The trouble is that the far left liberal Dems are never going to believe how much men like Ahmadinejad hate Americans until one of the extremists shove a bomb down their throats and kill a bunch of innocent people just like they did on 9/11.
You Can't Appease Everybody by Ann Coulter Posted 05/28/2008 ET
After decades of comparing Nixon to Hitler, Reagan to Hitler and Bush to Hitler, liberals have finally decided it is wrong to make comparisons to Hitler. But the only leader to whom they have applied their newfound rule of thumb is: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
While Ahmadinejad has not done anything as starkly evil as cut the capital gains tax, he does deny the Holocaust, call for the destruction of Israel, deny the existence of gays in Iran and refuses to abandon his nuclear program despite protests from the United Nations. That's the only world leader we're not allowed to compare to Hitler.
President Bush's speech at the Knesset two weeks ago was somewhat more nuanced than liberals' Hitler arguments. He did not simply jump up and down chanting: "Ahmadinejad is Hitler!" Instead, Bush condemned a policy of appeasement toward madmen, citing Neville Chamberlain's ill-fated talks with Adolf Hitler.
Suspiciously, Bush's speech was interpreted as a direct hit on B. Hussein Obama's foreign policy -- and that's according to Obama's supporters.
So to defend Obama, who -- according to his supporters -- favors appeasing madmen, liberals expanded the rule against ad Hitlerum arguments to cover any mention of the events leading to World War II. A ban on "You're like Hitler" arguments has become liberals' latest excuse to ignore history.
Unless, of course, it is liberals using historical examples to support Obama's admitted policy of appeasing dangerous lunatics. It's a strange one-sided argument when they can cite Nixon going to China and Reagan meeting with Gorbachev, but we can't cite Chamberlain meeting with Hitler.
There are reasons to meet with a tyrant, but none apply to Ahmadinejad. We're not looking for an imperfect ally against some other dictatorship, as Nixon was with China. And we aren't in a Mexican stand-off with a nuclear power, as Reagan was with the USSR. At least not yet.
Mutually Assured Destruction was bad enough with the Evil Empire, but something you definitely want to avoid with lunatics who are willing to commit suicide in order to destroy the enemies of Islam. As with the H-word, our sole objective with Ahmadinejad is to prevent him from becoming a military power.
What possible reason is there to meet with Ahmadinejad? To win a $20 bar bet as to whether or not the man actually owns a necktie?
We know his position and he knows ours. He wants nuclear arms, American troops out of the Middle East and the destruction of Israel. We don't want that. (This is assuming Mike Gravel doesn't pull off a major upset this November.) We don't need him as an ally against some other more dangerous dictator because ... well, there aren't any.
Does Obama imagine he will make demands of Ahmadinejad? Using what stick as leverage, pray tell? A U.S. boycott of the next Holocaust-denial conference in Tehran? The U.N. has already demanded that Iran give up its nuclear program. Ahmadinejad has ignored the U.N. and that's the end of it.
We always have the ability to "talk" to Ahmadinejad if we have something to say. Bush has a telephone. If Iranian crop dusters were headed toward one of our nuclear power plants, I am quite certain that Bush would be able to reach Ahmadinejad to tell him that Iran will be flattened unless the planes retreat. If his cell phone died, Bush could just post a quick warning on the Huffington Post.
Liberals view talk as an end in itself. They never think through how these talks will proceed, which is why Chamberlain ended up giving away Czechoslovakia. He didn't leave for Munich planning to do that. It is simply the inevitable result of talking with madmen without a clear and obtainable goal. Without a stick, there's only a carrot.
The only explanation for liberals' hysterical zealotry in favor of Obama's proposed open-ended talks with Ahmadinejad is that they seriously imagine crazy foreign dictators will be as charmed by Obama as cable TV hosts whose legs tingle when they listen to Obama (a condition that used to be known as "sciatica").
Because, really, who better to face down a Holocaust denier with a messianic complex than the guy who is afraid of a debate moderated by Brit Hume?
There is no possible result of such a meeting apart from appeasement and humiliation of the U.S. If we are prepared to talk, then we're looking for a deal. What kind of deal do you make with a madman until he is ready to surrender?
Will President Obama listen respectfully as Ahmadinejad says he plans to build nuclear weapons? Will he say he'll get back to Ahmadinejad on removing all U.S. troops from the region? Will he nod his head as Ahmadinejad demands the removal of the Jewish population from the Middle East? Obama says he's prepared to have an open-ended chat with Ahmadinejad, so I guess everything is on the table.
Perhaps in the spirit of compromise, Obama could agree to let Iran push only half of Israel into the sea. That would certainly constitute "change"! Obama could give one of those upbeat speeches of his, saying: As a result of my recent talks with President Ahmadinejad, some see the state of Israel as being half empty. I prefer to see it as half full. And then Obama can return and tell Americans he could no more repudiate Ahmadinejad than he could repudiate his own white grandmother. It will make Chris Matthews' leg tingle.
There is a third reason to talk to dictators, in addition to seeking an ally or as part of a policy of Mutually Assured Destruction.
Gen. Douglas MacArthur talked with Japanese imperial forces on Sept. 2, 1945. There was a long ceremony aboard the USS Missouri with full press coverage and a lot of talk. It was a regular international confab!
It also took place after we had dropped two nukes on Japan and MacArthur was officially accepting Japan's surrender. If Obama plans to drop nukes on Ahmadinejad prior to their little chat-fest, I'm all for it. But I don't think that's what liberals have in mind.
Bush's America: 100 Percent Al-Qaida Free Since 2001 by Ann Coulter (more by this author) Posted 06/12/2008 ET Updated 06/12/2008 ET
In a conversation recently, I mentioned as an aside what a great president George Bush has been and my friend was surprised. I was surprised that he was surprised.
I generally don't write columns about the manifestly obvious, but, yes, the man responsible for keeping Americans safe from another terrorist attack on American soil for nearly seven years now will go down in history as one of America's greatest presidents.
Produce one person who believed, on Sept. 12, 2001, that there would not be another attack for seven years, and I'll consider downgrading Bush from "Great" to "Really Good."
Merely taking out Saddam Hussein and his winsome sons Uday and Qusay (Hussein family slogan: "We're the Rape Room People!") constitutes a greater humanitarian accomplishment than anything Bill Clinton ever did -- and I'm including remembering Monica's name on the sixth sexual encounter.
But unlike liberals, who are so anxious to send American troops to Rwanda or Darfur, Republicans oppose deploying U.S. troops for purely humanitarian purposes. We invaded Iraq to protect America.
It is unquestionable that Bush has made this country safe by keeping Islamic lunatics pinned down fighting our troops in Iraq. In the past few years, our brave troops have killed more than 20,000 al-Qaida and other Islamic militants in Iraq alone. That's 20,000 terrorists who will never board a plane headed for JFK -- or a landmark building, for that matter.
We are, in fact, fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them at, say, the corner of 72nd and Columbus in Manhattan -- the mere mention of which never fails to enrage liberals, which is why you should say it as often as possible.
The Iraq war has been a stunning success. The Iraqi army is "standing up" (as they say), fat Muqtada al-Sadr --the Dr. Phil of Islamofascist radicalism -- has waddled off in retreat to Iran, and Sadr City and Basra are no longer war zones. Our servicemen must be baffled by the constant nay-saying coming from their own country.
The Iraqis have a democracy -- a miracle on the order of flush toilets in that godforsaken region of the world. Despite its newness, Iraq's democracy appears to be no more dysfunctional than one that would condemn a man who has kept the nation safe for seven years while deifying a man who has accomplished absolutely nothing in his entire life except to give speeches about "change."
(Guess what Bill Clinton's campaign theme was in 1992? You are wrong if you guessed: "bringing dignity back to the White House." It was "change." In January 1992, James Carville told Steve Daley of The Chicago Tribune that it had gotten to the point that the press was complaining about Clinton's "constant talk of change.")
Monthly casualties in Iraq now come in slightly lower than a weekend with Anna Nicole Smith. According to a CNN report last week, for the entire month of May, there were only 19 troop deaths in Iraq. (Last year, five people on average were shot every day in Chicago.) With Iraqi deaths at an all-time low, Iraq is safer than Detroit -- although the Middle Eastern food is still better in Detroit.
Al-Qaida is virtually destroyed, surprising even the CIA. Two weeks ago, The Washington Post reported: "Less than a year after his agency warned of new threats from a resurgent al-Qaida, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden now portrays the terrorist movement as essentially defeated in Iraq and Saudi Arabia and on the defensive throughout much of the rest of the world, including in its presumed haven along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border."
It's almost as if there's been some sort of "surge" going on, as strange as that sounds.
Just this week, The New York Times reported that al-Qaida and other terrorist groups in Southeast Asia have all but disappeared, starved of money and support. The U.S. and Australia have been working closely with the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia, sending them counterterrorism equipment and personnel.
But no one notices when 9/11 doesn't happen. Indeed, if we had somehow stopped the 9/11 attack, we'd all be watching Mohammed Atta being interviewed on MSNBC, explaining his lawsuit against the Bush administration. Maureen Dowd would be writing columns describing Khalid Sheik Mohammed as a "wannabe" terrorist being treated like Genghis Khan by an excitable Bush administration.
We begin to forget what it was like to turn on the TV, see a tornado, a car chase or another Pamela Anderson marriage and think: Good -- another day without a terrorist attack.
But liberals have only blind hatred for Bush -- and for those brute American interrogators who do not supply extra helpings of béarnaise sauce to the little darlings at Guantanamo with sufficient alacrity.
The sheer repetition of lies about Bush is wearing people down. There is not a liberal in this country worthy of kissing Bush's rear end, but the weakest members of the herd run from Bush. Compared to the lickspittles denying and attacking him, Bush is a moral giant -- if that's not damning with faint praise. John McCain should be so lucky as to be running for Bush's third term. Then he might have a chance.
The Other Inventor of Radio by Ann Coulter (more by this author) Posted 08/01/2008 ET
The story of Rush Limbaugh reminds me of a movie you wouldn’t believe could ever happen in real life. Forging his own path against all odds and under constant attack, in the end, the hero triumphs!
I knew about the prominent Limbaugh family before I ever heard of Rush. I clerked for a federal appeals court judge in Kansas City after law school, and every lawyer in the Midwest has heard of the Limbaughs–the Limbaugh judges, the Limbaugh lawyers, the Limbaugh courthouse.
But Rush spurned the law, spurned college and went on radio. He wanted to be on radio, so that’s what he did. He was a conservative, so that’s what he was.
As obvious as it seems now that Rush would be a huge success on radio, it was far from obvious for many years. He was fired repeatedly, until, eventually, his distinctive brand of conservative talk radio that no one believed would work, worked.
When Rush came along, it’s not just that there was no conservative talk radio to speak of. AM radio was dying. And the idea of a national show three hours a day at a time of day when Republicans are at work must have seemed ludicrous to even his friends.
But the moment Rush became a huge success, liberals said he was just in it for the money!
Yes, what surer path to fame and fortune than announcing that you are a conservative and taking on the entire mainstream media while being repeatedly fired?
Perhaps some of Rush’s imitators are in it for the money, but when Rush was coming up, there was absolutely no reason to believe three hours of conservative talk radio was the path to big bucks. (Judging from Air America radio, liberals sure aren't going into talk radio for the money.)
This is why I have a rule: Never trust a conservative public figure who hasn’t been fired, at least once, for being a conservative. Apparently, we can trust Rush!
By being the first and the most successful public conservative, Rush made it leagues easier for those of us who followed him. Among other things, he flushed out liberals and forced them to deploy all their idiotic talking points against him. By now, we’ve heard the same denunciations so often, we can lip-sync liberal attacks on us.
But when Rush started out doing conservative radio, there was no Fox News, there were no other national conservative talk-radio hosts, there was no Drudge Report. Rush just had to stand there taking bullets by himself.
And he had no shortage of critics, on the left and a few envious souls on the right. They’ve never changed, even as Rush became more and more popular and other conservatives followed Rush into various branches of the media and they too became more and more popular. Luckily, Rush's critics have tended to disappear when their newspapers fold or their columns get cancelled, but new ones always pop up spouting the same drivel.
Back in 1991, The Syracuse, (N.Y.) Post-Standard unleashed almost all of the standard liberal clichés against conservatives in a single editorial denouncing Rush. I have categorized them here:
1. His shtick is getting tiresome. “By next year at this time, we may be saying, ‘Rush who?’"
(Actually, by that time the following year people were saying “They're paying Rush Limbaugh how much?" and asking ,“The Syracuse Post-what?”)
2. Thinking conservatives reject him. “He bills himself as a conservative, although thinking conservatives, after an initial chuckle or two, should want to put as much distance between him and themselves as possible.”
(That would explain the 22 million listeners every week, the top-selling newsletter, and the two No.1 bestselling books.)
3. He makes personal attacks! “His favorite technique for discrediting an idea with which he disagrees is to make petty personal attacks against the people who espouse that idea.”
(Yes, who can forget Rush's bestselling Book "Al Franken Is A Big, Fat Idiot"? Wait –that wasn’t his book? What liberals mean by a “personal attack” is any comment about a liberal. )
4. He’s mean. “He is not a nice man, and he doesn't pretend to be. . . . And he's nasty.”
(This would explain the legions of female callers who breathlessly call Rush every day, cooing, gushing, and all but proposing to him over the airwaves. Of course, if by "nice" liberals mean "someone who cares about what liberals think," then they’re right: Rush is not nice, not nice at all. Neither am I!)
5. He’s a fraud who just does it for the money. “Limbaugh admits he's in it for the money.”
(This is as opposed to newspaper editors and reporters who work pro bono.)
6. He’s not as good as [fill in the blank] “Plainly, he's no Edward R. Murrow.”
(And yet, he’s inexplicably more popular than Murrow was.)
7. He’s more like these other losers. “Limbaugh reminds us of Morton Downey, Jr., the celebrated TV hatemonger of a few years ago.”
(Really? Okay, name one similarity. Besides the fact that Rush Limbaugh and Morton Downey, Jr. are both more popular than the Syracuse Post-Standard.)
Even writing a cliché, The Syracuse Post-Mortem couldn’t get it right. They missed liberals' famed “fact-checking” of conservatives and the deft counterargument: “he’s stupid.” So, I’ll add two more from the standard attack on conservatives:
8. He gets his facts wrong! A 1994 article in Newsweek claimed to have found a study showing that “Limbaugh often disdains facts.” Among the examples was this quote from Rush: When "the [black] illegitimacy rate is raised, the Rev. Jackson and other black leaders immediately change the subject."
But according to Newsweek: “For years, Jesse Jackson and others have decried ‘children having children.’"
(Say, wasn’t there a story recently about Jackson threatening to cut someone’s “n--s off”? Oh yes, I remember now! That was what Jackson said he wanted to do to Obama for talking about the black illegitimacy rate.)
9 He’s stupid! Or as Ken Bode put it in a 1993 New York Times article: “Mr. Limbaugh is not hobbled by intellectual consistency.”
(22 million listeners a week.)
Attacks like these gave the rest of us something to aspire to! Conservatives, if you’re not being called a mean-spirited has-been, who’s in it for the money, engages in personal attacks, gets his facts wrong and plainly is “no Edward R. Murrow”–you ’re not doing it right.
Liberals have had nearly two decades to come up with some fresh libel of conservatives, but it’s always the same thing. Thank you, Rush Limbaugh! This has been a big help.
Like Jerry Seinfeld’s mother, who can’t understand why everyone doesn’t love Jerry, my mother is constantly perplexed by any criticism of me. I always tell her: “Remember how much you love Rush Limbaugh, Mother, and think of all the terrible things they’ve said about him. Notice how no one ever criticizes Rich Lowry.
This always works, but it makes me wonder: What did Rush tell his mother?
The Reign of Lame Falls Mainly on McCain by Ann Coulter Posted 11/05/2008 ET Updated 11/05/2008 ET
Last night was truly a historic occasion: For only the second time in her adult life, Michelle Obama was proud of her country!
The big loser of this election is Colin Powell, whose last-minute endorsement of Obama put the Illinois senator over the top. Powell was probably at home last night, yelling at his TV, "Are you KIDDING me? That endorsement was sarcastic!"
The winner, of course, is Obama, who must be excited because now he can start hanging out in public with Bill Ayers and Rev. Jeremiah Wright again. John McCain is a winner because he can resume buying more houses.
And we're all winners because we will never again have to hear McCain say, "my friends."
After Bill Clinton won the 1992 presidential election, Hillary Clinton immediately announced that, henceforth, she would be known as "Hillary Rodham Clinton." So maybe Obama can now become B. Hussein Obama, his rightful name.
This was such an enormous Democratic year that even John Murtha won his congressional seat in Pennsylvania after calling his constituents racists. It turns out they're not racists -- they're retards. Question: What exactly would one have to say to alienate Pennsylvanians? That Joe Paterno should retire?
Apparently Florida voters didn't mind Obama's palling around with Palestinian activist Rashid Khalidi and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, either. There must be a whole bunch of retired Pennsylvania Jews down there.
Have you ever noticed that whenever Democrats lose presidential elections, they always blame it on the personal qualities of their candidate? Kerry was a dork, Gore was a stiff, Dukakis was a bloodless android, Mondale was a sad sack.
This blame-the-messenger thesis allows Democrats to conclude that their message was fine -- nothing should be changed! The American people are clamoring for higher taxes, big government, a defeatist foreign policy, gay marriage, the whole magilla. It was just this particular candidate's personality.
Republicans lost this presidential election, and I don't blame the messenger; I blame the message. How could Republicans go after B. Hussein Obama (as he is now known) on planning to bankrupt the coal companies when McCain supports the exact same cap and trade policies and earnestly believes in global warming?
How could we go after Obama for his illegal alien aunt and for supporting driver's licenses for illegal aliens when McCain fanatically pushed amnesty along with his good friend Teddy Kennedy?
How could we go after Obama for Jeremiah Wright when McCain denounced any Republicans who did so?
How could we go after Obama for planning to hike taxes on the "rich," when McCain was the only Republican to vote against both of Bush's tax cuts on the grounds that they were tax cuts for the rich?
And why should Republican activists slave away working for McCain when he has personally, viciously attacked: John O'Neill and the Swift Boat Veterans, National Right to Life director Doug Johnson, evangelical pastors Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and John Hagee, various conservative talk radio hosts, the Tennessee Republican Party and on and on and on?
As liberal Democrat E.J. Dionne Jr. exuded about McCain in The Washington Post during the Republican primaries, "John McCain is feared by Democrats and liked by independents." Dionne proclaimed that McCain "may be the one Republican who can rescue his party from the undertow of the Bush years."
Similarly, after unelectable, ultraconservative Reagan won two landslide victories, James Reston of The New York Times gave the same advice to Vice President George H.W. Bush: Stop being conservative! Bush was "a good man," Reston said in 1988, "and might run a strong campaign if liberated from Mr. Reagan's coattails."
Roll that phrase around a bit -- "liberated from Mr. Reagan's coattails." This is why it takes so long to read the Times -- you have to keep reading the same paragraph over again to see if you missed a word.
Bush, of course, rode Reagan's ultraconservative coattails to victory, then snipped those coattails by raising taxes and was soundly defeated four years later.
I keep trying to get Democrats to take my advice (stop being so crazy), but they never listen to me. Why do Republicans take the advice of their enemies?
How many times do we have to run this experiment before Republican primary voters learn that "moderate," "independent," "maverick" Republicans never win, and right-wing Republicans never lose?
Indeed, the only good thing about McCain is that he gave us a genuine conservative, Sarah Palin. He's like one of those insects that lives just long enough to reproduce so that the species can survive. That's why a lot of us are referring to Sarah as "The One" these days.
Like Sarah Connor in "The Terminator," Sarah Palin is destined to give birth to a new movement. That's why the Democrats are trying to kill her. And Arnold Schwarzenegger is involved somehow, too. Good Lord, I'm tired.
After showing nearly superhuman restraint throughout this campaign, which was lost the night McCain won the California primary, I am now liberated to announce that all I care about is hunting down and punishing every Republican who voted for McCain in the primaries. I have a list and am prepared to produce the names of every person who told me he was voting for McCain to the proper authorities.
We'll start with former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Florida Gov. Charlie Crist. Then we shall march through the states of New Hampshire and South Carolina -- states that must never, ever be allowed to hold early Republican primaries again.
For now, we have a new president-elect. In the spirit of reaching across the aisle, we owe it to the Democrats to show their president the exact same kind of respect and loyalty that they have shown our recent Republican president.
GOP Vote Declines Less Than NYT Profit by Ann Coulter (more by this author) Posted 11/12/2008 ET Updated 11/13/2008 ET
For the first time in 32 years, Democrats got more than 50 percent of the country to vote for their candidate in a national election, and now they want to lecture the Republican Party on how to win elections. Liberal Republicans have joined them, both groups hoping no one will notice that we just lost this election by running the candidate they chose for us.
For years, New York Times columnist David Brooks has been writing mash notes to John McCain. In November 2007, he quoted an allegedly "smart-alecky" political consultant who exclaimed, in private, "You know, there's really only one great man running for president this year, and that's McCain."
"My friend's remark," Brooks somberly intoned, "had the added weight of truth."
Brooks gushed, "I can tell you there is nobody in politics remotely like him," and even threw down the gauntlet, saying: "You will never persuade me that he is not among the finest of men."
That took guts at the Times, where McCain is constantly praised by the op-ed columnists and was endorsed by the paper in the Republican primary. Even Frank Rich has hailed McCain as the "most experienced and principled" of the Republicans and said no one in either party "has more experience in matters of war than the Arizona senator" -- the biggest rave issued by Rich since Rent opened on Broadway.
They adored McCain at the Times! Does anyone here not see a cluster of bright red flags?
In January this year, Brooks boasted of McCain's ability to attract "independents."
And then Election Day arrived, and all the liberals who had spent years praising McCain all voted for Obama. Independents voted for Palin or voted against Obama. No one outside of McCain's immediate family was specifically voting for McCain.
But now Brooks presumes to lecture Republicans about what to do next time. How about: "Don't take David Brooks' advice"?
According to Brooks, the reason McCain lost was -- naturally -- that he ran as a conservative. If only presidential candidates would spurn polls, modern political history, evidence from campaign rallies, facts on the ground and listen to the wishful thinking of Times columnists!
If McCain lost because he ran as a conservative, then how come I knew McCain was going to lose before Brooks did? About the same time Brooks was touting McCain's uncanny ability to attract independents, I was writing, accurately: "John McCain is Bob Dole minus the charm, conservatism and youth."
Using the latest euphemism for "liberal," Brooks complains that "reformist" Republicans like John McCain are forced to run for president as smelly old conservatives: "National candidates who begin with reformist records -- Giuliani, Romney or McCain -- immediately tack right to be acceptable to the power base." (Some "tack" so far to the right they almost adopt the positions in the GOP platform!)
In another sign of how popular liberalism is, liberals have to keep changing their name, like grifters moving from town to town. Liberal Republicans used to be known as "moderates," then "mavericks" or "centrists." I guess now they're "reformists." Why, liberals are so popular they have to disguise themselves for fear of being mobbed by an adoring public!
I gather by "reformist," Brooks means liberal only on the social issues like gay marriage and abortion because -- apart from abortion and gay marriage -- Rudy Giuliani was a right-wing lunatic. He engaged in aggressive policing, cut taxes and government bureaucracies, abolished New York's affirmative action office and was repeatedly denounced as a storm trooper by The New York Times.
The same thing goes for Romney, who also cut taxes and government regulations, but promised Massachusetts voters he would not tinker with their beloved abortion rights.
Ironically, McCain was a liberal on virtually every issue except abortion and gay marriage, but he bashed social conservatives to his friends in the press, so they excused his pro-life voting record as a cynical ploy to get votes in Arizona.
So "reformist" evidently means a Republican who is liberal on social issues. My term for that is "Joe Lieberman." Whatever the merit of being liberal on social issues, both Joe Lieberman and the Republican Party's history suggest that the winning formula is the exact opposite combination.
If liberals are going to use their first majority vote in a national election since Helen Thomas was spilling champagne on Liza at Studio 54 to lecture Republicans on how to win elections, I have a tip for them based on the exact same election: Constitutional amendments banning gay marriage passed in every state they were on the ballot -- Florida, Arizona, even in liberal California.
I'll accept the results of the presidential election, if you anti-Proposition 8 die-hards in California accept the results of that vote. Earth to protestors: Most Americans oppose gay marriage. On this, even blacks and Mormons are agreed! Why don't you people go find something useful to do?
Let's see, who was avidly pro-gay-marriage? Oh I remember: The guy who's once again lecturing Republicans on how to win elections: David Brooks.
by Ann Coulter Posted 11/19/2008 ET Updated 11/19/2008 ET
With Time magazine comparing Obama to Jesus, I guess we should be relieved that, this week, liberals are only comparing him to Abraham Lincoln.
The one thing every liberal on TV seems to know about Lincoln is that he put rivals in his cabinet, as subtly indicated in the title to historian and plagiarist Doris Kearns Goodwin's book: "Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln." Like Lincoln, Goodwin is always open to contributions from her rivals, although Lincoln was better at crediting their words.
And hasn't Obama talked to former rival Hillary about becoming his secretary of state? Hasn't he had a sit-down with Sen. John McCain? Did I imagine this, or is he even now brokering peace talks between Joy Behar and Elisabeth Hasselbeck?
Ergo: Obama is a genius.
Indeed, historians have just named Obama the best president-elect ever.
I don't recall the media swooning when President George W. Bush reached out to rivals, such as Sen. Teddy Kennedy, who was asked to co-write Bush's education bill. In fact, the way I remember it, Bush is liberals' most hated president ever (only because they can't remember George Washington or they'd hate him, too).
And yet no modern president has ever done more to bridge partisan divides and show respect to his opponents than George W. Bush. I do not say this with admiration; it is simply a fact.
Throughout the year and again in his convention speech during the 2000 presidential campaign, Gov. Bush bragged that he had "no stake in the bitter arguments of the last few years. I want to change the tone of Washington to one of civility and respect."
(As a side note: Bush would never have been elected president if not for the "bitter arguments of the last few years," in which Republicans exposed and impeached Bill Clinton, which then killed Al Gore's presidential ambitions. So you're welcome.)
But the point is: Bush was massively chummy with his enemies -- Democrats, communists and the Congressional Black Caucus. So chummy that even they began to wonder if he was a little daft.
In his first few weeks in office, Bush met with more than 150 members of Congress, half of them Democrats -- including five events with America's leading liberal menace, Sen. Teddy Kennedy.
Bush's very first social event at the White House was movie night with the Kennedy family to watch "Thirteen Days," a falsely heroic portrayal of JFK's disastrous handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis. This suggests to me that Obama's first social move as president will have to be to invite Lindsey Graham over to a screening of "Larry the Cable Guy Saves Christmas."
Naturally, Bush also had primary rival John McCain and his wife, Cindy, over to dinner at the White House.
Bush was the first president in memory to attend the congressional retreats of the opposing party. After two weeks in office, a Wall Street Journal column noted that Bush's charm offensive was "disorienting the local Hatfields and McCoys." (Again: You're welcome.)
Bush even made a special point to meet with the Congressional Black Caucus upon taking office, which -- given their feelings toward Bush -- would be the equivalent of Obama holding a special meet-and-greet session with the upper management of the Ku Klux Klan.
Bush invited the Democratic black mayor of the District of Columbia to the White House, attended a majority black District church service and appointed the first black secretary of state.
And that was all before Feb. 1, 2001. (By the end of his presidency, he would have appointed the first two black secretaries of state.)
Though it was small potatoes after all that palling around with Teddy Kennedy, this is the same George W. Bush who had Muslim "spiritual leaders" to the White House a week after 9/11.
Bush also famously said of then-Russian president, former KGB agent Vladimir Putin, that he looked him in the eye and "was able to get a sense of his soul."
(This made Bush's critics almost as apoplectic as if he had said, "I looked into Putin's eyes and, frankly, I just don't trust the guy." No matter what Bush did, liberals were incensed.)
As president, Bush scuttled the playing of "Hail to the Chief" in his honor and repeatedly reminded his staff to act humbly.
This is as opposed to Obama, who I believe is the first president-elect in history to have his own "Office of the President-elect" seal commissioned.
Like I always say, even if you don't like the current president-elect, you should still have some respect for the office of the presidency-elect.
The Cleanest State Meets the Pushiest Person by Ann Coulter Posted 12/03/2008 ET Updated 12/03/2008 ET
Until now, Minnesota was always famous for its clean elections. Indeed, Democratic consultant Bob Beckel recently attested to the honesty of Minnesota's elections, joking: "Believe me. I've tried. I've tried every way around the system out there, and it doesn't work."
But that was before Minnesota encountered the pushiest, most aggressive, most unscrupulous person who has ever sought public office, Al Franken.
On Election Day, Franken lost the U.S. Senate race in Minnesota to the Republican incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman by 725 votes. But over the next week, Democratic counties keep discovering new votes for Franken and subtracting votes from Coleman, claiming to be correcting "typos."
In all, Franken picked up 459 votes and Coleman lost 60 votes from these alleged "corrections."
As the inestimable economist John Lott pointed out, the "corrections" in the Senate race generated more new votes for Franken than all the votes added by corrections in every race in the entire state -- presidential, congressional, state house, sanitation commissioner and dogcatcher -- combined.
And yet the left-wing, George Soros-backed Secretary of State, Mark Ritchie, stoutly defended the statistically impossible "corrected" votes. There's something fishy going on in Minnesota besides the annual bigmouth bass tournament.
Fortunately, the very outrageousness of the "corrections" scam brought national attention to the Minnesota recount, at which point it became more difficult to keep "finding" votes for Franken. Under the glare of the national media, the steady accretion of post-election ballots for Franken came to a screeching halt, rather like a child who, after being caught red-handed, tactfully removes his hand from the cookie jar.
As Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis said, sunlight is the best disinfectant. (Although, having met Franken, I would add that actual disinfectant might not be a bad idea either.)
Since then, the state has been conducting a meticulous hand recount and, despite a suspicious delay from liberal Hennepin County and a suspicious late-vote discovery from liberal Ramsey County, Coleman has consistently held a lead of 200 to 300 votes. (That's not including the 519 votes that were stolen -- or "corrected" -- from Coleman immediately after the election when no one was paying attention.)
As of Wednesday, with 93 percent of the votes recounted, Coleman holds a 295-vote lead. At no point since the first count after the election has Franken been ahead.
The famously honest people of Minnesota probably think this means the recount is almost over. But like a bad Al Franken sketch on "Saturday Night Live," I predict this recount will keep going on and on and on for no apparent reason.
To understand what is happening in Minnesota, one must turn to the Washington state gubernatorial election of 2004.
As in Minnesota this year, the Republican candidate kept winning and winning, but the Democrats refused to concede, instead demanding endless recounts. Meanwhile, Democratic precincts kept "discovering" new ballots for the Democrat, Chris Gregoire.
Six days after the election on Nov. 10, 2004, Republican Dino Rossi was ahead by 3,492 votes. But five days later, heavily Democratic King County election officials actually claimed to "find" 10,000 uncounted ballots! And they favored Gregoire!
Nonetheless, after a full recount, Rossi was still ahead, but this time by only 42 votes.
So the Democrats demanded a third recount -- and King County continued its miraculous ballot-"finding" trick, which continued to favor Gregoire.
It's hard to avoid the conclusion that Democrat election officials were "finding" new votes as much as they needed to find new votes. Here are 10,000 new votes. You need more? OK, back to work!
Eventually, King County found enough provisional and absentee ballots to put Democrat Gregoire in the lead -- and this result was immediately certified by the weenie Republican secretary of state.
Republicans are always accused of being sharks; I wish they'd rise to the level of minnows.
According to Michael Barone, an examination of King County records showed that nearly 2,000 more mail-in ballots had been "cast" in King County than had been requested.
But Gregoire got to be governor -- having done unusually well among the imaginary voters of King County.
The head of the Washington State Democratic Party orchestrating this ballot theft was Paul Berendt. Guess who is advising Al Franken on the Minnesota recount right now? That's right: Paul Berendt.
Get ready, good people of Minnesota: You have no idea what is about to hit you. And, per usual, the Republicans clearly haven't the vaguest notion what is about to hit them.
Just this week, liberal Ramsey County "discovered" 171 new votes from a single voting machine in a single precinct. An analysis by John Lott shows that these newly "discovered" votes represent yet another statistical improbability that favors Franken: Despite the fact that Maplewood precinct No. 6 gave Franken only 45.4 percent of the original, untampered-with vote, the newly "discovered" votes gave Franken 53.2 percent of the vote.
Also, you will notice that Franken is obsessively fixated on the absentee ballots, a specialty of the vote fraud experts at ACORN. Inasmuch as only 5 percent of absentee ballots were rejected in Minnesota, Franken already has fraud baked into the cake. But he needs more.
He is demanding to be given the names of voters whose absentee ballots were rejected. Why would he need the names of the voters? Unless ... he plans to track them down, determine how they voted and then ferociously fight to qualify the absentee ballots only of known Franken voters.
Franken can pretend to be generous -- by not demanding that all rejected absentee ballots be counted -- while in fact being manipulative -- by requesting that only the ballots with votes for him be counted. That's exactly what the Democrats -- led by Franken adviser Berendt -- did to steal the 2004 election in Washington state.
But first, Franken will need the names. Then he can check voter registration lists, ask around or, in a really aggressive move, call the rejected voters directly and bully them into admitting who they voted for. If they say "Coleman," I promise you they won't get a call back to ensure that "every vote is counted."
There is absolutely no other reason to get the names of those whose ballots were rejected.
We'll find out in the next few weeks if Barack Obama's "new politics of hope and change" includes turning the cleanest state in the union into one of the dirtiest.
This Is the Downer We've Been Waiting For! by Ann Coulter (more by this author) Posted 01/07/2009 ET Updated 01/07/2009 ET
After NBC canceled me "for life" on Monday -- until seven or eight hours later when the ban was splashed across the top of The Drudge Report, forcing a red-faced NBC to withdraw the ban -- an NBC insider told The Drudge Report: "We are just not interested in anyone so highly critical of President-elect Obama, right now," explaining that "it's such a downer. It's just not the time, and it's not what our audience wants, either."
In point of fact, I'm not particularly critical of Obama in my new book. I'm critical of the media for behaving like a protection racket for Obama rather than the constitutionally protected guardians of our liberty that they claim to be. So I think what the NBC insider meant to say is that NBC is not interested in anyone so highly critical of NBC right now. It's such a downer, it's just not the time, and it's not what their audience wants right now, either.
In fact, I think my book is the downer America has been waiting for! So herewith, I present an excerpt from the smash new book out this week, Guilty: Liberal Victims and Their Assault on America:
When the Obama family materialized, the media was seized by a mass psychosis that hadn't been witnessed since Beatlemania. OK! magazine raved that the Obamas "are such an all-American family that they almost make the Brady Bunch look dysfunctional." Yes, who can forget the madcap episode when the Bradys' wacky preacher tells them the government created AIDS to kill blacks!
Still gushing, OK! magazine's crack journalists reported: "Mom goes to bake sales, dad balances the checkbook, and the girls love Harry Potter" -- and then the whole family goes to a racist huckster who shouts, "God damn America!"
Months before network anchors were interrogating vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin on the intricacies of foreign policy, here is how NBC's Brian Williams mercilessly grilled presidential candidate Barack Obama: "What was it like for you last night, the part we couldn't see, the flight to St. Paul with your wife, knowing what was awaiting?"
Twisting the knife he had just plunged into Obama, Williams followed up with what has come to be known as a "gotcha" question: "And you had to be thinking of your mother and your father." Sarah Palin was memorizing the last six kings of Swaziland for her media interviews, but Obama only needed to say something nice about his parents to be considered presidential material.
The media's fawning over Obama knew no bounds, and yet, in the midst of the most incredible media conspiracy to turn this jug-eared clodhopper into some combination of Winston Churchill and a young Elvis, you were being a bore if you mentioned the liberal media. Oh surely we've exploded that old chestnut. ... Look! Look, Obama just lit up another Marlboro! Geez, does smoking make you look cool, or what! Yeah, Obama!.
The claim that there's no such thing as a left wing press is a patent lie said to enrage conservatives. Newspapers read like the press under Kim Jong Il, which, outside of a police state, looks foolish. The prose is straight out of The Daily Worker, full of triumphal rhetoric with implicit exclamation points. Still, their chanted slogans fill your brain, like one of those bad songs you can't stop humming.
There is no other explanation for the embarrassing paeans to Obama's "eloquence." His speeches were a run-on string of embarrassing, sophomoric Hallmark card bromides. It seemed only a matter of time before Obama would slip and tell a crowd what a special Dad it had always been to him.
The major theme of Obama's campaign was the audacity of his running for president. He titled his keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, "The Audacity of Hope" -- named after a sermon given by his spiritual mentor Jeremiah Wright, whom we were not allowed to mention without being accused of playing dirty tricks. (Rejected speech titles from sermons by Rev. Wright included "God Damn America!," "The U.S. of K.K.A." and "The Racist United States of America.")
What is so audacious about announcing that you're running for president? Every U.S. Senator has run for president or is currently thinking about running for president. Dennis Kucinich ran for president. Lyndon LaRouche used to run for president constantly.
But the media were giddy over their latest crush. Even when Obama broke a pledge and rejected public financing for his campaign -- an issue more dear to The New York Times than even gay marriage -- the Times led the article on Obama's broken pledge with his excuse. "Citing the specter of attacks from independent groups on the right," the Times article began, "Sen. Barack Obama announced Thursday that he would opt out of the public financing system for the general election."
So he had to break his pledge because he was a victim of the Republican Attack Machine.
When Obama broke his word and voted for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act bill (FISA), the Times' editorial began: We are shocked and dismayed by Sen. Obama's vote on ... oh, who are we kidding? We can't stay mad at this guy! Isn't he just adorable? Couldn't you just eat him up with a spoon? Is he looking at me? Ohmigod, I think he's looking at me!!!! Couldn't you just die?
"We are just not interested in anyone so highly critical of President-elect Obama, right now," explaining that "it's such a downer. It's just not the time, and it's not what our audience wants, either."
It has NOTHING to do with presedent elect Obama.....but, EVERYTHING to do with the country and it's 'feelings'.....whether or not Obama was elected the country has lost it's soul.....OR....sold it's soul to the devil........
I'm sorry, but, I believe this has nothing to do with political parties but, who you know and where you fall on the food chain......
and the generation's loss of 'truth'........JMHO
Ann Coulter should know where her bread is buttered.....NOT-mho......................
...you are a product of your environment, your environment is a product of your priorities, your priorities are a product of you......
The replacement of morality and conscience with law produces a deadly paradox.
STOP BEING GOOD DEMOCRATS---STOP BEING GOOD REPUBLICANS--START BEING GOOD AMERICANS
More Boos Than Balls by Ann Coulter Posted 01/21/2009 ET Updated 01/21/2009 ET
It will not be easy for President B. Hussein Obama. More than half the country voted for him, and yet our newspapers are brimming with snippy remarks at every little aspect of his inauguration.
Here's a small sampling of the churlishness in just The New York Times:
-- The American public is bemused by the tasteless show-biz extravaganza surrounding Barack Obama's inauguration today.
-- There is something to be said for some showiness in an inauguration. But one felt discomfited all the same.
-- This is an inauguration, not a coronation.
-- Is there a parallel between Mrs. Obama's jewel-toned outfit and somebody else's glass slippers? Why limousines and not shank's mare?
-- It is still unclear whether we are supposed to shout "Whoopee!" or "Shame!" about the new elegance the Obamas are bringing to Washington.
Boy, talk about raining on somebody's parade! These were not, of course, comments about the inauguration of the angel Obama; they are (slightly edited) comments about the inauguration of another historic president, Ronald Reagan, in January 1981.
Obama's inaugural address tracked much of Reagan's first inaugural address -- minus the substance -- the main difference being that Obama did not invoke God as stoutly or frequently, restricting his heavenly references to a few liberal focus-grouped phrases, such as "God-given" and "God's grace."
Obama was also not as fulsome in his praise of his predecessor as Reagan was. To appreciate how remarkable this is, recall that Reagan's predecessor was Jimmy Carter.
Under Carter, more than 50 Americans were held hostage by a two-bit terrorist Iranian regime for 444 days -- released the day of Reagan's inauguration. Under Bush, there has not been another terrorist attack since Sept. 11, 2001.
But I gather that if Obama had uttered anything more than the briefest allusion to Bush, that would have provoked yet more booing from the Hope-and-Change crowd, which moments earlier had showered Bush with boos when he walked onto the stage. That must be the new tone we've been hearing so much about.
So maybe liberals can stop acting as if the entire nation could at last come together in a "unity of purpose" if only conservatives would stop fomenting "conflict and discord" -- as Obama suggested in his inaugural address. We're not the ones who booed a departing president.
It is a liberal trope to insult conservatives by asking them meaningless questions, such as the one repeatedly asked of Bush throughout his presidency about whether he had made any mistakes. All humans make mistakes -- what is the point of that question other than to give insult?
When will the first reporter ask President Obama to admit that he has made mistakes? Try: Never.
No, that question will disappear for the next four years. It will be replaced by the new question for conservatives on every liberal's lips these days: Do you want Obama to succeed as president?
Answer: Of course we do. We live here, too.
But merely to ask the question is to imply that the 60 million Americans who did not vote for Obama are being unpatriotic if they do not wholeheartedly endorse his liberal agenda.
I guess it depends on the meaning of "succeed." If Obama "succeeds" in pushing through big-government, terrorist-appeasing policies, he will not have "succeeded" at being a good president. If we didn't think conservative principles of small government and strong national defense weren't better for the country, we wouldn't be conservatives.
And why was that question never asked of liberals producing assassination books and movies about President Bush for the last eight years?
Say, did liberals want Pastor Rick Warren to succeed delivering a meaningful invocation at the inaugural?
The way I remember it, the Hope-and-Change crowd viciously denounced the Christian pastor, stamped their feet and demanded that Obama withdraw the invitation -- all because Rick Warren agrees with Obama's stated position on gay marriage, which also happens to be the position of a vast majority of Americans every time they have been allowed to vote on the matter.
Liberals always have to play the victim, acting as if they merely want to bring the nation together in hope and unity in the face of petulant, stick-in-the-mud conservatives. Meanwhile, they are the ones booing, heckling and publicly fantasizing about the assassination of those who disagree with them on policy matters.
Hope and unity, apparently, can only be achieved if conservatives would just go away -- and perhaps have the decency to kill themselves.
Republicans are not the ones who need to be told that "the time has come to set aside childish things" -- as Obama said of his own assumption of the presidency. Remember? We're the ones who managed to gaze upon Carter at the conclusion of his abomination of a presidency without booing.
Liberal Victimhood: A Game You Can Play at Home by Ann Coulter (more by this author) Posted 01/28/2009 ET Updated 01/28/2009 ET
I notice that liberals have not challenged the overall thesis of my rocketing bestseller, "Guilty: Liberal 'Victims' and Their Assault on America," which is that liberals always play the victim in order to advance, win advantages and oppress others.
I guess that would be hard to do when the corrupt Democratic governor of Illinois is running around comparing himself to Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi.
Indeed, you can't turn on the TV without seeing some liberal playing victim to score the game-winning point.
Caroline Kennedy tried to Bigfoot her way into New York's Senate seat while being bathed in the Kennedy light of eternal victimhood. The New York Times began a profile of Caroline by quoting an average citizen who "turns almost maternally protective" upon hearing Caroline's name, mentioning the assassination of her father -- nearly half a century ago.
MSNBC's Chris Matthews summarily announced: "We all want to be protective of Caroline Kennedy." When one of his guests, Michael Smerconish, merely asked what her qualifications were, an appalled Matthews said: "Wow."
Political reporter Ron Brownstein elaborated on "wow," saying: "Well, that's pretty rough. That's pretty rough. I mean, but she has got, at least publicly, a very private persona, one of quiet grace and elegance and intelligence."
The Times' City Room exercised its own protective function toward Caroline by censoring any indelicate inquiries about her on its blog.
The Kennedys are the textbook case of victims who go around victimizing others. As I describe in "Guilty," in 1969, Times reporter James Reston began his story about Teddy Kennedy driving a girl off the Chappaquiddick bridge with the sentence: "Tragedy has again struck the Kennedy family."
Reston waited a discreet four paragraphs before mentioning the name of the dead girl, whose "tragedy" was arguably greater. (Even the Times rewrote Reston's opening line.)
Caroline's expectation that she would sail past all other contenders and be handed a seat in the U.S. Senate is perfectly in keeping with her family tradition.
When Robert Kennedy won his Senate seat from New York, he unseated a well-liked Republican, Kenneth Barnard Keating, who had represented New York in Congress for more than a decade.
Meanwhile, Robert Kennedy hadn't lived in New York since he was 12 years old. But the allegedly sophisticated voters of New York were awed by the Kennedy name, and dumped a popular native son.
A deputy manager of Kennedy's campaign explained that the carpetbagger accusation could not withstand the image of JFK's assassination a year earlier: "You couldn't vote against Robert Kennedy without seeing the presence of John Kennedy."
With New York's record of swooning for celebrity victims, it was a snap for another carpetbagger, Hillary Clinton, to push aside veteran New York Democrats to win her Senate seat in 2000.
When Gov. David Paterson ended the Kennedy soap opera by appointing Democratic congresswoman Kirsten Gillibrand, her Democratic colleague, Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, blanketed the airwaves, threatening to challenge Gillibrand in the next election because of her NRA-approved stand on guns.
McCarthy explained, "My voice is for the victims."
The only reason McCarthy was elected to Congress in the first place is that her husband and son were shot by a crazed gunman on the Long Island Rail Road in 1993. Colin Ferguson's shooting spree wasn't stopped sooner because none of the passengers had guns. As has been demonstrated beyond dispute at this point, armed citizens save lives.
In a comprehensive study of all public multiple shooting incidents in America between 1977 and 1999, economists John Lott and Bill Landes found that the only public policy that reduced both the incidence and casualties of such shootings were concealed-carry laws. Not only are there 60 percent fewer gun massacres after states adopt concealed-carry laws, but the death and injury rate of such rampages are reduced by 80 percent.
Rep. McCarthy claims to "speak for the victims" by promoting policies that will provably create a lot more victims.
And all of this occurs in a year when the mainstream media is agog with their discovery that a black man can be elected president in America! By being elected president, Obama overcame the massive racial hatred that existed only in liberal imaginations.
I don't know a single conservative who thought America wouldn't elect a black man.
If Republicans had run Colin Powell in 1996 -- back when he was a Republican -- he would have been the first black president. As Powell himself said, he received the strongest support from Southern white men, who admired his military background.
The first serious black candidate to run for president in America won, so blacks are one-for-one in a country liberals would have us believe is teeming with Ku Klux Klanners.
Throughout Obama's entire life, doors were opened for him, his college applications smiled upon and favors bestowed simply because he is black -- the original victim category in America. Being black is the highest victim caste because of blacks' authentic victimhood: The nation once tolerated slavery and Jim Crow.
But ironically, Obama's father is from Africa: He never suffered from the ancient policies that, today, give his son Victim Gold. To the contrary, if Obama's African relatives had anything to do with slavery, it was on the business end.
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