Anti-American Idol

"People of Venezuela and Sean Penn, your votes have been counted and the new Anti-American Idol is: Hugo Chavez! That's right folks, in one of the closest contests in recent memory, Chavez beat out sentimental favorites Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Keith Olbermann to become the U.S.-basher of record."

While the press was busy writing a million stories predicting that President Bush won't be able to tie his shoes now that Karl Rove is leaving something infinitely more disturbing and newsworthy was happening in South America. Lunatic dictator (and new Sean Penn-Pal) Hugo Chavez decided that it's time to change the Venezuelan constitution so he can be elected until whatever god you believe in can remove him from this earth. (The CIA missed a golden opportunity when Chavez was speaking at the UN last year at the same time all of that tainted spinach was floating around. One little salad could've done the trick. Alas, it was chicken nugget day at the UN cafeteria. I believe that's served with tater-tots and a heaping bowl of useless sanctions.)

Hugo Chavez has been very irritated with the U.S. ever since we went into Iraq. Many think that this is because he's staking out some moral high ground because he is opposed to war. Personally, I think that Hugo is fuming because the dictator spotlight was taken off of Saddam Hussein and redirected to his own pudgy mug. True, he would deny that he's actually a dictator but here's one overwhelming piece of evidence: he's been embraced by Sean Penn, Harry Belafonte and Danny Glover. They've all visited Chavez, gotten the same sanitized "Hollywood Tour" that Castro gives in Cuba and marveled at the gestapo glory that's all about the place. Maria Conchita-Alonso, an actress who is actually from Venezuela, thinks Chavez is a "totalitarian." But what would she know, she only has friends and family there.

Wealthy liberals absolutely adore communist dictators. One I know (who shall remain nameless-pretend I'm a reporter with "an unnamed source") once said to me, "I just love what Castro has done with Cuba!" None of the Cuban immigrants I know has echoed that sentiment thus far. Why is it that Lefties can believe whatever a dictator tells them but ignore the little things, like thousands of people risking their lives to float on makeshift rafts to get to Miami? We won't even jump into our pools if the chlorine levels are off, these people are flinging themselves at the mercy of the ocean and the weather to get away from Castro's glory. Just guessing here, but I don't think people kill themselves to get away from paradise. "Oh my god! The health care and education are simply too magnificent, I've got to get out of here!"

What's really scary for those of us who don't have to live under benevolent Chavez regime is that this guy now controls a HUGE chunk of our oil imports. We import twice as much oil from Venezuela as we do from Iraq. Where's that "war for oil" now?

Chavez is also filling the hollowness that Hollywood has felt since Castro became ill. I could almost hear the weeping in Malibu when it looked like Fidel was going to die. He is still too ill for any real good propaganda photo-ops. Just when it looked like Hollywood was about to enter its darkest, dictator-free hours, along came Hugo like a breath of fresh, fascist air to give the Loony Left someone new to spoon with in their political beds.

Just wondering, aren't huge oil exporters disproportionately contributing to greenhouse gas emissions? I guess there is a big carbon-footprint reduction factor if you're a communist dictator.

It's a love story only Hollywood could write.

Cooking Data With The Climate Commies

I'm hurt. Newsweek called me a "naysayer" in its cover story this week. As if Harry Potter were on staff, the magazine morphed global warming skeptics into "naysayers" and "deniers." All funded, of course, by BIG OIL (Just curious, if BIG is so bad then why are we still listening to Al Gore, who is large enough to have his own gravitational pull that attracts orbiting idiots?). FYI, I'm still waiting for the check from Exxon that allegedly funds all of this denial of mine.

Hot (pun intended) on the heels of the Newsweek hysterical wailing came the news that a revision of NASA data revealed that 1934 was the hottest year on record. This screwed a lot of things up for the Climate Commies because 1934 isn't part of their global warming Prime Time, which is supposed to be the last ten years. One would think that this might, just might, lend some credibility to skepticism but I know it won't.

You see kids, climate hysteria isn't really about saving the earth. It's mostly a 21st Century makeover for communism, which, as all liberals will tell you, is better for the children. What the Climate Commies are most adept at is preaching federal (sometimes international) governmental control and silencing dissent. Wait, they're big on the destruction of personal property too. As soon as some eco-terrorists blow up a person along with a Hummer the entire movement will officially be Joe Stalin dressed in hemp.

So, this revised data isn't actually going to slow the C.C.s down, they'll just make up new, non-CO2 emitting fuel for the fire. If 1998 were merely the hottest year since 1997 it would be more than enough to propel Al Gore and the Consensus Mongers around the world to tell everyone that the best way to save humanity is to get rid of the humans. Logic has never been an integral component of the global warming hysteria. Until Gore stops all the convoluted carbon footprint rationalizations and begins traveling everywhere on foot to spread the message it never will be.

Naturally, this story has been all over the blogs. I've seen several Climate Commies rush to point out that the data only applies to U.S. temperatures. Each post is done with sort of a "HA!" attitude, as if everything was once again settled and we could tuck ourselves in under the blanket of consensus.

However, we here in the United States are supposed to be the biggest CO2 whores this side of Beijing. If Man and his evil modern gadgets were really firing up the weather so much shouldn't we be frying eggs on the sidewalks of Minneapolis in February by now? Surely the birthplace of Big Oil and its insatiable consumers would be heating up like Bill Clinton's pants at a cheerleader competition. Instead, one has to go all the way back to the Great Depression when few Americans could afford food, let alone cars, to find the toasty atmospheric goodness. If only Al Gore's forebears had known how dangerous all of those unemployed people were to the planet! They could have fashioned an international treaty for the economic sanctioning of people who were just standing around.

At this very moment, the Climate Commies are trying to find a link between the checkbooks of Big Oil and accurate mathematics. Believe me, they'll come up with some new way of finding truth in computer predictions while screaming that historical data is nothing but a bunch of well funded denial.

About the only thing I'm denying right now is that Newsweek employs intelligent, objective journalists.

John Edwards' Caucasian Conundrum

The last blog posted here was spent lamenting the interminable length of this presidential election cycle. I now have to admit that I have one not-so-guilty pleasure that's just come about during the last month: each week now brings some gift-wrapped stupidity from the mouth of Elizabeth Edwards. I check the news every weekday with the joyful curiosity of a five year-old shaking an unopened Christmas present.

Much of the focus on the Edwards campaign has been on Johnny Hair-Boy's remarkably insincere attempt to be the rich white guy who feels the pain of poor minorities. However, the real fun over at Camp Caucasian is waiting to see what Mrs. Hair-Boy will say next. This week finds Loopy Liz lamenting the fact that, for marketing purposes, her husband's $400 salon treatments can't transform him into an African-American female. This seems to be the reason why they rely so much on the Web. It would appear that there is a glass ceiling for insanely wealthy white guys when it comes to television advertising.

Quoth Mrs. Hair-Boy, "We can't make John black, we can't make him a woman. Those things get you a lot of press, worth a certain amount of fundraising dollars. Now it's nice to get on the news, but not the be all and end all."

My, my...what a concisely bundled little message of racism and sexism. If that same quote had come from any of the GOP campaigns CNN would have hired sky writers and Sean Penn to get the message out. This is an insidious double standard in America: Democrats can be racists and sexists because they are the ones who say they want to fight racism and sexism. How do they do this? Through a never ending supply of federal programs that purport to help but really do nothing more than encourage the kind of tokenism displayed by Mrs. Hair-Boy's enlightened liberal comments.

The Republican candidates are willing to attack Sens. Clinton and Obama on what they say and do rather than what they are. Where they see legitimate opponents Mrs. Edwards sees a black guy and an uppity broad.

Hate to tell you this Liz, but both of them have well oiled campaigns and actual messages they want to get out. In the long run, the world doesn't care that your husband hates Bill O'Reilly. Our real enemies are in Iran, Iraq and some caves scattered throughout Afghanistan, not at the Newscorp building in Manhattan. The serious candidates address and debate these very real issues.

The increasingly marginal candidates scream about the Curse of Whitey over the whining of a blow dryer.

Preemie Election Cycle Needs An Incubator

As August rolled around I felt a little depression set in. Naturally, I thought it was because summer was winding down and I'd have to deal with the harsh realities of another brutal winter in West Los Angeles. We don't get any snow here but I do spend a lot of time shoveling liberals off the driveway. It's backbreaking work but unavoidable in these parts.

A quick look at my calendar revealed the source of my woes. I saw that November is still three months away. November of 2007. I finally began to wrap my head around the fact that this election we've been obsessing about for eight months already isn't going to happen for another fifteen months (That's 1 1/4 years to you and me, Russ). Once my head was sufficiently wrapped, it began to throb. Fifteen more months of this and I might become a reindeer shaver at the North Pole. And I'm a political junkie.

I'm having a "chicken or the egg" debate about the causes of this ad nauseam election cycle. It seems to be a tie between the added number of early primaries and the attention whore qualities of the average candidate, with the latter having a slight edge. So hypnotic is the effect of the media spotlight that it can make people like Chris Dodd and Ron Paul think they're interesting. The light pulls candidates out of the woodwork and now we're left with what is by far the worst reality show on television. I find myself watching soccer in Spanish on some nights as sort of a mental palate cleanser; it's much better than plowing through another story about whether or not Hillary Clinton showed an eighth of an inch of man-cleavage during a YouTube debate. Seriously, YouTube was made for a lot of things like goofy Will Ferrell videos, salsa dancing chimps and watching drunk celebrities fall on stuff. Hillary Clinton's alleged boobs take the fun out of it.

Unless I move to the middle of the woods and start shooting my meals, I'm bombarded with things like John "Hair Boy" Edwards screaming "Health Care for all, Free Speech for everyone but Fox News!" When the election is five light years away you really have to pace yourself on the weighty issues.

I'm not even old and I remember when the nominees for each party were decided-get this-at the conventions. Seriously! That was back around the time that environmentalists were saying that global cooling was going to kill us; not yesterday, but not that long ago. The conventions have become like the British monarchy: an expensive, useless curiosity. Food Network shows have more suspense.

Half the fun of any presidential election is watching the candidates rip into members of their own parties for months on end then spend a few short months pretending to be friends on the campaign trail. It's American street theater. This new process is depriving us of that fun. If this gets decided early and we're left with just the two candidates droning on for an extended period of time I fear a spike in alcohol related death rates.

Here's my proposal. Let's send the candidates to Baghdad for six months. Let each of them explain why he or she should be the next Commander in Chief to the troops. Let Ron Paul talk to some serious people for once. Let John Edwards get his hair cut, for free, by a man's barber. Something tells me that Hillary would actually prefer to wear fatigues every day. Put Dennis Kucinich in a flak jacket and he might become too top heavy to remain standing. We already know that the one place television cameras don't spend a lot of time is with the troops on the ground so we can be reasonably assured that we don't have to hear from the candidates twenty four freaking hours a day. One more thing: this little overseas excursion might just help the fringe candidates come to grips with just how fringey they are and weed the field out a bit.

Oh-oh...I just glanced at the TV and saw a naked guy running across a Mexican soccer field with "Who Is Ron Paul?" painted on his butt.

Gray Lady Gas Pains

The official publication of the Democratic National Committee, more commonly known as The New York Times, is feeling a little dyspeptic this week. In just the span of a few days, the paper was forced to report on good news about the war and Rupert Murdoch's successful acquisition of The Wall Street Journal. Nothing short of the Yankees moving to a suburb of Boston could have been more painful for the Times to report than either of these stories.

I've always viewed the Times as being like the old Soviet Pravda without the government funding. So stunned was I to see two almost positive pieces about Iraq in the paper that it took me a few days to even address it. I was convinced that someone had laced the wine I had the other night and that I was in a state of perpetual hallucination.

Political blog readers know all about the two stories but I've been asked on occasion to add background for those who don't regularly peruse political news. The first story had to do with a poll the Times conducted that showed an increase in support for the war. The editorial brain trust at the paper didn't want to believe this. They arrogantly called the findings, "counterintuitive" and decided to conduct another poll, getting the same results. The results were finally reported, accompanied by an article that said they "...didn't make sense." Translation: "Here's what we've found but it can't possibly be right."

The second, more stunning piece, showed up on the Op-Ed page of the Times, which I usually can't touch without breaking out in hives. It's what Hugo Chavez reads when he wants to feel like a moderate communist. The article was by Michael E. O’Hanlon and Kenneth M. Pollack and it was titled, "A War We Might Just Win." Maureen Dowd and the rest of the Op-Ed Politburo at the Times must have been on suicide watch as soon as this went to press.

A few days of pondering have led me to only one possible explanation for the Times publishing this article. Kenneth Pollack, a former Clinton staffer, laid out what may have been the most detailed, rational reasons for invading Iraq in his book, The Threatening Storm. He has since spent most of his time showing up on cable news shows and telling everyone within earshot that he was wrong. Times publisher Punch Sulzberger probably has a "Ken Pollack Retraction" hotline on his desk that he feverishly prays will ring at any moment. Meanwhile, Ms. Dowd has been talked in off the ledge and is sitting at her keyboard ready to write a piece entitled "See, I Told You So" as soon as Pollack calls.

The above reporting must have been painful enough for the Times folk but Rupert Murdoch's success surely must have them all avoiding sharp objects now. Murdoch is everything the Times hates: wealthy, conservative, American and happy. Add to that the fact that he emigrated from Australia legally and you can see why he's a problem for them. Murdoch's most cardinal sin to those on the Left, however, is that he made the First Amendment functional in American media. Liberals had a stranglehold on television news (ever met Ted Turner?) until Rupert came along. Prior to his ascension, most on-air news outlets were little more than televised parrots of the New York Times (Bernard Goldberg explains this a bit in his book "Arrogance"). The dastardly Murdoch used a free press to reintroduce free speech into the national dialog.

Few things terrify American liberals more than a First Amendment that gets used by everyone. Murdoch is the bogeyman in the Times' closet who just keeps growing more nightmarish every day in this regard.

To those of us on the Right,however, Rupert Murdoch is the light in that closet which, when allowed to shine, makes everything slightly less scary.