratic Party. But I imagine some of y'all reading this may not be quite at that point yet. Well, let me suggest to you that if you want to have any hope of turning your party into a force for good, your absolute top-priority Job One is to purge the Liebermans, the Hillary Clintons, the Chuck Schumers, the Joe Bidens. You may well end up with a smaller party in Congress, but if it's a party that's actually willing to act like the opposition, you'd be infinitely better off.

Now the fact is you don't have sufficient clout within the party to deny them the nomination. But you might very well be their margin of victory in the general election. Once again: if you live in a district, or a state, represented by a Democrat who voted for the war, serve notice on the party that you will not vote for that person again. And stick to it. Come next November, vote for a third party or write somebody in.

You really have nothing to lose. These people are repeat offenders, and they will kill again.

“We’'re not planning to diminish the war.... We just want to change the mix of the forces doing the fighting .... We’'re in the middle of a seven-year slog in Iraq....”

"When you've become the president's best friend on the war in Iraq, you should not be in office, especially if you're in the opposing party," Weicker said.

Goddam, I hope he runs. And of course I hope he wins. But the second-best outcome would be if he deprives AIPAC zombie Lieberman of his seat, in favor of a Republican. There's absolutely no downside to this scenario. A Republican couldn't possibly be worse than Lieberman, and the little rat's fate might, just might, be a salutary lesson to those of his Democratic colleagues who aren't too far gone.

If there are any such.

Yes, you heard me right -- the pit viper of the Dalmatian coast says, stop babying those towel-headed Teheranian blood zombies! Disarm their militias! Seal their border crossings! Pump dry their oil! Dare their unemployed kids to come out into the streets and fight like men!

Looks like Wesley has joined the "real men" who wanted to go to Teheran all along. How long do you think it will be before some deputation of Congressional Democrats will bring this little Christmas gift to the floor of the House?

Editor's note: This is the same Wesley Clark who wrote a few years ago,

"As I went back through the Pentagon in November 2001, one of the senior military staff officers had time for a chat. Yes, we were still on track for going against Iraq, he said. But there was more. This was being discussed as part of a five-year campaign plan, he said, and there were a total of seven countries, beginning with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia, and Sudan… I left the Pentagon that afternoon deeply concerned." – --Winning Modern Wars, page 130.

I'm trying to think of an analogy. Guy's getting beaten up by a gang of thugs. Says nothing, doesn't defend himself. After half an hour or so of bone-crunching kicks and punches, he starts to wonder -- just internally, mind you; he doesn't say anything -- whether perhaps if this goes on much longer, he might possibly consider complaining about it.

These poor souls at MoveOn and the like really are scared of their own shadow. The only thing that will get the War Democrats' attention is a third-party peace line in the general election. But the pwo-gwessives are as petrified of that idea as a little bird confronted by a cobra.

dear rep steve

  okay   you are it  buddy boy

we with the brown bags over our heads have chosen

you

we want you
you
the  bay state's
       lowest hangin  war mongrel

yup we're givin'
marty and ed a pass
           in 06
long as they fly straight
here on out

but  u

u gotta  prove u mean it
                             big time

like cinderfellah

u be our bitch or

we  run over
     ya  next november

and
we got just the right blend of candidate
                                          to bounce ya
a bemedaled
  marine  viet vet from southie

he's bronzed  buff
sharp as a grade school thumb tack
                          and  ready to rumble .....

but
     hey  here's a thought

  not  that this will save u

but as a token of u
             "catchin our drift"


try this on

   since   you're on the house sub-c
  charged with the  noble mission
                    of rooting out all fetid thievery
    inside   gub contracting
                  over there in the sand trap...


    start  raising holy  hell   steve
stop the river of green gravy
right
in its  privatizing tracks

call for a freeze of funds
call a halt to about the biggest
taxpayer rip-o-ramakoff
since bebe rebozo resold
      those    alp high piles
            of hot tires
                      back in '43

do it steve nooooow
  sing solo baby

sing  like its wagner

  'out truman truman'
as  they used to say
     back in bebe's day

Two names to conjure with:

• Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.)
• Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.)

This pair of quivering dermatophytes are respectively the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chairman and the second-ranking House Democratic leader. You can probably play their song without me even humming a few bars: Pelosi's stance "could backfire on the party." Twisted Cal gals Jane Harman and Ellen Tauscher have articulated a House clone of the Republican Senate resolution calling for "a period of significant transition to full Iraqi sovereignty" and a Bushmill explanation of his "strategy for the successful completion of the mission in Iraq."

But of course la bella Pella stands firm, right?

Wrong. I quote her press flack:

"While Pelosi estimates more than half of House Democrats favor a speedy withdrawal, she will lobby members in today's meeting against adopting this as a caucus position."

Aaahh Nan, you still have my, um, attention; but my heart is broken.

On Monday, the ex-medic said "The idea that we're going to win this war is an ideal that unfortunately is just plain wrong." Today?

"It was a little out of context. ... We can only win if we change our strategy dramatically. ... We want to serve our troops well. They're doing a fantastic job in Iraq.... [Bush] is going in the wrong direction. We'll go in the right direction and save soldiers lives while we're doing it... We can and we have to win the war on terror."

... when churchyards yawn, and Hell itself breathes forth

Contagion to the world.

Yep, the Republican implosion has brought the democratic-party Undead clambering out of their graves. A particularly ripe and fragrant specimen is Dick Holbrooke, baulked of the top job at Foggy Bottom when his noble steed Kerry died under him. Behold, he sniffs the air. A terrible excitement animates his decaying sinews. Hollowly, tonelessly, mechanically, he speaks:

"I'm not prepared to lay out a detailed policy or strategy... It's not something you can expect in a situation that is moving this fast and has the level of detail you're looking for.... I don't believe in an arbitrary drawdown, whether it's Vietnam or Bosnia or Iraq.... A departure must be based on realities on the ground.... Iraq is a country enmeshed in civil war, with no purely military strategy available.... Sunni insurgents cannot win but U.S. troops also cannot win, cannot eliminate multiple insurgencies.... Rather than a prescription I prefer to talk about goals.... we need to reach a point where U.S. troops are not participants in this civil war but where we're still able to protect U.S. interests like oil, regional stability, counterterrorism and Israel."

And it's very gratifying to reflect that mealy-mouthed temporizing like this is quite likely to deprive the Democrats of a recrudescence in '06 that they have done nothing, absolutely nothing, to deserve.

"One would have to be more cynical than I to believe there are those in power in my party who do not want to see people like me have a chance, people who have not already made their deals with interest groups and powerful contributors, people who really do have new ideas and fresh approaches , and perhaps even uncorrupted leadership to offer.

I choose not to believe this. But if the Democratic Party puts the big states ahead of New Hampshire, I, and a lot of other people, may have to reconsider."

Go back to sleep, you old ham.

"As Republicans contemplate political ruin in next year's election, they can take solace in the fact that, if defeated, their replacements may not differ in any meaningful way on important issues of the day... That's the hope and dream of Democratic apparatchik Rahm Emmanuel and the corporate toadies he represents."

So obviously in '06 she runs again and wins, right?

Wrong. Cegalis has made the mistake of calling for troop withdrawal from Iraq. So Rahm wants a female Iraq veteran, Tammy Duckworth, who, as Andrew says, "Queried by a Chicago Sun Times columnist for her opinion on the war, replied, 'There's good and bad in everything'."

See, unlike Cegalis, Duckworth knows the party line -- and all you 'progressive' wishful thinkers out there, referring to the Democratic Party as 'us', need to know that. Rahm himself put it best: "At the right time we will have a position."

Andrew also reminds us Rahm was the NAFTA quarterback in '93, back in those dear Clinton years for which we're supposed to feel such nostalgia. After that, and before he replaced that old thief Dan Rostenkowski in the House, his patrons parked him in a "well-upholstered" job in a Chicago bank.

Part of this, of course, is just dead-cat bounce -- people who were otherwise inclined to be behind him got shook up by the events of the late summer and early fall, and now that things have settled down they're feeling like maybe they overrreacted a little.

But the fact that they got shook shows they're shakable, and the fact that they didn't stay shook can be credited, I think, to the Democratic party, which with a few rare and honorable exceptions, refused to take advantage of the opportunity they were offered. What we got from most of them was the usual lame, mumbled yes-butnik pabulum. Now the train may be leaving the station, with the Dems standing rather foolishly on the platform -- as has been their historic role, save for a few short intervals, since they were on the losing side in the Civil War.

• Clinton Lieberman Schumer et al.: '06 will be year of transition.
• MoveOn: '06 should be year of exit.

In other news, "Democracy for America", chaired by Howard Dean's brother Jim (Christ, isn't one enough?), has a plan for dealing with Bloody Joe, the Genghis Khan of Greenwich. They're going to... send him a letter, which you can sign online if you feel like getting your name on a list. The document is almost miraculously feeble; it calls on Joe to start "questioning President Bush's foreign policy."

Reading this story, between my belly laughs, I had an image of old Hrothgar's men, huddled in the mead hall at Heorot, surrounded by the disjecta membra of former colleagues, composing a letter to Grendel. Dear Mr. Grendel, we urge you to consider a change in diet. Our best wishes to your Mom. Sincerely, the Progressive Thanes of Geatland.

I switched on the bedside lamp and took a thoughtful pull from the bottle of Jack Daniels I keep ready to hand for these Democrat dreams . As my mind slowly cleared, the thought occurred to me that if Nan really wanted to bat cleanup, she'd start with her own House party, and cancel the Rahm and Steny show.

Couldn't go back to sleep, so I started working on a L'Infame post appealing to my girl to do just that. Not quite awake yet, you see.

Of course as the mists cleared I realized the futility of any such appeal. But I decided to go ahead.

What sense can there be in making impossible demands like that?

Well, maybe the clear sound of the word "impossible" shot back at us in high dudgeon is itself enough reason. Maybe one too many stony dismissals can finally shatter a few stained glass illusions. "At long last is this all they are..... why in heaven's name am I putting up with this?"

So with such epiphanies in mind we will continue to call on the leaders of the party of lesser venality to do the right thing -- knowing all along we'll hear back the chorus of that old Perry Como favorite "It's just impossible ...."

Leading contender for the face on the Hallmark card is Doctor John Edwards, who observed, "There is a hunger in America, a hunger for a sense of national community, a hunger for something big and important and inspirational that they all can be involved in." Dr. Edwards didn't say so, but I presume he no longer means a war -- that would be sooo 2004.

Russell Feingold was making noises about filibustering it. As far as I know, no other Democrats have yet indicated they will join him.

If Feingold does try a filibuster, it's another foregone conclusion that enough Democrats will cross the aisle to cut off debate.

And then, when those Democrats are up for re-election, we will see hapless liberals wringing their hands and then trooping dutifully off to vote for these swine, lamely mumbling that a Republican would certainly be worse.

And that, dear friends, is how the machine turns out its predictable product. These poor liberals are, you might say, the "enablers" who allow the monster to have his wicked way.

Not to the unspeakable Rahm Emmanuel, chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee -- Mr. Moneybags, in other words, for the national party. Emmanuel has apparently passed down the word that Bishop would get little support from the DCCC.

This is starting to look like a pattern.

Among those dodging the bullet with a bold and resolute "present" was our friend Rahm Emanuel.

"There is no one Democratic voice... and there is no one Democratic position."

I say it with deep regret, since I find Nancy fantastically attractive, but she must be expunged. What is the matter with all you peace and love San Franciscans? How can you abide her willingness to sup so calmly with the worst devils in all of Tartarus?

There's your House Democratic party package -- Nan and Rahm. Why would anyone think it's an improvement for these electric eels to gain control of Congress?

To think this is the same Nan who, as whip, back in '02, rallied 126 Democratic house votes against the war authorization, right under pig-pants Gephardt's bristled snout! Now it's all too clear that was Nan doin' showbiz -- dancing to the local Frisco beat, a noble meaningless gesture, pure theatrics.

Come the Murtha moment -- come a real chance to kill the war -- the real Nan emerges, gladly setting places at the table for an Emanuel or a Harmon.

Frisco does not see Iraq like Nan, and Frisco needs to wake up and punish her. This dirty desert war is profoundly not a matter of "individual conscience".

Come next November vote your conscience, Frisco. Vote her out, in the primary if you can and the general election if you must.

Now, all they have to do is stand pat and the whole package of sixteen nefarious provisions will expire. But that doesn't appear to be the game plan. Rather, the senatorial Democrats -- inexplicably including Feingold, who was the lone vote against the original act -- say they want to pass an improved version. Looks like a triangulation stunt to me -- they want to claim that they've done something for civil liberties but also look good on "National Security," whatever that is.

In an interview with "Fox News Sunday," Democratic Senate leader Harry Reid acknowledged that he had been briefed on the eavesdropping program "a couple of months ago." But he added that "the president can't pass the buck on this one. It's his program." House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said she, too, had been briefed, and had raised "strong concerns" at the time, according to the Associated Press.

It will be interesting to see whether such an unlikely Pied Piper as ol' Arlen can get any of the rats to follow him.

More prosaically, they extended it in exactly its present form for six months, when they could have let it expire and made the Republicans come back with a new secret-police act -- an act that would have hopefully faced more skepticism than the Patriot Act did, back in the days after 9/11 when Democrats and Republicans were trying to see who could be more hysterical.

Now, however, the Act represents the status quo and the Democrats will face the burden of painting a civil-liberties smiley-face on it.

Nice work, fellas.

The Chicago Sun-Times reports:

The Duckworth campaign, orchestrated by Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), chief of the House Democratic political operation -- who nationally has been recruiting Iraq vets for House races -- will be boosted by Illinois Democratic Senators Dick Durbin and Barack Obama.

"I'm just solidly in Tammy Duckworth's corner," Durbin said Friday as Obama, standing at his side, nodded in agreement.

Rahm, let it be remembered, runs a thing called the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), a slush fund for the national party to support the campaigns of nice safe Democrats like Rahm himself.

"This is the right thing to do for the country," Schumer said after the deal had been announced. "To let the Patriot Act lapse would have been a dereliction of duty."

Tom Matzzie, the Washington director for MoveOn.org, a liberal advocacy group, suggested that the antiwar movement would potentially undercut its own message by waging what he said would be a hugely unsuccessful primary challenge against Mrs. Clinton.

"The case I would make is that 2006 needs to be a year of reckoning for Republicans on Iraq," he said. "If the antiwar candidate is creamed by Hillary Clinton, it's a distraction."

A recent [Quinnipiac] poll ... found that 88 percent of Democrats who were interviewed said they approved of Mrs. Clinton's job performance.... Mrs. Clinton's approval rating comes at the same time that 83 percent of Democrats in the sample told pollsters that they regarded the war in Iraq as a mistake.

"She has the left in her back pocket," said Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac institute. "She doesn't have to worry about catering to them."

In 2003, I debated Shmuley Botech, a NY Lubavicher Orthodox rabbi, on WWRL-AM radio's "Peter and Shmuely Show". (Peter Noel is a Black journalist.) A historian, I read anything by people I've encountered. Every so often I discover something that belongs out there in front of the world public.

Shmuley's "Madonna: Mother of Modern Monotheism?," in New York's 10/28/05 Jewish Week, is mostly about her. He explains that

"the fact that Judaism is becoming increasingly dependent on vulgar pop cultural icons to make it appeal to the masses is a sign of desperation rather than achievement, failure rather than success."

Then he made a confession:

"It is no secret that I spent two years in friendship with Michael Jackson. To be sure, we worked together to inspire parents to prioritize their children, and Michael even came with me to meet Ariel Sharon and stand up for Israel at a time when few others would. But my embarrassment comes not from Michael's subsequent arrest (and exoneration), but from my insecurity in believing that the Jewish faith needed a celebrity spokesman in order to garner mainstream credibility."

I'll leave you with this for starters.

Sharon:

Michael! You can't imagine what a pleasure it is for me to meet you. I've been your greatest fan for years.

Jackson:

Ariel, you took the words right out of my mouth!