Fritz and Billy laugh it up at the Wellstone
Meanwhile, Ted Rall poses that President Bush could have been involved in eliminating The Most Liberal Senator.
"The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left." --Ecclesiastes 10:2
If he is forced to run a real, albeit quick, campaign, Mondale could also have some problems with his base. Yes, he's a liberal Democrat. But he's not a child of the New Left, as Wellstone was. The fact that he's on the board of an HMO won't endear him to Wellstone's core constituency. Mondale also co-chaired a commission that came out for Social Security reform, including both private accounts and an increased retirement age (according to an AP report from earlier this year). Mondale can also reasonably be asked to state his position on Iraq: Would he have voted for or against the war resolution? He won't want to be against the president on this. But if he says he would have voted for the resolution, the Wellstonites will feel betrayed.
Alexander, the front-runner in the Senate race, laughed off the incident as "just a media stunt." He told us: "He gave me a firm handshake and I gave him a firm handshake, and I've just shaken 2,000 more hands at a barbecue in Knoxville. I feel fine. I think I may go home tonight and play a little Chopin."
Weaseliest Organization | |
---|---|
Democratic Party | 5,727 |
Major League Baseball | 4,118 |
White House | 3,700 |
Congress | 2,702 |
Republican Party | 2,333 |
FBI | 872 |
Weaseliest Country | |
---|---|
France | 6,684 |
Saudi Arabia | 4,488 |
Pakistan | 3,601 |
Iraq | 3,453 |
North Korea | 669 |
Iran | 285 |
Weaseliest Company | |
---|---|
Microsoft | 7,661 |
Arthur Andersen | 3,908 |
Enron | 3,621 |
WorldCom | 1,381 |
Rite Aid | 1,255 |
Merrill Lynch | 576 |
Tyco | 535 |
Qwest | 486 |
Weaseliest Profession | |
---|---|
News reporters | 4,875 |
Lawyers | 4,447 |
Politicians | 3,539 |
Tobacco executives | 3,484 |
Oil executives | 1,159 |
Accountants | 1,098 |
Advertising executives | 926 |
Weaseliest Individual | |
---|---|
Martha Stewart | 4,734 |
Gary Condit | 3,810 |
Marie Reine Le Gougne (French Ice Skating Olympic Judge) | 3,475 |
Kenneth Lay (Enron) | 3,284 |
Michael Jackson | 2,009 |
Dennis Kozlowski (Tyco) | 810 |
Gary Winnick (Glob. Cross.) | 483 |
"Chainsaw" Al Dunlap | 342 |
Sam Waksal (ImClone) | 255 |
Weaseliest Religion | |
---|---|
Islam | 6,112 |
Catholicism | 5,227 |
Atheism | 4,221 |
Protestantism | 1,710 |
Judaism | 1,147 |
Buddhism | 239 |
Hinduism | 233 |
The safest road to hell is the gradual one--the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.
C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), British author. Screwtape, in The Screwtape Letters, letter 12 (1942).
Much of the modern resistance to chastity comes from men’s belief that they "own" their bodies--those vast and perilous estates, pulsating with the energy that made the worlds, in which they find themselves without their consent and from which they are ejected at the pleasure of Another!
C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), British author. Screwtape, in The Screwtape Letters, Letter 21 (1942).
There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.
C. S. Lewis (1898–1963), British author. The Screwtape Letters, Preface (1942).
Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality.
C. S. Lewis (1898–1963), British author. Quoted in: Cyril Connoly,The Unquiet Grave, pt. 3 (1944; rev. 1951).
It is hard to have patience with people who say "There is no death" or "Death doesn’t matter." There is death. And whatever is matters. And whatever happens has consequences, and it and they are irrevocable and irreversible. You might as well say that birth doesn’t matter.
C. S. Lewis (1898–1963), British author. A Grief Observed, pt. 1 (1961).
Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable.
C. S. Lewis (1898–1963), British author. A Grief Observed, pt. 4 (1961).
An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.
Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965), British statesman, writer. Quoted in: The Reader's Digest (Pleasantville, N.Y., Dec. 1954).
A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.
Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965), British statesman, writer. Quoted in: New York Times (5 July 1954).
Moral of the Work. In war: resolution. In defeat: defiance. In victory: magnanimity. In peace: goodwill.
Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965), British statesman, writer. Epigraph to The Second World War: The Gathering Storm, vol. 1 (1948).
Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites; in proportion as their love to justice is above their rapacity; in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption; in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves.
Edmund Burke (1729–97), Irish philosopher, statesman. A Letter to a Member of the National Assembly, 19 Jan. 1791.
We must not always judge of the generality of the opinion by the noise of the acclamation.
Edmund Burke (1729–97), Irish philosopher, statesman. First Letter on a Regicide Peace (1796; published in The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, vol. 9, ed. by Paul Langford, 1991).
It is a general popular error to suppose the loudest complainers for the public to be the most anxious for its welfare.
Edmund Burke (1729–97), Irish philosopher, statesman. Observations on a Publication, “The Present State of the Nation” (1769).
Among a people generally corrupt, liberty cannot long exist.
Edmund Burke (1729–97), Irish philosopher, statesman. Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol, 3 April 1777 (published in Works, vol. 2).
The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts.
Edmund Burke (1729–97), Irish philosopher, statesman. Letter, 3 April 1777, to the Sheriffs of Bristol.
There is but one law for all, namely that law which governs all law, the law of our Creator, the law of humanity, justice, equity—the law of nature and of nations.
Edmund Burke (1729–97), Irish philosopher, statesman. Speech, 28 May 1794, Westminster Hall, at the impeachment of Warren Hastings.
Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgement; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.
Edmund Burke (1729–97), Irish philosopher, statesman. Speech, 3 Nov. 1774, to the electors of Bristol, England.
I have never yet seen any plan which has not been mended by the observations of those who were much inferior in understanding to the person who took the lead in the business.
Edmund Burke (1729–97), Irish philosopher, statesman. Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790).
And having looked to government for bread, on the very first scarcity they will turn and bite the hand that fed them. To avoid that evil, government will redouble the causes of it; and then it will become inveterate and incurable.
Edmund Burke (1729–97), Irish philosopher, statesman. Thoughts and Details on Scarcity (Nov. 1795; published in Works, vol. 5), cautioning against the “attempt to feed the people out of the hands of the magistrates.”
To drive men from independence to live on alms, is itself great cruelty.
Edmund Burke (1729–97), Irish philosopher, statesman. Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790).
No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth!
Ronald Reagan (b. 1911), U.S. Republican politician, president. "A Time for Choosing," television address, 27 Oct. 1964 (published in Speaking My Mind, 1989).
We might come closer to balancing the Budget if all of us lived closer to the Commandments and the Golden Rule.
Ronald Reagan (b. 1911), U.S. president. Quoted in: Observer (London, 5 Feb. 1983).
The government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.
Ronald Reagan (b. 1911), U.S. Republican politician, president. Address, 15 Aug. 1986, to the White House Conference on Small Business.
Freedom-loving people around the world must say . . . I am a refugee in a crowded boat foundering off the coast of Vietnam. I am Laotian, a Cambodian, a Cuban, and a Miskito Indian in Nicaragua. I, too, am a potential victim of totalitarianism.
Ronald Reagan (b. 1911), U.S. Republican politician, president. Speech, 27 May 1985, at Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp, Germany (published in Speaking My Mind, 1989).
If the federal government had been around when the Creator was putting His hand to this state, Indiana wouldn't be here. It'd still be waiting for an environmental impact statement.
Ronald Reagan (b. 1911), U.S. Republican politician, president. Speech, 9 Feb. 1982 (published in Speaking My Mind, "The Wit and Wisdom of Ronald Reagan," 1989).
Freedom prospers when religion is vibrant and the rule of law under God is acknowledged.
Ronald Reagan (b. 1911), U.S. Republican politician, president. Speech, 8 March 1983, at the Annual Convention of the National Association of Evangelicals, Orlando, Fla. (published in Speaking My Mind, 1989).
Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.
Ronald Reagan (b. 1911), U.S. Republican politician, president. Speech, 11 Dec. 1972 (published in Speaking My Mind, "The Wit and Wisdom of Ronald Reagan," 1989).
My objection to Liberalism is this-that it is the introduction into the practical business of life of the highest kind-namely, politics-of philosophical ideas instead of political principles.
Benjamin Disraeli (1804-81), English statesman, author. Speech, 5 June 1848, to House of Commons, London, on the expulsion of the British ambassador from Madrid.
[Referring to liberals] Cosmopolitan critics, men who are the friends of every country save their own.
Benjamin Disraeli (1804-81), English statesman, author. Speech, 9 Nov. 1877, Guildhall, London.
The principle feature of American liberalism is sanctimoniousness. By loudly denouncing all bad things--war and hunger and date rape--liberals testify to their own terrific goodness. More important, they promote themselves to membership in a self-selecting elite of those who care deeply about such things. . . . It’s a kind of natural aristocracy, and the wonderful thing about this aristocracy is that you don’t have to be brave, smart, strong or even lucky to join it, you just have to be liberal.
P. J. O’Rourke (b. 1947), U.S. journalist. Give War a Chance, Introduction (1992).
In the end we beat them with Levi 501 jeans. Seventy-two years of Communist indoctrination and propaganda was drowned out by a three-ounce Sony Walkman. A huge totalitarian system . . . has been brought to its knees because nobody wants to wear Bulgarian shoes. . . . Now they're lunch, and we're number one on the planet.
P. J. O'Rourke (b. 1947), U.S. journalist. "The Death of Communism," in Rolling Stone (New York, Nov. 1989; repr. in Give War a Chance, 1992).
Communism is the opiate of the intellectuals [with] no cure except as a guillotine might be called a cure for dandruff.
Clare Boothe Luce (1903-87), U.S. diplomat, writer. Newsweek (New York, 24 Jan. 1955).
The word "conservative" is used by the BBC as a portmanteau word of abuse for anyone whose views differ from the insufferable, smug, sanctimonious, naive, guilt-ridden, wet, pink orthodoxy of that sunset home of the third-rate minds of that third-rate decade, the nineteen-sixties.
Norman Tebbit (b. 1931), British Conservative politician. Quoted in: Independent (London, 24 Feb. 1990).
There are two kinds of liberalism. A liberalism which is always, subterraneously authoritative and paternalistic, on the side of one's good conscience. And then there is a liberalism which is more ethical than political; one would have to find another name for this. Something like a profound suspension of judgment.
Roland Barthes (1915-80), French semiologist. Interview with Bernard-Henri Lévy, in Art and Text, no. 8 (1977; repr. in Discourses: Conversations in Postmodern Art and Culture, ed. by Russell Ferguson, et al., 1990).
[Referring to liberals] I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means-except by getting off his back.
Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910), Russian novelist, philosopher. What Then Must We Do? ch. 16 (1886).
The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936), British author. What’s Wrong With the World, pt. 1, ch. 5 (1910).
I’m not an Uncle Tom. . .. I’m going to be here for 40 years. For those who don’t like it, get over it.
Clarence Thomas (b. 1948), U.S. Supreme Court Justice. Washington Post, (October 28, 1994), answering attacks on his character at a meeting of African American journalists and other African Americans.
While Belafonte was making millions of dollars entertaining white folks in the 1960s, Colin Powell wasn't living the good life. He wasn't singing "Day-o." He wasn't rubbing shoulders with the Hollywood elite. He was fighting for his country in Vietnam.
Nothing was handed to Colin Powell in his life. He worked hard, studied hard, fought hard and became a general and, later, the first black secretary of state in the history of the United States. Harry Belafonte sang the "Banana Boat Song."
DSA’s national electoral project this year is the Minnesota Senate Election. Together with YDS, DSA’s Youth Section, we are mobilizing to bring young people to Minnesota. Minnesota is one of the few states that allow same day voter registration. We will therefore focus our energy on registering young Minnesotans. Wellstone will need a high percentage of young people to register and vote for him if he is to stave off the campaign that Bush, the Republicans and the Greens are waging against him. He is the Right’s Number One electoral target.
Because we are focusing on issue-based voter registration, this electoral work can be supported by tax-deductible contributions. The DSA FUND is soliciting tax-deductible contributions to support this project. Contributions are needed to underwrite the costs of transportation as well as providing a stipend for expenses; housing is being donated.
The chairman of the committee, Gunnar Berge, used the prize to make a scathing attack on President Bush's campaign to topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
U.S. lawmakers gave Bush solid bipartisan support on Thursday for a strike on Iraq. Carter said last month it would be a "tragic mistake" for the United States to attack Iraq without U.N. backing.
"With the position Carter has taken...(the award) can and must also be seen as criticism of the line the current U.S. administration has taken on Iraq," Berge, a former Labour cabinet minister, told reporters after announcing the award.
Asked if it was a "kick in the leg" at Washington, Berge said: "Yes, the answer is an unconditional 'yes."' A "kick in the leg" is a Norwegian phrase meaning "a slap in the face."
CATO RULES
Sen. Robert Byrd has been waging a week-long war on the floor of the Senate to block the one that President Bush wants to wage in Iraq. On Thursday Byrd could be seen waving about a palm-sized version of the U.S. Constitution in booklet form, which has been published and distributed around the world by the Cato Institute.
"When we pointed out that the think tank that published it was libertarian, he didn't want to bring it on the floor," says a Democratic staffer on the Appropriations Committee, which Byrd chairs. "But it was the only copy we could find in the office."
And where did they find it? "We took it from a Republican staffer's desk," says the Democrat.
New Jersey law says that substitutions must be made at least 51 days before the vote. Sen. Torricelli was not dead, or in jail, or otherwise incapacitated. He had simply been revealed as a sleazebag, and was becoming a deeply unpopular one. Yanking him off the ballot canceled the will of New Jersey's Democratic-primary voters; popping in Lautenberg at the last minute deprives all New Jersey voters of the back-and-forth of a normal campaign.
Taylor had a twice weekly segment in the early 1980s on a Denver television station. The clip shows Taylor applying lotions to the face of a man siting in the barber chair and discussing techniques. The ad shows Taylor, then slender, sporting a full beard. He is wearing a tight-fitting, three piece suit, with a big-collared open shirt ala John Travolta in "Saturday Night Fever." Taylor's top two or three shirt buttons are unbuttoned, exposing some bare chest and a number of gold chains.
R Lee Ermey, who made his name as the fearsome drill sergeant in the film Full Metal Jacket, told The Telegraph that Streisand's views were far from representative of Hollywood as a whole.
"Once again, Barbra Streisand has opened her alligator-sized mouth wide before her humming-bird brain has had a chance to catch up," said Ermey. "Of course, she has the right to her opinion, but what she does is use the 'bully pulpit', helped by her fame, and people think she's talking for Hollywood."
Ermey, an ex-marine and outspoken supporter of Mr Bush and the war on terror, continued: "We need to do something about the situation before it turns round and bites us in the ass. Democrats are criticising President Bush for not spotting signs that 9/11 was coming. But they don't want him to act to stop the next disaster. Ms Streisand does not speak for me or many other folks in this business."
Richard Nixon was the Republican president living down on Pennsylvania Avenue. Hubert Humphrey was the still-ambitious former veep who lost but came close enough that it was hard to deny him another chance.
Those senators--wannabe presidents--included the tall New Englander, Edmund Muskie of Maine, the soft-spoken South Dakotan George McGovern, the solid moderate Henry Jackson of Washington. George Wallace was the governor and Shirley Chisholm the "unbought and unbossed" black congresswoman from New York. Larry O'Brien, confidante to John F. Kennedy, was the party chairman and Shirley MacLaine the Hollywood actress.
So, any resemblance to Al Gore, John Kerry, Tom Daschle, Joe Lieberman, John Edwards, Howard Dean, Al Sharpton, Terry McAuliffe and Barbra Streisand is purely coincidental.
The situation of Lake Charles, Lousiana received some media attention recently (The New York Times, 9/15/02). Public radio listeners there woke up in May 2001 to find Gospel music and preaching playing on 90.5 FM, where NPR's "Morning Edition" had aired. It turned out that the Rev. Wildmon's American Family Radio network had won the right to broadcast on the wavelength formerly assigned to a local NPR affiliate. Indeed, AFA won the license-to-broadcast on some 194 stations in the United States. It has 18 affiliates and applications for hundreds more are pending.
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