Open Threads

Michael Kelly’s scathing critique of Gore’s speech was fun. I guess it is just too bad he wrote it before Daschle’s meltdown on the Senate floor today.

I don’t know why people don’t understand, but what Gore said, although reprehensible and stupid, was smart politically (even though Josh Chafetz disagrees with me). He is pandering to the base, and one thing we know about Democrats like Gore and their accomplices in the press, he will not be accountable for what he has said, despite Andrew Sullivan’s best efforts. Was Clinton ever held accountable? Count Tom Daschle’s lies from this year alone. Why he has said it, as I noted yesterday, is what is important. He knows he can not win the primary as a DLC frontrunner, so he has to run to the left.

Michael Kelly’s scathing critique ofPost + Comments

R.I.P., Mike Webster

The greatest center in the history of football (my histroy, at least) is dead.

R.I.P., Mike Webster The greatestPost + Comments

If you are bored tonight at around 12:45 EST, turn on MSNBC and watch Katrina Vanden Heuvel, editor of the Nation, come completely unhinged while debating Laura Ingraham. Katrina started her babble about Bush not being a democratic president, but na Imperial President. He wants to build an empire. Katrina, also managed to re-mention that Gore won the popular vote, and thus, despite the Clinton/Gore dismal record in foreign affairs and fighting terrorism, Gore is credible.

Katrina, btw, is the woman on Hardball who could not name her U.S. Representative.

If you are bored tonightPost + Comments

My Analysis of the Gore Speech (This is SUPER long, but I think relevant)

Much has been made about the idiotic and intellectually vacant Gore speech, although the criticisms at this point seem to be limited to the blogosphere. Certainly, the NY Times had a fawning newsitorial yesterday, but I have not seen any op-ed pieces yet today discussing the speech. Maybe he is as irrelevant as the White House has concluded, but I think that is not the case. As I stated yesterday, the reason for the speech is clear: Gore is running in 2004.

Stephen Green (aka Vodkapundit) fired a salvo yesterday, in an open letter to Mr. Gore. This opening shot across the bow was far from a clear point by point refutation of Gore’s oration, but it served as a nice primer. Today, Herr Vodkapundit attacks Gore’s speech again- but methinks he misses the real reason for the Gore speech. But I will get to that later.

Susanna Cornett blogged almost immediately after Gore finished speaking, and did a fine job of a point by point refutation of Mr. Gore’s speeech. Again, Susanna, like Stephen, is missing the forest for the trees.

Andrew Sullivan also has wasted no time and spared no bandwidth criticizing Gore on the merits of the speech and, and Sullivan, like Green and Cornett, notes the flip-flops and inconsistencies. However, where Sullivan nails it on the head is recognizing the naked ambition and the soon to appear historical revisionism. Gore’s, not Saddam’s. This quote from Sully is so prescient that it is absolutely astounding that more people did not immediately recognize it (and to their credit, perhaps Stephen and Susanna did, but felt it was so obvious that they need not state it):

They just show that he is a pure opportunist, with no consistency in his political views on foreign or domestic policy.

The other member of the blogosphere to grasp the realpolitik of the Gore speech is William Quick, the Daily Pundit. Check out this quote from Quick, referencing the demise of the Democrat opposition as penned by David Broder:

Well, what’s going on is Broder is helping to set up the re-launch of Big Honest Al’s endless campaign for the Presidency. It’s also a nice bit of political theater. The Donk pols who are actually in office at the moment can continue to dodge the main question as they pursue their real goals in the fall; and Big Honest Al, who holds no office and never will, is earmarked to fall on his sword as he makes the Donk “attack dog” case against an attack on Iraq.

Quick is right, in that this is the beginning of the Gore 2004 campaign. I am not sure how complicit Broder is in this timetable (although he is oft called the ‘Dean of the Washington Press Corps, I have long felt he was merely a nuanced hatchet man for the left- check out this self-serving attack of Jesse Helms), but it is clear that this is the opening salvo of his campaign. Where I differ from Bill Quick is when he states that Gore ” simply has a wooden ear (to match his manner and his skull) about politics.” I think this speech yesterday was a master stroke (from Gore’s perspective), and it includes all the craven, overly-ambitious, delusional, dishonest, disgusting, and self-serving aspects of Gore and his ambitions that Gore-haters like me have been watching for years. Let me explain how.

The political reality of the landscape in the Democrat party is that there is a leadership and a rank-in-file that are politically at odds with each other. However, like a poor married couple, fight as they might, neither can exist without each other. The grass roots is composed of numerous disparate groups of self-serving fringe issue constituencies, ranging from the Naderite greens, the African-American caucus, women

My Analysis of the GorePost + Comments

Time to go to bed so I can wake up tomorrow, go earn a living, and pay my taxes so we can build more bombs and bullets to use on Islamofascists and other enemies of the state. I just wish I could etch my name in a couple of the rounds.

Time to go to bedPost + Comments

Is John Madden George Bush’s Speech-writer?

At the end of tonight’s MNF game, John Madden stated:

“When you win, you know, everyone is around, and when you lose, you can’t find anyone.”

Using my Bush to English dictionary, that would be this quote:

“Victory has a thousand fathers but defeat is an orphan.”- John F. Kennedy

Is John Madden George Bush’sPost + Comments

Is Scrappleface the funniest man in the Blogosphere?

NY Times Publisher Buys NFL Jets, Changes Strategy
(2002-09-22) — New York Times publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr., today announced he has purchased the New York Jets NFL franchise, and will immediately make strategic changes consistent with the Times editorial board’s beliefs.

“Many NFL teams act as if they’re better than others and they must always win,” Mr. Sulzberger said. “But we realize that we’re just like everyone else. We want to have peace. We have no right to impose our will upon the competition. If you do that, someone is always the loser.”

Consequently, he said, the Jet’s offensive strategy will be to negotiate a reduction in touchdown attempts by both teams. In addition, strength-training coaches have been fired, and the weight room locked because “big, muscular fellows are intimidating to other players.”

Sulzberger said he will hire a coach who realizes there’s no need to take the ball away from the other team until the moment they actually try to put it in your end zone.

“Just because they’re driving down the field, doesn’t mean they have the desire or capability to score against you,” the new Jets owner said. “Why act as if every little offensive play is such a big threat?”

Har.

Is Scrappleface the funniest manPost + Comments