We're a couple hours away from today's episode of One Jerusalem Radio's Omri Ceren Show. With Mitchell and Biden on the ground the show is going to be extremely diplomacy-heavy, making allowances for the time needed to cover this-week-in-Iranian-warmongering. You can tune in live via the show page or the episode page starting at 6:30pm PST, and as always I'll have the chatroom and the phone lines open for questions and comments.

There are functionally two full interviews this week. Larry Greenfield, Claremont Institute Fellow and Executive Director of The Reagan Legacy Foundation, comes on as a special guest to talk about "Israel's Increasingly Dangerous Neighborhood," the enormous writeup he just completed on the recent Jerusalem Conference. Given his role in conservative and Jewish politics - the Obama campaign banned surrogates from debating him when he was head of the California RJC and then NJDC moron Aaron Kayek targeted him in one of the dumbest attacks I've ever read - that comes up too.

Today's Diker segment goes for almost 20 minutes, which is what you'd expect given that the show topic is diplomacy and he's among Israel's top diplomacy analysts. One of the money lines from the beginning of the conversation: "we haven't seen this type of sympathy by an American administration... really since Carter, and even the Carter administration was somewhat more measured in its approach." Cf. the rest of the Israeli political world, where that exact conclusion is on its way to becoming conventional wisdom. You'll want to stay till the end where he evaluates whether Obama will actually succeed in detonating the US-Israel alliance. Tough to say, tough to say.

Official show blurb:

Omri interviews Larry Greenfield, Claremont Institute Fellow and Executive Director of The Reagan Legacy Foundation. They discuss Greenfield's recent missile defense talk at the 7th Annual Jerusalem Conference, the political climate in Israel and within American Jewry, and the future of the US conservative movement. Dan Diker also joins the show, talking about Israel's recent public and state-to-state diplomacy in the context of the Iranian threat. In between Omri runs down the week's news on global terrorism, Middle East geopolitics, and the left's Big Government push in the United States.

I'm also in the process of going over all the old shows and reediting them to make them listenable (or at least to remove cracks and pops - any unlistenable content will, alas, stay the way it is). More on that in the next week or so. In the meantime, see you in a bit.

References:
* Jerusalem's Misgivings with Larry Greenfield [TOCS]
* Israel's Increasingly Dangerous Neighborhood [Larry Greenfield]
* Obama Campaign Demands Ban On Republican Jewish Group, Escalates Thuggish Intimidation [MR]
* NJDC Tool Aaron Keyak Helpfully Illustrates How Liberal Activists Sneeringly Cocoon Themselves In Asinine Arguments And Dishonest Smears [MR]
* Politics: Not afraid to speak her mind [JPost]
* Israeli Officials: Hey, Do You Think That Maybe Obama's Going To Detonate The US-Israel Relationship? [MR]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* The Omri Ceren Show
* Anti-Israel Diplomacy
* Jewish Politics

Each week, in a contest for the week's best post, the members of the Watchers Council nominate one of their own posts and a second from outside the Council for consideration by other council members. This week's nominations run the gamut across liberalism in comic books, liberalism in government, and liberalism in anti-Israel circles. Two submissions - mine and the non-Council submission from the Colossus Of Rhodey - even dealt with liberalism in academia. Which is to say: there's a theme.

As preparation for poring over the nominations - and they really are quite good - here is a playground of baby pandas. Watch it, read the entries, and then head over to the Mere Rhetoric Facebook page and post which ones you'd choose.

And now you're ready...

Via TIME, an uncommonly clever spot from the National Republican Senatorial Committee. It's not an on-point debunking of the the fake economic reality that Obama apparently inhabits. But as a way of explaining the brazen corruption behind the stimulus, it's not totally ineffective:

High point: "most ethical Congress evuh" voice-over. Missing: any mention of the time when Reid chided angry citizens for not electing more pork-seeking, vote-trading Senators. It came after he bought votes on health care so it's not directly applicable, but I would've wanted to see it just as a gesture. Anything to better to highlight what a monumental prick this guy is:

Far from embracing calls for bipartisanship now that Republicans have a 41st senator, Harry Reid is acting as though he has nothing to lose and is taking down Republicans at every turn. The majority leader opened the Senate on Tuesday with a caustic floor speech accusing Republicans of undermining national security because they had filibustered a series of high-level national security nominations... His tirade, in which he blamed Republicans for blocking homeland security nominations while terrorists plotted domestic attacks, came a day after he told a Las Vegas talk show host that Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) has to "get over" his 2008 presidential loss... Another aide said Democrats were motivated by Obama calling out Republicans in his State of the Union address for playing partisan politics.

You'd think Reid would be a little more circumspect, given what a confused, confirmed moron he is. But it's probably nothing a few more "evil mongers" smears can't paper over. Almost difficult to understand how the Senate atmosphere became so poisoned.

References and related after the jump...

References:
* Madison Avenue Loses To Silicon Valley In Stimulus Political Ad Race [TIME]
* Obama Now Just Making Up Economic Theories To Justify Stimulus Success [MR]
* Reid: Didn't Make a Deal? SUCKER [Ace]
* Harry Reid comes out swinging at Republicans [Politico]
* EXCLUSIVE! Harry Reid challenging Nancy Pelosi for the title of World's Dumbest Bag Of Hammers [Transsylvania Phoenix]
* Harry Reid: Town-hall protesters are "evil-mongers" [Hot Air]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* American Politics
* Democratic Politics
* Republican Politics

Each week, in a contest for the week's best post, the members of the Watchers Council nominate one of their own posts and a second from outside the Council for consideration by other council members. The writeup for this week's batch of posts, I think, really shows off the Council's diversity. "A touch of vodka." How quaint:

Sit back while enjoying your personal potion and read the wonderful articles that have been passed on to us by the Watcher's Council. Upon reading what I consider to be some of the most egregious and fact finding exposes of weasels in your midst make note of each article and pass them on to your friends. Or better yet, pass on my prescription for warming up on this blustery winter day and point them directly to this article here! Whatever path you take, enjoy. As always, the Watcher's Council wishes you a warm winter wonderland. Make sure to come back and visit us on Friday for the results of this weeks contest!

My submission was last week's post about Israel's Apache fleet, where it looks like Obama might be blocking helicopter upgrades and eroding the Jewish State's Qualitative Military Edge. On the same subject, you should check out the first segment from yesterday's episode of One Jerusalem Radio's Omri Ceren Show. I got a couple of tips after I posted the initial story, and things are a little less straightforward than they might otherwise be. Still deeply suspicious. But not as straightforward.

In any case, here are this week's submissions. Feel free to sound of find on the Facebook entry for this post: which do you think should win?

Each week, in a contest for the week's best post, the members of the Watchers Council nominate one of their own posts and a second from outside the Council for consideration by other council members. This week's nominations got posted in the aftermath of the Illinois primary, where "anemic turnout" produced a Mark Kirk nomination on the GOP side. It's somewhat heartening that Kirk, for all that he's a RINO's RICO, is now talking and acting like Scott Brown. Only a year ago the Obama model of utopian populism - plus the scapegoating it relies on when promises fall short - was the model to be emulated.

It'd be even more heartening if Kirk actually thought like Scott Brown, but there's only so much you can ask of Illinois politicians. Lets start with not holding knives to girlfriends' throats and go from there. Baby steps. In the meantime, here are the nominations. Feel free to sound off under this post on the Facebook page about which ones you'd vote for.

Council Submissions

* Mere Rhetoric - Yahoo Wipes "Ariel, Israel" Off The Map, Replaces It With "Jenin, Palestinian Occupied Territories"
* Rhymes With Right - But If She Wanted An Abortion, It Would Have Been No Big Deal
* Soccer Dad - The goldstone rumor mill
* Bookworm Room-Leftist tactics to scare the uninformed about America's religious freedoms *UPDATED*
* Wolf Howling - The Three Stooges Meet Al Qaeda In Undiegate
* The Colossus of Rhodey - The Colonel's Tiger
* Right Truth - GOP: You blew it!
* The Glittering Eye - The Really Hard Choices We're Avoiding
* Joshuapundit - The Valley Of Decision : Iran Crosses The Nuclear Threshold
* American Digest - Last Light
* The Provaocateur - Dr. Chacko to Afghanistan?

Non-Council Submissions

* Submitted By: The Watcher - Pamela Geller @ Big Government - Obama Recruiting Radicals in High Schools
* Submitted By: Mere Rhetoric - Smart Politics - 'Professor' Obama? President's State of the Union Address Notches 4th Lowest Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level Score Since FDR
* Submitted By: Rhymes With Right - SCOTUSblog - Ending Racial Preferences
* Submitted By: Soccer Dad - Daled Amos - The Middle East: The New York Times hasn't learned its lesson and now it's teaching it
* Submitted By: Wolf Howling - Plumb Bob Blog - A New Political Term: Debt Reduction
* Submitted By: Bookworm Room - Commentary Contentions - When the Telling Starts
* Submitted By: The Colossus of Rhodey - City Journal - The Grasping Hand
* Submitted By: Right Truth - Atlas Shrugs - From Himmler with Love: "His Eminence, the Grand Mufti, In Remembrance"
* Submitted By: The Glittering Eye - KeithHennessey.com - The President's Bigger Budget
* Submitted By: Joshuapundit - American Thinker / Randall Hoven - The Lost Decade
* Submitted By: American Digest - Cobb - King Solomon's Mines
* Submitted By: The Provocateur - Dick Morris at Newsmax - Behind Obama's Phony Deficit Numbers

References:
* The Black and White of Being "Scott Brown" [Watcher Of Weasels]
* Dem candidate in IL has record of domestic violence [Hot Air]
* Mere Rhetoric Facebook Page [Official Site]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* American Politics
* Democratic Politics
* Republican Politics

Each week, in a contest for the week's best post, the members of the Watchers Council nominate one of their own posts and a second from outside the Council for consideration by other council members. This week's nominations got posted just as the Scott Brown victory was sinking in, giving me an excuse to embed the best Daily Show clip ever since the last best Daily Show clip ever. This is the one from the night before the election and if you haven't seen it yet, by all means enjoy. This week's nominations are right afterward.

Council Submissions

* American Digest - Bring. It. On.
* Bookworm Room - A perfect statement about the balance of power between government, citizens and business
* Joshuapundit - Pat Robertson, The Devil And Me
* Rhymes With Right - Getting It Right On Palin
* The Glittering Eye - The Triumph
* Right Truth - Here Come the Orphans
* Soccer Dad - Rachel's tomb and the protection of jewish holy sites
* Mere Rhetoric - Government Labor Protections And Welfare Policies Keeping French Youths Jobless, Alienated
* The Colossus of Rhodey - Harry Reid, "light-skinned" and "Avatar"
* The Provocateur - Some Thoughts on Dr. Chacko's Dismissal
* Wolf Howling - Wailing & Lamentations

Non-Council Submissions

* Submitted By: American Digest - Sippican Cottage - Quincy Market (Election Day)
* Submitted By: Bookworm Room - A New Conservative Lesbian - Obama's 'Enabling Act' trial balloon
* Submitted By: Joshuapundit - Seraphic Secrets - Haiti: No One But the Israelis Has Come to Help
* Submitted By: Rhymes With Right - Volokh Conspiracy - The Supreme Court's Cult of Celebrity
* Submitted By: The Glittering Eye - The Coast Guard Compass - Guardians Report In: HS1 Larry Berman
* Submitted By: Right Truth - Fore-Left - The Ties That Bind - Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal
* Submitted By: Soccer Dad - The Muqata - Israel's emergency response
* Submitted By: Mere Rhetoric - Danger Room - Visualizing the Underwear Bomber's Online Life
* Submitted By: The Colossus of Rhodey - Common Sense Political Thought - My health care anecdata
* Submitted By: The Provocateur - American Spectator - The Scott Heard Round the World
* Submitted By: Wolf Howling - YouTube - Martin Luther King "I have a dream"

References:
* Scott Brown's Boston Tea Party, Twenty Ten! [Watcher Of Weasels]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* American Politics
* Democratic Politics
* Republican Politics

Each week, the members of the Watchers Council nominate one of their own posts and a second from outside the Council for consideration by other council members in a contest for the week's best post. Last week's submissions were written in the background of the grassroots victory over Scozzafava in the NY-23, polls showing a Republican crush in Virginia, and the promise of at least moral victory in deep blue New Jersey. The eventual top posts expressed a kind of justifiable sanguine confidence in the future of conservativism.

Post-PelosiCare, things are looking less rosy. In Britain even the Conservatives have to express "100% support" for the NHS, the political reality in a nation long ago infantalized by government paternalism. Promises of grassroots anger have a lot less sting when you project out 3 years into a political environment where taxpayers, having been drained of wealth and holding up an incredible national debt, have no choice but to turn to the government for their health care. The rationalizations will be fast, furious, and vapid - but they'll be ubiquitous.

This week is starting off badly enough, with Iranian triumphalism abroad and the possibility of an anti-Israel ambush in DC. You know, there's a theory under which a country that abandons its friends while supplicating its enemies isn't laying the foundation for future prosperity. Anyway, evaluate for yourselves:

Council Submissions
* Joshuapundit - Conservatives Win In NY 23
* The Provocateur - Interview With Wade Rathke II
* The Glittering Eye - What's A Foreseeable Rate of Taxation?
* Bookworm Room - Do They Even Listen to Themselves?
* Right Truth - Half of all U.S. children will be on food stamps according to study
* The Razor - Laws Need Limits
* The Colossus of Rhodey - Once again, the Democrats back vote fraud
* Mere Rhetoric - The Omri Ceren Show - 2pm PST - Barry Rubin On Lebanon's Crisis And Ours

Non-Council Submissions
* Submitted By: Joshuapundit - Big Government - The Public Option Deception
* Submitted By: The Provocateur - New Ledger - George Soros Assautl on the Free Market
* Submitted By: The Glittering Eye - E. D. Kain-American Tory - Nothing's ever certain except race and taxes
* Submitted By: Bookworm Room - Black & Right - Comment of the Day
* Submitted By: Right Truth - Sense of Events - Is Obama a milleniarian without a plan? Does he even need one?
* Submitted By: The Razor - Washington Examiner - Conservative revolt good news for Republicans
* Submitted By: The Colossus of Rhodey - The Boston Globe - Islam's Darwin problem
* Submitted By: Mere Rhetoric - Solomonia - SDS Still Alive and Planning Disruptions...at Brandeis
* Submitted By: The Watcher - Michael J. Gaynor at Web Commentary - ACORN 8 Supporter Tries to Disparage Michelle Malkin and Anita MonCrief in Halloween Hit Piece

References:
* Taxing: Policy and Tedium as a Result of Left Wing Beliefs and Attitudes [Watcher Of Weasels]
* 'I Am A Proud Conservative Day' - Taking Back The Republican Party [Watcher Of Weasels]
* PM heads to U.S. under threat of Palestinian statehood declaration [Ha'aretz]
* Iran expecting nuclear talks with world powers [AP]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* American Politics Coverage
* Democratic Politics Coverage
* Republican Politics Coverage

The scrupulous FogCityJohn, member of the reality-based Daily Kos community, currently has a top post intriguingly titled "If Joe Wilson Were A Democrat." He muses thusly:

Tonight a Republican congressman essentially called the President of the United States a liar during a nationally televised speech delivered before both Houses of Congress... But what if the shoe were on the other foot? What if a Democratic congressman had interrupted one of Bush's speeches to Congress by calling Bush a liar? What do you think would have happened then?

I can tell you what would have happened. There would have been immediate demands from Republicans that the offending Democrat resign his office. The next day, the Republican leadership in both houses of Congress would introduce resolutions condemning the congressman for his disrespect of the president. Naturally, the Democratic congressman would get no support from members of his own party. They would be falling all over themselves to condemn his outburst themselves, lest they be accused of tolerating that kind of behavior, or even worse, of being "Bush haters." The resolutions of censure would pass with the support of all Republicans and strong majorities of Democrats. The congressman might even be driven to resign. Even if not, he'd be subjected to protests in his district and in Washington. (Needless to say, the news media would join the baying hounds calling for his head.)

But Joe Wilson is a Republican. So I'm betting that none of the above will happen to him... And that, my friends, is the difference between the two parties in a nutshell. (Somehow seemed appropriate to quote John McCain.)

Remember the time when some deep-feeling member of some activist tribe hoisted up an anti-China sign reading "Would We Have Allowed Nazi Germany to Host the Olympics?" This is nowhere near as awesome as that. But it's still pretty cool. The best part is how he introduces his shrill portrait of grim partisan inequity with a brash "I can tell you what would have happened." Great ethos! Demonstrably idiotic followup made more embarrassing by the combination of seething resentment and righteous indignation. But still great ethos!

I've let the clip run a little long at the end so you can see how your moral betters stayed petulantly rooted to their seats after having shouted down Bush, so disgusted were they by the prospect of Social Security reform:

In fairness to the liberals currently wetting themselves over Joe Wilson's destruction of Congressional civility, maybe those shouts of "no" and "boo" were meant supportively. Like "No! Good God NO! Thank you so much for bringing this to our attention! Boo on reality!" Because otherwise this morning's histrionics seem kind of self-serving and hypocritical. And moronic.

References:
* If Joe Wilson Were a Democrat [Daily Kos]
* Would We Have Allowed Nazi Germany to Host the Olympics? [Right Mind]

Previously:
* The Ugly Left - Failed Singer Reunites With Harvard Brat, Threatens To Kill President Bush. Ms. Coulter Responds [Video]
* Progressive Democrats To Palin: Get Back In The Kitchen
* Roseanne Barr Dresses Up As Hitler, Bakes "Jew Cookies" In Oven

Gather around class, as we open up one of the central passages from Freud's seminal Interpretation Of Dreams:

The term Kettle Logic or La logique du chaudron refers to Freud's mention of the defensive tactics engaged by a neighbor who had borrowed a kettle and was accused of having returned it with a hole. Freud mentions this tale in his Interpretation of Dreams... "The whole plea -- for this dream is nothing else -- recalls vividly the defence offered by a man who was accused by his neighbour of having returned a kettle in a damaged condition. In the first place, he had returned the kettle undamaged; in the second place it already had holes in it when he borrowed it; and in the third place, he had never borrowed it at all. A complicated defence, but so much the better; if only one of these three lines of defence is recognized as valid, the man must be acquitted."

Democrats and their MSM water carriers on Palin's "death panel" accusation:

(1) We'll have death panels in the plan because they're necessary:

Obama came a lot closer to talking about "death panels" back in April than I'd thought... He's talking about a panel of independent experts making end-of-life recommendations in order to save costs that have an effect at an individual level. And he thought it would be in the bill that emerges... It's also pretty clear that something like the "IMAC" panel is what he has in mind. Whether or not the IMAC would actually do this - Harold Pollack says end-of-life issues are well down the curve-bender's list, for example - Obama thought it would do it.

(2) There are no death panels in the plan:

Former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin says the health care overhaul bill would set up a "death panel." Federal bureaucrats would play God, ruling on whether ailing seniors are worth enough to society to deserve life-sustaining medical care. Palin and other critics are wrong. Nothing in the legislation would carry out such a bleak vision. The provision that has caused the uproar would instead authorize Medicare to pay doctors for counseling patients about end-of-life care, if the patient wishes.

(3) We're dropping death panels from the plan:

"Independent" guidance to seniors about death with an eye to reducing the lion's share of health-care spending. What could go wrong? Tired of the political migraines it's getting from this, the Finance Committee finally decides to, er, pull the plug:

"On the Finance Committee, we are working very hard to avoid unintended consequences by methodically working through the complexities of all of these issues and policy options," Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said in a statement. "We dropped end-of-life provisions from consideration entirely because of the way they could be misinterpreted and implemented incorrectly..." Grassley said. The veteran Iowa lawmaker said the end-of-life provision in those bills would pay physicians to "advise patients about end-of-life care and rate physician quality of care based on the creation of and adherence to orders for end-of-life care."

Do you think nutroots cretins will apologize to Palin for the last few days of "you'd have to be an idiot not to understand that there are no death panels in ObamaCare"? I'm thinking they're such a reality-based community - to say nothing of gracious argumentative disputants - that they'll pretty much have to.

References:
* Kettle Logic [HG]
* Will You/Won't You Be on My "Death Panel"? [Kausfiles]
* FACT CHECK: No 'death panel' in health care bill [AP]
* Breaking: Finance Committee drops "death panel" provisions from Senate bill [Hot Air]

Previously:
* Dems: We'll Finance Health Care With Cigarette Tax That Will Cause People To Stop Buying Cigarettes
* Obama To Lawmakers Concerned About Health Care: Stop Talking
* Shh... Massachusetts Proves Mandate-Based Health Reform Will Be A Disaster

I got a little behind during the ramp-up to July 4th so I'm only getting to last week's Watchers Council posts now. The nominations are listed in the main post, and I'll get to winners tomorrow.

Lots of discussion about broad cultural dynamics and how they impact policy. The Razor's post covered personal terrain and discussed the behavior of predominantly liberal charities. Turns out the bien pensants of reduce, recycle, reuse don't seem particularly interested in recycling or reusing (reducing, on the other hand - near the top of liberal priorities). The Provocateur took apart Libertarian conspiracy theories.

For the decade before the Bush administration, the cultural left condescendingly dismissed science as a social construction only tangentially related to reality. So deep did this sentiment run that there was a multi-year academic civil war over it. Then Bush came along and suddenly the reality-based community insisted that science done properly was the purest of pure pursuits. It must be shielded from even the whiff of politics. As Wolf Howling explained, not so much any more.

Bookworm Room mused that cinematic depictions of violence seem to be acclaimed precisely to the degree that they're implicitly anti-American. When the anti-woman violence of institutionalized political Islam appears on the screen, suddenly violence is indulgent and unseemly. Right Truth discussed the broader cultural dimensions of personal meaning.

The hard sciences aren't the only empirical disciplines the Obama administration is ignoring. Economic findings aren't a particularly popular source of knowledge for this crew either. My post pointed out that state controlled health insurance is an empirical disaster. That hasn't shaken the left's commitment to ObamaCare. The Glittering Eye explained the theoretical incoherence of internalizing fossil fuel externalities via permits. Cap and Trade will still hit the ground running in the Senate.

Obama's selective approach to international meddling came in for criticism. Rhymes With Right compared what the President did say on Iran to what he should have said. It's tough to know how much of a difference he could actually make in Iran. JoshuaPundit's argued that the various Iranian factions aren't all that different, putting a pretty low ceiling on how much helping Mousavi could ever matter.

But it's still interesting to see where the President is willing to "meddle." Soccer Dad relayed academics and experts who are increasingly skeptical that Obama's efforts to detonate the US-Israel alliance will pay dividends. But there's a very, very slim chance that it will make Iranian leaders pause before, say, exporting more terrorism to South America. For only a couple of minutes, of course. But we've all got to learn to ratchet down our expectations, right?

References and previously after the jump...

Maybe this is just wishful thinking on my part - I thought she was McCain's best choice before he picked her, I thought she was a great candidate after he picked her, and I thought she'd make a good President some day - but really? The career of a 45 year old woman who is beloved by an increasingly alienated conservative base is over because she says she's going to take care of her kids? Really?

There are any number of paths that Palin could take back into national politics.

Here's one: she waits two years, gets herself named an Olin/Scaife/Bradley/whatever Energy Policy Fellow at Claremont/Heritage/AEI/whatever, and publishes for a year before and a year after Obama's reelection. Now there's a Republican party that just lost to a post-health care, post-stimulus, post-cap-and-trade Democratic party. There's credible talk about a permanent Democratic majority. Palin spends the next three years fundraising and mounting a credible challenge.

Here's another: she waits four years and reenters national politics in the aftermath of an Obama reelection. The 2012 GOP primaries were a bloodbath between Mitt, who had no appeal to the base, and Huck, who had no appeal to small government conservatives. Palin's speech begins: "Four years ago I left national politics to take care of my family. We're an extremely close-knit and warm bunch. If I had remained governor or run for national office, the only thing I could have given Willow during high school was the ugliness of national politics. But now she's grown up - Todd and I are so proud of her - and she's off to college. In addition to my family, of course, I love and adore my country. I know that the best way I can serve America today is to return to national politics and to help rebuild my party and restore pride to our country."

Listen. This resignation obviously wasn't the most strategic way to set up a 2016 run. But it hardly closes it off. Two elections are a political eternity. Palin will be just over 50 when the runup to 2016 begins.

Why is she resigning? We know at least two things: (1) this makes no sense politically, meaning it's either a scandal or a health issue (2) Palin tweeted that her reason was "good news." If it's good news it can't be a scandal or a health issue, unless that health issue is that she's pregnant. My very first guess was pregnancy, in which case mazel tov except she's going to get slammed as "irresponsible" for getting pregnant after giving birth to Trig.

References:
* 2012 or 2016? [Goldberg / NRO]
* Is Palin's national political career over? [Hot Air]
* WOW: Palin Resigning In a Few Weeks [Geraghty]

Previously:
* Polls Being Manipulated Through Statistical Methods, Death Threats (Plus: Obama Supporters Wallowing In Anti-Palin Murder Fantasies, Shooting At Conservatives)
* Time For Another "Liberals Bragging About Their Pathological Hatred For Palin" Post
* Dick Morris: Of Course Palin Was A Great Pick

Ed at Hot Air is asking some tough questions about the recently popular pro-Obama meme that cell phone users are being under-counted by pollsters. As it happens, Pew ran the numbers on this in mid-2007:

The good news is that none of the measures would change by more than 2 percentage points when the cell-only respondents were blended into the landline sample. Thus, although cell-only respondents are different from landline respondents in important ways, they were neither numerous enough nor different enough on the questions we examined to produce a significant change in overall general population survey estimates when included with the landline samples and weighted according to U.S. Census parameters on basic demographic characteristics.

Potential caveats:

(1) The views of cell-only users are different enough to swing polls by one or two points. So as long as the race remain close, there might be a genuine skew in the data. On the other hand, it might be washed out by both the Bradely Effect and by the same kind of differential nonresponse that skewed the 2004 exit polling.

(2) The Pew study goes on to say that cell-phone only users may cause distortions within specific subgroups - especially in polls of young adults. But that demographic is already pretty far in the tank for Obama, so I'm not sure how much distortion there could be. And it's a subgroup of a subgroup. And they don't show up on election day anyway.

(3) The numbers were crunched in the middle of last year and, as always, things may have changed.

I still think that the electoral map - to say nothing of right direction/wrong direction, disproportionate unemployment in swing states, etc - is insurrmountably grim. But - in what should be a shock to absolutely nobody - election day will not be decided by a bunch of under-polled kids who decide to show up and vote.

References:
* Will cell phones rescue Barack Obama? [Hot Air]
* Young voters to have impact

Previously:
* Turns Out, The Devout Republican Evangelical Governor Of Alaska Has A Soft Spot For Israel
* Massive Study Proves Push-Polling Works, Takes It As Proof That Conservatives Are Dumb
* Stupid Polling Tricks

Before you ask - of course he's an Obama backer:

In the Charleston Gazette Sunday, Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-WV, who has endorsed Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., said that Sen. John McCain "has a temper" and, according to the story, "believes McCain has become insensitive to many human issues. "McCain was a fighter pilot, who dropped laser-guided missiles from 35,000 feet. He was long gone when they hit. What happened when they [the missiles] get to the ground? He doesn't know. You have to care about the lives of people. McCain never gets into those issues."

First: fighter pilots don't drop bombs. They fight in the air against other fighter pilots. Ergo the name.

More importantly: McCain was tortured by North Vietnamese goons for five and a half years because he refused to sign multiple "confessions" alleging trumped up war crimes against civilians. So, without exageration - an Obama surrogate just adopted and repeated the identical smears that McCain's captors screamed at him while they broke his limbs and snapped off his teeth for half a decade. Hope and change.

UPDATE: Proving the old adage that glib sarcasm on things we know little about is a recipe for disaster (is that actually an adage?), reader David writes in with this gentle reproach:

Not so accurate, I think, was your specific criticism of his remark about fighter pilots. I think that McCain was shot down in a Skyhawk, which is a fighter-bomber and was on that occasion being used as a bomber. Whether, on other occasions, he engaged in man-to-man dogfights against MiGs, I don't know. Not that it would substantiate Rockefeller's charge in any case -- it's just that I suspect your statement is factually misleading.

And sigh.

References:
* Obama-Backing Senator Attacks McCain's War Experience [Political Punch]

Previously:
* Top Obama Adviser Explains Iraq War: Turns Out, It's The Jews' Fault. Again. (Plus: Ha'aretz Political Correspondent's Pro-Obama Apologism Getting Increasingly Desperate)
* Obama Draws Line In The Sand: Invading Israel OK But Calling Hillary A Mean Name Is A Firing Offense
* Top Obama Foreign Policy Adviser: No Seriously, We Are Totally Going To Screw Israel When We Get Into Power

And that's that. Now we know how Democrats feel when their guy loses. You want to blame the apathy of the media, the stupidity of voters, the fickleness of your base - everyone and everything except the candidate or the message. And you know what?

It feels good.

We officially hate everybody. But especially you people. Sigh.

UPDATE: Hot Air has a roundup of reactions. With complete justification, AP has gone ahead and busted out the anti-humpbot.

References:
* Day of Mourning [IMAO]
* Obligatory MR Iowa Reaction [MR]

Previously:
* Fred Thompson For President... Now
* Fred Thompson For President
* Fred And Jeri Thompson Rock Fox News (Plus: Romey Is Either Really Popular Or Really Unpopular) [Video]

* Yes.
* Yup.
* Totally in bounds.

How about the US disengage from Iowa and let the Palestinians declare an independent state there? Or a confederation. Or whatever. At least the Palestinians are smart enough to elect candidates they agree with. Conservatives choosing Huckabee is like having the Palestinians elect Shas. Sure they disagree on every fundamental principle, but look how godly and populist Shas is!

Not even the Palestinians are that stupid, of course. Perhaps it's because Gaza probably has a better educational system than Iowa. Sad, but not entirely unlikely [PDF]. One of the six states worse than Iowa? Arkansas.

References:
* My Take on Huckabee's Win in Iowa [IMAO]
* Obligatory Rant About Iowa and Huckabee [IMAO]
* An Open Letter [Vodkapundit]
* UN: "Distractions" Are Causing Gaza Students To Flunk Math And Arabic [Videos] [MR]

Previously:
* Fred Thompson Is Serious - He Will Crush You In A Debate [Video]
* Fred And Jeri Thompson Rock Fox News (Plus: Romey Is Either Really Popular Or Really Unpopular) [Video]
* Fred Thompson For President

We're really just using this liberal Jewish dipshit (our FAQ debunking these same old smears here) as an excuse to post the summary of this editorial:

Ma'ariv notes that Friday, November 2nd was the 90th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration and says that "The Balfour Declaration diverted history and made the hitherto marginal Zionist idea a real option in world politics." The editors believe that "The Balfour Declaration was not designed to serve Britain's political interests," since it damaged those interests and suggest that it had to more with Christian messianism.

So even when Christians support Israel for reasons Jews might object to, their support still pragmatically ends up being beneficial. Unprecedented. The picture at the top, by the by, was a commercial run on evangelical stations during Lebanon II. We'll quote from a NYT article about the campaign:

For one thing, white evangelicals make up about a quarter of the electorate. Whatever strains may be creeping into the Israeli-American alliance over Iraq, the Palestinians and Iran, a large part of the Republican Party's base remains committed to a fiercely pro-Israel agenda that seems likely to have an effect on policy choices. Mr. Hagee says his message for the White House was, "Every time there has been a fight like this over the last 50 years, the State Department would send someone over in a jet to call for a cease-fire. The terrorists would rest, rearm and retaliate." He added, "Appeasement has never helped the Jewish people."... At rallies this fall for Christian conservative voters, Dr. Dobson sometimes singled out Mr. Ahmadinejad as a reason to go to the polls, arguing that Democrats could not be trusted to face down such dangers. "Hitler told everybody what he was going to do, and Ahmadinejad is saying exactly what he is going to do," Dr. Dobson explained. "He is talking genocide."

But you just know that the reason they're trying to stop a war in the Middle East is so they can bring about an apocolyptic war in the Middle East. Makes. Perfect. Sense.

References:
* Friends and enemies [Guardian]
* OneJerusalem.org Conference Call: Pastor John Hagee, Senior Pastor of Cornerstone Church [FAQ: Debunking Liberal Myths About Evangelical Support For Israel] [MR]
* Sumamry of editorials from the Hebrew press [MFA]

Previously:
* Evangelical Support for Israel - It's Not Because They Hate Jews
* Isn't It About Time For Democratic Jews To Stop Electorally Empowering The Ahmadinejad-Supporting Left?
* More Democrats Repeat Anti-Semitic Canards, Embrace Particularly Anti-Semitic Sounding Parts Of Walt And Mearsheimer

Another day, another endorsement for Ron Paul from a vicious racist. This one's from Stormfront Radio, and the video is included only for completion's sake. You can listen to it if you really want, but really - she's just very psyched that her vicious racism seems to fit well into the Paul campaign:

Paul supporters say that they shouldn't be held accountable for every cretin that chooses to endorse their candidate and that not all their supporters are cretins. We view this kind of the same way we view the idiotic talking point about how not all Muslims are crossborder terrorists. True enough. But there does appear to be something about Islamic ideology such that the vast majority of crossborder terrorists turn out to be Muslim. Similarly, not all Ron Paul supporters are politically engaged vicious racists - but it seems that the vast majority of politically engaged vicious racists are gathering to march under his banner.

In the meantime, Fred Thompson is throwing red meat - albeit well thought out red meat - at the base. But it's just not happening. No matter - still a long way to Iowa and SC.

References:
* Stormfront Radio Supports Ron Paul [admsparrow14 / YouTube]
* Fred rolls out immigration plan: Enforcement by attrition [Hot Air]
* Good news for Giuliani and Clinton [Bloomberg]

Previously:
* Juan Cole Is Enamored With Rank Populist, Borderline Anti-Semite Ron Paul. Of Course He Is.
* The YouTube Election Is Here (Plus: As Usual, The Pretty Girls Are On Our Side) (Updated: Source For Quotes Added) [Videos]
* Thursday Link Dump - American Politics, Vatican Politics, Russian Politics (Such As It Is), Etc.

August Bebel once said that anti-Semitism is the socialism of fools. So if you're a libertarian, well, you've got to believe in something:

Nice hodge-podge of supporters he's building up. Add to this his white supremacist friends and creepy nutrootsy self-styled net thugs and we've got the makings of the best 3rd party candidacy ever. On the other hand, it's super neat how he believes in "peace with all nations." We believe in unicorns.

No, not really.

References:
* Ron Paul To Run "Zionist" Bashing Ads In Muslim Areas [Ace]
* Juan Cole Is Enamored With Rank Populist, Borderline Anti-Semite Ron Paul. Of Course He Is. [MR]
* To His Dismay, Ron Paul Becoming Magnet For White Supremacists [HuffPo]
* Video: Ron Paul supporters getting creepier by the minute [Hot Air]

Previously:
* The YouTube Election Is Here (Plus: As Usual, The Pretty Girls Are On Our Side) (Updated: Source For Quotes Added) [Videos]
* Fred And Jeri Thompson Rock Fox News (Plus: Romey Is Either Really Popular Or Really Unpopular) [Video]
* Wednesday Fred Update - Fred Thompson Closing In Florida, Jeri Thompson Still A "Trophy Wife"

Our Jewish Journal article defending Ann Coulter and mocking Donny Deutsch is now online. Regular readers will be familiar with some of the material, but a lot of it is about arguments and press releases that came out after our original posts.

References:
* Over-clamor over Coulter's comments [Jewish Journal Of Greater LA]
* Manufactured Scandal Of The Week: Media Matters Accuses Coulter Of Wanting To Wipe Out American Jews, Action Alerts To Pull Her Off The Air Immediately Follow [MR]
* Hysterical Liberal Calls To Ban Coulter Somewhat Inconsistent With Their "Free Speech" Celebrations Of Ahmadinejad's Columbia Appearance [MR]

Previously:
* Early Morning Chuckle - Coulter On the Dem Debate Edition
* Ms. Coulter: There Are Only Three Ways To Stop Jihadists [Video]
* Ann Coulter Embraces France: Hot

This issue is a little old, but with all of the leaks that have been emerging about Operation Orchard it's not the worst time to revisit it. We don't support term limits for politicians in Washington. There's such a thing as institutional memory, and it's critical that the people who are actually elected to run the country have access to it. Being a brilliant maverick policy wonk isn't good enough. You have to understand an issue, sure - but once you make a decision, you also have to know where there's a particular office with a particular bureaucrat who plays a particular role. The joke is that in academia you ell you're getting to someone important because they have a back office buried somewhere in an obscure building. Washington is the same way. It's got its fiefdoms and its powerful career civil servants. Listen to Thompson on this issue:

Mr. Thompson says that while a senator he was long concerned with U.S. intelligence failures. "The CIA has better politicians than it has spies," he says, referring to the internecine turf wars that have been a feature of the Bush administration. A key problem, Mr. Thompson notes, is a general lack of accountability in government, where no one pays any price for failure. When asked about President Bush's awarding the Medal of Freedom to outgoing CIA Director George Tenet after U.S. intelligence failures in Iraq became apparent, he shakes his head: "I just didn't understand that."

The next president, according to Mr. Thompson, needs to exercise strong leadership "and get down in the weeds and fix a civil-service system that makes it too hard to hire good employees and too hard to fire bad ones." He doesn't offer specifics on what to do, but notes the "insanity" of the new Congress pushing for the unionization of homeland security employees only five years after it rejected the notion in the wake of 9/11. "Should we tie ourselves up in bureaucratic knots with the challenges we may have to face?" he asks in wonderment.

So for instance - both Obama and Fred have very big brains. You need experience not just in an abstract sense - "you understand how Washington works" - but in the very specific sense of knowing how bureaucracies relate to each other and how to approach different agencies. Otherwise, you may wind up with someone like Dick Armitage leaking the name of a CIA desk jockey and then having the scandal erode your Presidency for years. Hypothetically.

References:
* Lights, Camera... Candidacy? [WSJ]

Previously:
* Psst... We Think the Press Might Have Helped the Democrats Win
* It's Official: You Can't Be Too Much Of A Genocidal Jew-Hating Maniac For Europeans Or Democrats
* Why Can't Democrats Be More Like This?

But there's going to be hell to pay when K-Lo gets back from whatever vacation she's on. Hell. To. Pay:

The best Trek was conservative: it was rooted in the unchanging nature of man, be they hooting hominids on the plains of Earth throwing rocks at prey, or civilized spacefarers Money, power, lust, war: These were the constants, and Star Trek knew they'd follow us to infinity and beyond. At best we could find enlightened, savvy ways to avoid the pointless fights. But some people only understand a photon torpedo up the dorsal vent port, and we'd best be prepared to deal with them. The Federation, after all, had something called General Order 24, which called for the total destruction of a planet's surface if the civilization was considered a threat to the Federation. As Vader might have said: Impressive. Kirk actually invoked General Order 24, in "A Taste of Armageddon." He used it as a threat, and didn't carry it out. You can imagine his relief; the paperwork alone would have been a nightmare.

By the by, Steven Hayward is dead to us: "I hated - hated - Star Trek: TNG." Who says that? Clearly someone with a hollow shell where a human soul should be. Seriously.

References:
* The Needs of the Many Outweigh the Needs of the Pelosians
* Get a Life! [NRO]
* Oh Captain, My Captain! [NRO]
* A Conservative Trek [NRO]
* Replacing Reagan [NRO]

Previously:
* Neat! Experiment Spectacularly and Productively Fails To Explain Problems With Physics
* Neat - Germs Taken To Space So They Can Mutate, Come Back Deadlier
* Neat - Israeli Nanobots To Revolutionize Medicine

So we caught this news about how evangelicals are rallying around Thompson and against Dobson, and we wanted to do a "never contradict us in front of the children" told you so post. Because we remembered writing something about how evangelicals would come out against Dobson because of his irrational opposition to the Senator. Except we couldn't find that post, despite fifteen minutes of frustrating searches.

Turns out it was a Facebook message to a conservative friend. And now you know why we long for the days of email and Usenet. Because we're Luddites like that. Anyway:

The Richard Land quote behind the link includes the phrase "furious at Doctor Dobson." Good stuff. And meanwhile, local and regional press outlets seem to have missed the memo from the national press that Fred is unexciting and that Jeri is manipulative:

Could it be the case that evangelicals actually think for themselves and that a 6'2" movie star is good at lighting up a room? Stranger things have happened.

References:
* Southern Baptist Leader Defends Fred Thompson [CBN]
* A great time at the Bisso Corral [Houston Chron]

Previously:
* Fred08 Posting Embeddable Videos - Fred At Iowa State Fair: "I'm Tired Of Apologizing For America" [Video]
* Stupid Journalism Tricks: The NYT's Atttack On Jeri Thompson Is Sexist Even Though They Quoted Other People
* Fred Thompson Oppo Research Strongly Correlated With Fred Thompson Winning Polls. Which He's Doing.

Cross-posted to:
* The Astute Bloggers

We know that our credibility for being objective on this isn't exactly high. And we're big on not attacking the Republican candidates who are not Fred Thompson, because that must be hard enough on them as it is. But this semantic debate treads into - or more accurately, litters in - our academic home turf. If this exchange happened in a class, we would be forced to openly mock the student:

Thompson says "Bin Laden is a powerful symbol who resonates globally with jihadists, which in turn calls our attention to the frightening scope of the War on Terror and our need to fight it." McCain says "No he's not! He's a powerful person who resonates globally with jihadists, which in turn calls our attention to the frightening scope of the War on Terror and our need to fight it." And this attack was still less obviously silly than what Romney said: Bin Laden is not a "symbol" but rather the metaphorical personification of "the face of evil." Umm...

If this is really what the other candidates are going to be coming after Thompson with, then he should have taken another month off to get good and rested before bothering to enter the race.

References:
* Thompson Calls bin Laden "Symbolic"; Draws GOP Fire [ABC News]

Previously:
* NPR In Denial About Sexism On the Left, Gets MR Exactly Wrong On Jeri Thompson
* Your End Of the Week Fred Thompson Fix
* Fred Thompson Oppo Research Strongly Correlated With Fred Thompson Winning Polls. Which He's Doing.

It's going to be nice watching a debate and not cringing with trepidation every time our candidate has to speak. He literally dares his opponents to have in-depth policy debates against him. Twice:

By the way - another day, another Fred Thompson video. This is going to be the easiest month of blogging ever:

References:
* Fred Thompson's First Post-Announcement Interview [fredthompson / YouTube]

Previously:
* Stupid Journalism Tricks: The NYT's Atttack On Jeri Thompson Is Sexist Even Though They Quoted Other People
* Sen. Thompson on Cavuto Last Night: "I Frankly Believe the Disease Is Afraid Of You". [Video]
* Friday Thompson Fix, LA Times Buzz Edition

Those are not fake applause. Those are genuinely enthusiastic people who are cheering because someone is simply and compellingly saying out loud what they've been cowed into believing is unsophisticated Red State nonsense. We're not sure why people have been complaining about Thompson's stumping - he sounds pretty good here.

Also: most bloggable campaign ever. The code on the webpage even includes the 'center' tags so you don't have to bother doing it on your own - that's the flavor of net-centric yumminess we're talking about.

References:
* Fred Thompson at the Iowa State Fair Soapbox [Fred08]

Previously:
* Journalists Confused - Is Jeri Thompson A Dumb Bimbo Or An Evil Genius?
* Stupid Journalism Tricks: The NYT's Atttack On Jeri Thompson Is Sexist Even Though They Quoted Other People
* Fred Thompson For President... Now

The geekiest, most net-centric campaign in the history of American politics - awesome. Video posted to YouTube about an hour ago:

"You don't want to come back from another Clinton victory". He even makes jokes! But what you want starts at about 6:30 (counting up).

UPDATE (22:00 PST): There are a couple of rare negative comments under the video - high-minded and incisive stuff like "he's a joke" and "he's not smart". Guess what channel YouTubers like gwlibertarians and HelloMyNameIsRyan and meambobbo subscribe to (in one case, the only channel that they subscribe to). Come on, guess. You'll never guess.

Say what you will about Ron Paul supporters - they definitely have the semi-organization of a thuggish mob. Perfectly appropriate given the kind of vulgar populism that he plays on, but nonetheless worthy of grudging admiration. Or it would be if it wasn't so insipid and eye-roll inducing.

References:
* Fred Thompon's Announces his Candidacy for President [fredthompson / YouTube]

Previously:
* Fred Thompson Oppo Research Strongly Correlated With Fred Thompson Winning Polls. Which He's Doing.
* Fred Thompson On How To Be A Careful Conservative
* Fred Thompson For President

Somewhere, Ann Coulter is really psyched:

You just know that production is going to get contentious: "OK Janeane - point me to the part of the script that says 'in this scene, Janeane's character slips information to America's terrorist enemy.' You can't. You know why? Because it's not in the script. Stop improvising!"

References:
* Time right for Garofalo on '24' [Hollywood Reporter]

Previously:
* Jason Alexander vs. The Field of Statistics
* Mainstreaming Of Anti-Semitism, Hollywood Edition
* Hollywood Helps Out In the Middle East

Fred Thompson leads in a new South Carolina straw poll, and Allah has game on why it's not just a Southern thing. You can also work it from the other direction, and gauge Fred's potential run by looking at what his opponents are doing. According to Melanie Morgan, they're taking him quite seriously:

Just to give you a very crude measure of potential interest, we're getting insane hits from people Googling Jeri Thompson nee Kehn. You'll remember her from when we predicted she'd become a target of sexism from ostensible anti-sexists. Then when she did become a target of sexism from ostensible anti-sexists, NPR went into rock-back-and-forth-in-the-corner denial.

There are a lot of people searching for information about Mrs. Thompson, and some of them are searching pretty deep. There arehundreds of hits for "kehn", which if you're using Google doesn't appear anywhere near the first three pages as a MR post.

You imagine some of that is just plain old curiosity. Some more is coming from conservatives looking for whatever they can find about a Republican candidate that they can get excited about. But not a little is oppo research - from other GOP people, from a very few Dem campaigns, and from whatever passes as "flexing their muscles" for the netroots. Really - this is how they talk.

References:
* SC poll has Obama, Thompson as frontrunners [Real Cities]
* South Carolina poll: Fred! 25, Rudy 21, Mitt 11; Update McCain's, Kyl's favorable ratings down [Hot Air]
* Meet Jeri Thompson, the Powerful Republican Consultant That Grassroots Liberals Will Be Attacking As A Bimbo [MR]
* NPR In Denial About Sexism On the Left, Gets MR Exactly Wrong On Jeri Thompson [MR]

Previously:
* Fred Thompson For President... Now
* Fred Thompson On How To Be A Careful Conservative
* Friday Thompson Fix, LA Times Buzz Edition

Cross-posted to:
* The Astute Bloggers

Huh?

Maybe there's a context for this joke that we're missing. Something like "it's OK to make fun of religions that aren't violent in states that the Democrats aren't going to win anyway" - if that was the context, this comment suddenly makes sense. Or better yet: maybe there's a context in which this is funny. Or something.

References:
* Rev Sharpton On Romney's Religion [jtbarry325 / YouTube]

Previously:
* 4 Out Of 5 American Jews Agree - Self-Destruction Really Does Taste Better
* Dean And Sharpton In Runoff?
* Al Sharpton: "Jewing the Numbers Up And Down" [Video]

Preview: ways 2 and 3 are accomplished by Gitmo, but they're not the preferred method:

It's Wednesday - so in addition to leading off with a Coulter video, we've also got an Israeli hottie going up at the end of the day. If we ever generate a script that gives our blog title a subheading, we're thinking of just having it alternate between the lines "Mere Rhetoric: Wednesdays are for link baiting" and "Mere Rhetoric: Every day other than Wednesday is for link-baiting too".

References:
* Ann Coulter at Young America's Foundation Conference [YAFTV / YouTube]

Previously:
* You Have to Admit, Ms. Coulter Has a Point
* Early Morning Chuckle - Coulter On the Dem Debate Edition
* Video: Rush and Ms. Coulter On the THHNH

Ah, Ms. Coulter:

Say she's crazy. Say she's counterproductive. Just don't say that she's a poor writer, lest you come off sounding like someone so politically myopic that you've lost your sense of humor.

References:
* No wonder they're afraid of Brit Hume

Previously:
* Video: Rush and Ms. Coulter On the THHNH
* Maybe The Best Coulter Line Ever
* Democrats are Vulgar, Republicans are Funny

Unless something big has happened between the time we wrote this on on Tuesday night and the time it's going live Wednesday morning, this should be the political news of the day:

IMAO has a huge roundup of unverified facts that will get your Wednesday morning off to a chuckle. A very serious, very hopeful-that-Fred-Thompson-will-run chuckle. But a chuckle nonetheless. Commenting on Fred Thompson's Bond-like attraction to women, Ace concludes that:

Oh, and here's a new interview from Hannity. Because you've read this far, and you earned it:

He's so good. He's so good.

References:
* POLL: Rasmussen National Primary [Pollster.com]
* Unverfied Fred Thompson Facts [IMAO]
* Fred Thompson Admits To House Republicans: I Have A Fourteen Inch Penis Shaped Like A Corkscrew With Which I Rape Ducks [Ace]

Previously:
* Fred Thompson For President... Now
* Meet Jeri Thompson, the Powerful Republican Consultant That Grassroots Liberals Will Be Attacking As A Bimbo
* New Thompson CW: He Can Take His Damn Sweet Time

New plan: impeach President Bush, have then-President Cheney appoint Fred Thompson Vice President, have Dick Cheney resign. Honestly:

Peter Robinson stakes his reputation as a speech writer to comment that "it's good - I mean really good. Not just the content, although that's marvelous, but the style. When you read the commentary, you can hear Thompson's voice."

Yesterday's scientific poll of Republican leaning votersy has the Republican race tightening up with Thompson falling back into 4th place. Yesterday's unscientific poll of center-right blogosphere has Thompson facecrushing everybody. All that will be moot the day he announces, which might not be until July.

Plus: Andrew Sullivan celebrates Fred Thompson's skillz with the ladies. That is, indeed, skillz with a z. Because you people rolled your eyes when we dropped that line over the weekend, so now you get it again.

References:
* Sticks & Stones [NRO]
* Take It From a Former Speechwriter [NRO Corner]
* Exclusive: New Cook/RT Strategies Poll Results [Pollster.com]
* Fred trying to harness bloggers' enthusiasm [Hot Air]
* Thompson mulling summer announcement [Politico]
* Thompson, Woman-Chaser [Andrew Sullivan]

Previously:
* Friday Thompson Fix, LA Times Buzz Edition
* Meet Jeri Thompson, the Powerful Republican Consultant That Grassroots Liberals Will Be Attacking As A Bimbo
* Fred Thompson For President

Cross-posted to:
* The Astute Bloggers

* Interesting things to note about yesterday's NBC/WSJ poll:
(1) Thompson now leads Romney by 5 points. While that's not out of the margin yet (+/- 3.1), it's consistent enough with other polls that we think Romney should just drop out of the race and hand over his war chest to a conservative-supported candidate who can do something useful with it. Also note that McCain only leads Thompson by 5, putting Thompson in the margin.
(2) No one has bothered telling NBC that calling John McCain a "maverick" is now self-caricaturing. There are undiscovered tribes of pygmies who have never heard of America, let alone of "the Arizona Senator", who smirk when they hear him being called a maverick.

* Fred Thompson hung out with Chris Hitchens and Paul Wolfowitz at the Vanity Fair Correspondent's Dinner after-party. And thus did a great MR convergence take place.

* Exit homework: Aristotle distinguished between three kinds of proofs that can be offered in a speech - logos, or appeals to logic; pathos, or appeals to emotion; and ethos, or appeals based on the speaker's character. As an exercise, see if you can identify each kind of proof in Thompson's humiliating facecrush of Ramesh Ponnuru on federalism.

References:
* POLL: NBC/WSJ 08 Primary, Iraq
* Americans siding with Dems against Bush
* Christopher Hitchens Denounces Beltway Party, Invites Paul Wolfowitz To His House
* For the Defense [NRO Corner]

Previously:
* Your End Of the Week Fred Thompson Fix
* New Thompson CW: He Can Take His Damn Sweet Time
* Monday Morning Thompson Updates

We readily admit that posting this is sophomoric - that it does its humorous work in a way entirely devoid of wit, merely by associating "people we don't like" with "stupid". But nonetheless:

There is a certain element of truth in it.

References:
* Greatest Movie Line Ever

Previously:
* Initial, Visceral Bitterness - (2) It Must Be Tough Having a Bunch Of Lunatics As Your Party Base
* More Americans Blame Bush than Clinton for What?
* Democrats are Vulgar, Republicans are Funny

Boing Boing has an updated bullet point about the conspiracy theories floating around. You have to scroll down a little past all the pretentious Iraq hand-wringing, but there's a decent argument there that Ismail (from Cho's "Ismail Ax") could mean anything across different religions - Abraham is, after all, a patriarch for Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Of course, that misses a seemingly true point being made by the conspiracy theorists - Ismail appears to be a spelling that's more common in Arabic sources than in Christian or Jewish ones. But the final conclusion is correct: who knows what it meant to that particular lunatic?

Oh, and let the record show that Lynn-B has had it with you people. Her patience being of a fairer and more gentle variety than ours, it took her a day longer to snap. But snap she has. Welcome to the club ma'am. We have t-shirts and hats in the corner.

Again - if it turns out that he was Muslim and that the media isn't saying so out of sensitivity, that's a media critique issue. But it still wouldn't prove anything about anything about whatever incoherent combination of petulance, anger, and voices made him do this.

References:
* VA Tech shootings: world perspective
* NOT important
* Va. Tech Anti-Conspiracy Theory Intervention

Previously:
* 77 Year Old Israeli Holocaust Survivor Shot While Saving Students In Va. Tech Massacre
* Arab and Muslim Conspiracy Theories - Iranian Holocaust Denial Edition
* [Video] What You Get When You Vote For Democrats - Empowering Conspiracy Theory Wackos

Remember how we said that Sen. Thompson needs to officially declare relatively soon, lest people start to think that he's engaging in a vanity exercise? Yeah, maybe not so much with the American political analysis from us any more.

Instapundit says new fund-raising techniques means he's got more leeway rather than less. Red State goes even further. In the process of mocking a Hotline story about Thompson holing up with House Republicans (who were quite enthused, reports have it), they were conclusive on this question:

Captain's Quarters has the latest polling. The big news is that Giuliani is slipping back and rejoining the rest of the pack. There's also the obligatory When Will He analysis, with the guess being some time next month. There'll be an exploratory committee before that, so we're still pretty far off from an official go.

Exit fun: we're kind of partial to today's Daily Fred Thompson Fact from IMAO. It's semantically unsound, but there's still a certain je ne sais quoi about it that makes it compelling.

References:
* Monday Morning Thompson Updates [MR]
* IS FRED THOMPSON IN? [Insta]
* Hey Hotline, It Was 63, *NOT* 53 (Oh, and It Looks Like Fred! Is Really Running) [Red State]
* Giuliani Slips In Latest Polling [CQ]
* Daily Fred Thompson Fact [IMAO]

Previously:
* Fred Thompson For President
* Fred Thompson On How To Be A Careful Conservative
* Your End Of the Week Fred Thompson Fix

Please stop. This lunatic was mentally not there. We've gotten no less than four emails today with - and we use this term loosely - analysis purporting to prove that this was spontaneous jihad. We're not talking to the early bloggers who raised their eyebrows at the use of the nondescript "Asian", thinking that perhaps the American press was taking their linguistic cues for how to write "Muslim" from their British counterparts. We're not even talking to the people asking if he was a Muslim and, if so, why the MSM was "protecting" us from that news.

We're talking to the conspiracy theorists who are currently doing Koranic exegesis to extract deeply unpersuasive, metaphoric meaning that could possibly - in some universe - prove that "Islmail Ax" is a significant clue to Cho Seung-Hui's motives. As if the fact that he fancied himself a modern-day victim tells us something we didn't already know about this horror. Of course he thought of himself as poor and neglected. He lashed out in a shooting rampage against fellow students to, in his mind, get back at them and the world. That doesn't make him a jihadist. It makes him a Columbine-like freak.

Say he was either a born or self-declared Muslim, and we know that right now. That still wouldn't make him a jihadist. The thing that defines and unites jihadists is that they are driven by Islamist ideology. We're skeptical that this kid was coherent enough to even form consistent thoughts, let alone to link up actions and ideology. The Columbine shooters could have thought they were vampires. That doesn't mean that they could turn into bats. Or - if we can sharpen this a little - some Jewish kid might think that he's the Angel of Death. That doesn't mean that can fly over houses and is repelled by lamb's blood on the doorway. Nor does it mean that if he goes on a rampage it has anything to do with Judaism.

Which is not to say that a mentally disturbed person can't be a jihadist. As we've said before, you've got to be a little mentally disturbed to go out and - hypothetically - ram an SUV into a bunch of Jews. The rush to excuse actual spontaneous jihadism by reference to an individual's mental capacity is sometimes rank terrorist apologism. It's only to say that - in this one case - Cho Seung-Hui was almost certainly driven by his inner dementia to the exclusion of whatever cryptic, mystic motives he may have told himself about. Again, the Columbine shooters may have told themselves that they were vampires - that doesn't mean that they did what they did to get a plentiful supply of blood. Sometimes, lunatics are just lunatics and there's no deeper meaning to their actions to be had.

Let Robert Spencer - no apologist for jihadism - be your guide:

You can also go see Boing Boing's excellect and ongoing coverage to see examples of both the good and the bad. In honesty, the Islam theory that's proposed there is the most compelling we've seen. Still way, way implausible, but better - and still not nearly as compelling as any of the other possible, crazy explanations for what this kid thought he might be doing.

There is evil in the world - less wide-spread evil, but evil nonetheless - that's not jihadist. Let's not take away the singular horror of what happened at Va. Tech by trying to impose a meaning and agenda on it that's simply not there.

References:
* Virginia Tech shooter update [Jihad Watch]
* VA Tech mass shooting: Who or what is Ismail Ax? UPDATED [Boing Boing]

Previously:
* 77 Year Old Israeli Holocaust Survivor Shot While Saving Students In Va. Tech Massacre

When will he announce? Mickey Kaus says May 4 (you have to scroll up a little to see the post - we've never figured out his permalink system), but Rich Lowry says that's wrong and it's going to be later. He needs to get around to it. If he drags this out much longer, we're worried that people will begin to think this is a vanity exercise.

On the other hand, Steve Hayes returned to the Weekly Standard with an interview that pretty much explains why it's impossible to think bad things about Thompson:

You should read the whole article. There's a gigantic list of questions and answers at the end - including a long blockquote about the clusterfuck that is the White House communications room - that basically made us want to quit school and join the Thompson campaign. If we weren't already being thrown out for total and complete disregard for the benchmarks of being a graduate student.

References:
* Thinly-sourced kf item of the day [Kaus Files]
* Ixnay on Early May [NRO Corner]
* From the Courthouse to the White House [Weekly Standard]

Previously:
* Fred Thompson For President
* Fred Thompson On How To Be A Careful Conservative
* Your End Of the Week Fred Thompson Fix

Cross-posted to:
* The Astute Bloggers

Except they did go to the Muslim Brotherhood, so this is just kind of a bonus. The thing we appreciate about pro-Israel Jews continuing to vote Democratic is that it gives them all that influence in the party. Tons and tons of influence:

Maybe they'll get the Muslim Brotherhood to moderate. They're really good at that - just look at the bang up job that Pelosi did in Syria, with her nuanced approach to diplomacy. Hey, you know what we should do? Let's get a Democrat in the White House. Why should genocidal lunatics be consigned to Capital Hill, when there's a whole other branch of government that Democrats could open to them? (via LGF)

References:
* Blog Details Egyptian Daily: Democrats Invite Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood Leader and Muslim Brotherhood MPs to Congress [MEMRI]
* Dems Invite Muslim Brotherhood to Speak to Congress [LGF]
* Oh For Crying Out Loud. Democrats Now Actually Meeting With the Muslim Brotherhood. (UPDATED AND BUMPED- Hoyer Denies It. Kind Of. Except Not Really) [MR]

Previously:
* More Leaks Point To Democrats Holding Talks With Hamas Terrorists
* Oh For Crying Out Loud. Pelosi Now Actually Meeting With Iran (?? )
[Video] What You Get When You Vote For Democrats - Empowering Conspiracy Theory Wackos

The exciting news is the LAT poll that shows Thompson in second place even though he's not even officially in the race. McCain is actually behind him by three points, which Powerline takes as confirmation of their prediction that a Thompson candidacy would tube McCain (although Allah points out that the poll shows McCain doing better with Thompson in the race than without). Captains Quarters also does a breakdown of the poll and argues that Thompson can actually take the lead if he renounces his support for McCain-Feingold. We're not sure about that last part since Thompson already has more or less admitted that his vote was a mistake, but hope does spring eternal.

Something we haven't seen anyone mention: the numbers in that LA Times poll are probably not reliable. First, it's an LAT poll which means that it inherently sucks. Second, it's hard to match those numbers with the TIME poll that came out right afterwards. That one shows Thompson at 10 tied with Romney.

The trends, though, are pretty clear: Thompson up, McCain down, Rudy stagnant.

References:
* Poll: McCain falls behind with GOP voters [LAT]
* The Fred factor [Powerline]
* LAT poll: Rudy 29, Fred! 15, McCain 12 [Hot Air]
* LA Times Poll: Fred Gains As McCain Drops Back [Captain's Quarters'
* POLL: TIME/SRBI National Survey

Previously:
* Your End Of the Week Fred Thompson Fix
* Fred Thompson For President
* BREAKING - Fred Thompson Says He Has Lymphoma

For those that missed it. He's so running.

Hot Air says next week might be the week, and Powerline has a link filled post about Thompson. There's also this tidbit from the Powerline post:

We haven't seen anyone make this argument yet, but if it's true then it goes exactly the opposite way of all the Thompson naysayers. The main argument against Thompson's ability to win is that he's coming to the fund-raising game late. But if major donors are holding out on the possibility that he might run, doesn't that mean that there's low-hanging fund-raising fruit waiting to be picked? And this is coming from one of the best political minds of our time, a man who surveyed the political landscape more than half a year before the midterms and declared that Democrats would take both houses. So if conservative donors are waiting for Thompson to enter so that they can give him money, doesn't that mean that Thompson will have money when he enters?

Oh, and that "cancer is afraid of you" line fro Cavuto? Not an unreasonable theory.

References:
* Fred Thompson Interview with Cavuto Part 1 of 2 [GooTube]
* [IMAO]

Previously:
* Fred Thompson On How To Be A Careful Conservative
* Fred Thompson For President
* Your End Of the Week Fred Thompson Fix

Update 6 (07:40 PST): This is the last update, then we're closing up this post. The Crimson Blog is also constantly updating, including some quotes from Thompson himself about the illness. The quotes are posted to Red State, and their server isn't responding at the moment - but at a minimum, you should click through to Crimson to read the excerpts.

Update 5 (07:20 PST): K-Lo agrees with us. And by "agrees with us" we mean "came to the exact same, relatively obvious conclusion" as us:

Update 4 (07:12 PST): Fox News has an oncologist on right now. "If you're going to get any kind of cancer... God is good to give you this kind of cancer". That's what we want to hear.

Update 3 (07:10 PST): Niel Cavuto on Fox News. He says that Thompson requested the interview specifically to get the news out there, and to gauge the reaction in relation to a potential run. Which is exactly what we want to hear - because now the machine can go to work explaining why this shouldn't stand in the way of the Presidency.

Update 2 (06:55 PST): Again with a tip of the hat to AP, Fox News has a story online with some more details. The channel itself is going to be running the Duke lacrosse story for the next eight hours or so - so we're not holding out hope for anything useful from there. Good news money quote:

Here's our counterintuitive spin: we think this announcement is a sign that Thompson is planning to make a run for the Presidency. He's getting the medical information out there, he'll wait a couple of weeks for the pundits to explain that it's a medical non-story, and they'll he'll enter the race with this monkey off his back publicity-wise. We hope.

Update (06:40 PST):
CNN is doing something about the weather, and Fox News is covering the Anna Nicole Smith custody hearings. Natch.

Original:
We just got it from Hot Air a couple of minutes ago. Fox News is updating and we'll post if anything really strikes the eye, but since Allah broke it and is updating at HA you should go there.

This sucks.

References:
* Breaking: Fred Thompson says he has lymphoma

Previously:
* Fred Thompson On How To Be A Careful Conservative
* Fred Thompson For President
* Your End Of the Week Fred Thompson Fix

WND has an extensive roundup of the Senator's views and positions by Melanie Morgran. It's pretty thorough with some links to videos of the Senator being the Senator, but there's little that'll be new for anyone who's been following along. There is one almost off-handed comment that we wanted to highlight:

In all of the din about Thompson's ironclad conservativism, what's being forgotten is that he's a careful conservative. He doesn't vote down the ideological ticket regardless of issue - he is on the right side of the clear issues that matter, and in the mushy middle on the really complicated stuff. If he doesn't enter the race, there will be at least two reasons to mourn whoever the Democrats manage to shove down the country's throat - the obvious disaster of that candidate, and the loss of what a Thompson Presidency might have accomplished.

References:
* A man named Fred

Previously:
* Your End Of the Week Fred Thompson Fix
* Fred Thompson For President
* Yet Another Democratic Leader Meets With Yet Another Totalitarian Thug Dedicated To Wiping Out Israel

James "I get to decide who's Christian and who's not" Dobson doesn't think much of Senator Thompson's potential candidacy. The Freepers react with something between a stifled yawn and righteous indignation:.

One of our crazy liberal friends - not like "he's a liberal so he's crazy", but "he's crazy even for a liberal" - described the Freeper reaction as "eerily sane-ish." Our conclusion: Fred Thompson brings out the best in everybody. Except, apparently, in James Dobson.

In other news, a reader who's deeply plugged into California conservative politics wrote in about the quiet groundswell of Fred support that's been building:

He goes on to say that the speaker wasn't particularly enthused about Thompson - and that this skepticism did not sit well with the crowd at all. A true grassroots conservative who's also deeply ethical and thoughtful? Sign. Us. Up.

References:
* Heart-ache: James Dobson says Fred! isn’t a Christian [Hot Air]
* Dobson Offers Insight on 2008 Republican Hopefuls [Freeper HQ]

Previously:
* More Leaks Point To Democrats Holding Talks With Hamas Terrorists
* Republicans Defeat Fascist Democrats (Seriously!!)
* Fred Thompson For President

Well, obviously it's because he was the source of the Plame leak, as Kos figured out way back in 2004:

We haven't seen logic that air-tight since we helped this kid in a sophomore year Intro To Metaphysics class. It's almost a shock that it turned out to be spectacularly wrong. And when you consider the intellectual maturity of the Kos comments section, the pieces really begin to fall into place, don't they?

One of the comments from that post talked about how Bush was going to do something crazy to appease the Jews. Firing Cheney was the specific suggestion, but honestly when you're that far gone do the details really matter any more? Regardless, logic on the march.

Anyway, Scooter Libby still hasn't been pardoned by the President, even though Libby was the victim of a politicized witch-hunt aimed at destroying... the President. This seems like a good plan, because the best way to get allies is to abandon them when the enemies they make in your name attack them.

References:
* It was Libby [DKos]

Previously:
* Does Kos Just Get to Make Things Up Now?
MR Has A Question For Democratic Jews: Are You Fucking Retarded?
The Democratic Base Is Proud Of Their Spineless Congresspeople Fighting Nonexistent - But Very Dark - Rovian Plots

Seriously. Here's Neal Stephenson's mockery of the politically correct liberal kneejerk anti-300 reviewers:

It really does take somebody totally imbecilic to believe that there's still something to notions like duty, loyalty, sacrifice, and the preservation of Western civilization against enormous odds. It's a good thing for all of us - and we hate to use this phrase, but it's appropriate here - that elite Hollywood opinion-setters are here to calibrate the proper level of cynicism.

References:
* It's All Geek to Me [NYT]

Previously:
* 300 Trailer
* Slate's Negative Review of 300 Provides Countless Reasons To See The Movie
* The Greek Deliberative Tradition

This afternoon's One Jerusalem conference call was with former House Majority Leader Tom Delay. On the call with us were Jim Hoft (Gateway Pundit), Pamela Geller Oshr (Atlas Shrugs), Anne Lieberman (Boker Tov, Boulder), and Daled Amos (Daled Amos). As always, Allen Roth was moderating the call and audio will be made available soon on the One Jerusalem frontpage.

Let's not mince words: the Republican situation going into 2008 is dire. As if there weren't enough real reasons to be disillusioned with the Bush administration, the Democrats have added a new arrow to their quiver: making shit up. The media's handling of the attorney firing dust-up is more or less proof positive that there's nothing Democrats can't turn into a scandal. We have reached a point where Ann Coulter is actually sounding reasonable when she talks about how it's "illegal to be Republican."

The Left is united ideologically, financially, and politically. If you're not worried yet, go check out David Horowitz's Discover the Networks site. They've got a database that tracks how Leftist donors, activists, and organizations have begun pooling their money and making common electoral cause. This isn't your parents' identity politics, where women and blacks used to march together to show solidarity. This is about politically obliterating the Republican party and bureaucratically stymieing conservative causes - which, in today's landscape, includes the pro-Israel movement.

In response, Delay is trying to reinvigorate grassroots activism. He's pushing a grassroots site called Coalition for a Conservative Majority, which will hopefully become a virtual clearinghouse for grassroots causes. He's even started his own blog, and it's quite good. The posts are being written by someone signing as "NJ Conservative", and it actually reads like an real blog - the the look is right and the tone is right. It's as good a step as any other - something needs to be done, and fast, to unite the right against what's rapidly emerging as one of the most organized political juggernauts in recent memory.

In the non-Internet world Delay has a new book out titled No Retreat, No Surrender. It's an autobiography, not a theoretical work - but it does its job of outlining broad contours and values for a kind of revived successful conservative movement. Here's one of the parts about Israel:

Over and over and over again, evangelicals insist that their alliance with Israel is built on the most laudatory of values and mandated by Christian faith. And over and over and over again, the left slanders this alliance. Most recent and stark example: Wonkette West Coast overlord Ken Layne:

So on one side you've got every important evangelical in the country insisting that evangelicals have to support Israel on the basis of genuine affection and Biblical injunction. They say it in interviews, they preach it to their parishioner, they write it in their books, and they print it on the back of pamphlets.

On the other side, you've got millions upon millions of liberals who have transformed their apocalypse myth into conventional wisdom. This slanderous nonsense is a token of sophistication in a breathtaking number of liberal corners. Which gets back to Delay's central point: Democrats can make up anti-conservative stories out of whole cloth, and they still get disseminated as if they were totally reasonable positoins. That's the kind of coalition that the Republicans face in 2008, and it spans. political, journalistic, media, and academic forums. And time is running out to counter-organize.

Full disclosure: I blog for Gridskipper, which is owned by Gawker Media, the same company that owns Wonkette

References:
* One Jerusalem
* Shooting Elephants in a Barrel
* Discover the Networks
* Coalition for a Conservative Majority
* Tom Delay
* OneJerusalem.org Conference Call: Pastor John Hagee, Senior Pastor of Cornerstone Church [FAQ: Debunking Liberal Myths About Evangelical Support For Israel] [MR]
* John Edwards Expresses Concern Over Israel-Iran War, Loses Nomination [Wonkette]

Previously:
* JPost Drops Bombshell: Democrats Illegally Communicating With Hamas Terrorists
* Democrats Take a Brave Stand Against Israeli Self-Defense Israeli Self-Defense and Other Stuff Too
* [Video] What You Get When You Vote For Democrats - Empowering Conspiracy Theory Wackos

True text conversation from last week:

Two things are readily apparent. The first is that text messages are even geekier when you use the equality operator instead of the assignment operator. The second is that Stan was right and we were wrong. Sigh.

The week after this text conversation we heard Sen. Thompson on Hannity - and he just killed. Just absolutely killed. He was thoughtful, he was emphatic, he was deeply, deeply ethical. Hannity suggested that Thompson is in line for "the mantle of Reagan," mainly because Thompson is more socially conservative than McCain, Giuliana, or Romney. Instead of doing what everyone else would have done and demurred-but-not-really, Thompson pushed back and said that being Reaganesque is about sticking to one's principles and not about taking any particular position - and then went on to explain that Reagan wasn't all that socially conservative as a governor. He also took nuanced positions about abortion and gay marriage - at one point even stopping Hannity and saying "people need to know this about me - I'm against a Constitutional amendment against abortion". Then he launched into a discussion about the virtues of federalism that warmed our academic hearts.

Sen. Thompson showed the same grace when talking about the Democratic field. He was especially good on Obama. The ethos that he's got toward Obama is just perfect - the serious elder veteran indulgently treating Obama's passion as the exuberance of the young. We're giddy to watch a debate between these two, where Sen. Thompson just dismantles Obama bit by bit - all the while expressing his admiration for how great it is to see raw passion, if only we weren't facing a world of widespread nuclear proliferation where what's needed is level-headedness and experience.

Have we mentioned that he's a candidate who would just overwhelm opponents with outright smarts? We're among the first to ridicule insecure liberals who reinforce their misguided sense of superiority by reciting Bushisms - but even we'll admit that Sen. Thompson is simply in a different class. In another context, we suspect that he might have made a half-way decent policy wonk. There will be no cringing when he gets up on stage to debate confidently opponents - only respect and admiration.

The United States needs Fred Thompson to enter the Republican primary, win the Republican primary, and then win the general election. The good news is that a lot of people are working to draft him, and it increasingly looks like he's going to run.

Draft Fred Thompson.

References:
* Dejafoo
* The Case For Fred Thompson
* Tennessee Republican Congressmen announce launch of ‘Draft Fred Thompson 2008’ committee
* Wamp Says Thompson Likely To Run For President

Previously:
* The Democratic Party and American Jews: The Divorce Is Going To Be Ugly
* Republicans Defeat Fascist Democrats (Seriously!!)
* Democrats are Vulgar, Republicans are Funny