AS THE WORLD TURNS AROUND THE CLINTONS

I don’t care what anyone says, it was nice of Bill Clinton to leave his girlfriend’s house and come listen to Hillary’!2! give her speech.

Do we actually know where he was looking when he mouthed the words “I love you!”?

Anyway, we were able to obtain an advance copy of Bill Clinton’s speech by threatening to release the memoir written by Buddy the Dog before Buddy’s mysterious and untimely demise.

(President Clinton):

“Good evening.

Do you people have any idea who you’re messing with–any idea at all?

You don’t fire the Clintons–we fire you! In fact, we don’t even have to fire you–we OWN you. And we’ll tell YOU when you’re done with us–got it? Good.

Oh, yeah; vote for Obama. Goodnight.”

(Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews, David Gregory, Diane Sawyer, Andrea Mitchell, et al.):

“Uh…President Clinton did what he had to do tonight, making a strong case for electing Barack Obama…”

And that’s really all there is to it.

Not content with being a mere Messiah, Obama looks now to have decided the role of Zeus is a better fit for his HopeyChangeuy omnipotence. ALL MUST BOW BEFORE THE KING OF KINGS! LOOK ON MY WORKS, YE MIGHTY, AND DESPAIR!

What an overinflated putz. But like the man Himself, the Temple of O is all facade, grandiose and imposing but with no substance at all.

In the belly of the beast: Zombie liveblogs from Nutroots Central.

Some random thoughts from Thomas Sowell, all of which have merit:

If you took all the fraud out of politics, there might not be a lot left.

There are countries in Europe that would love to have their unemployment rate fall to the 5.7 percent unemployment rate to which ours has risen. Yet those who seem to want us to imitate European economic and social policies never seem to want to consider the actual consequences of those policies.

Republicans won big, running as Republicans, in 2004. But once they took control of Congress, they started acting like Democrats and lost big. There is a lesson in that somewhere but whether Republicans will learn it is another story entirely.

When we hear about rent control or gun control, we may think about rent or guns but the word that really matters is “control.” That is what the political left is all about, as you can see by the incessant creation of new restrictions in places where they are strongly entrenched in power, such as San Francisco or New York.

Now that the Senator with the furthest left voting record in the Senate and the Senator with the third furthest left voting are the Democrats’ nominees for President and Vice President, there will be great expressions of indignation over being “negative” if anyone dares call them “liberals.” Actually, leftists would be more accurate.

I’ve been repeating variations on that last one myself for years now. Is there more? You betcher.

…and heartily embracing Obama’s attempt at censorship — real censorship, via the Justice Department, rather than the imaginary kind they whine and pout about whenever anyone dares to express disagreement with them — and not one of the sniveling punks even bothers to address the incontrovertible truth of the central point at issue: that Obama launched his political career in the home of a remorseless domestic terrorist; worked closely with him for years; maintains his friendship with the traitorous scum to this day; and has lied repeatedly about the nature of that friendship to preserve his political viability. They scream, they cry, they threaten and bluster, they call for any and every alternative media outlet to be summarily shouted or shut down…but they never once even attempt to grapple with the truth.

Because they can’t.

And remember, these witless would-be fascists are the Demonrat base. Deny it if you wish, but as far as I’m concerned you are who you pander to.

No link to the poisonous little toads from here; Glenn has a stronger stomach than I do.

…Michael Totten unleashes some more big-T Truth — in stark contrast to what usually passes for it these days.

I have no intention of wasting so much as a minute watching the Moonbat National Convention bait-and-switch show this week, but some of those who’ve done so say that the miraculous conversion of the bitter, America-disparaging Queen of Heaven into a sort of modern-day Donna Reed was truly something to behold. Needless to say, the Last True Conservative experienced frissons of delight and then peed down his leg in a spasm of uncontrollable bliss (and of course it’s all ultimately about gay marriage, just as everything else is in his strange, manic world), and others of the Savior’s apostles in Old Dead Media are still straining mightily in the beat-off contest they’ve been running since Obamacommie announced (priceless Chris Matthews quote: “ohhh, uhhh, unnngggh, ahhhhhhh…pass me a Wet-Nap, Keith”). But Byron York, for one, ain’t buying it, thanks. And neither is Jim Geraghty.

Any locked-ward Nutrooters upset by Michelle’s shocking transmogrification from snarling, resentful victim of American racist opression into Huxtable Lite needn’t worry overmuch; there’s no way she’ll be able to keep up her ebullient convention facade for long. Anybody who enthusiastically filled a ringside pew in Reverend Wright’s hatemongering Chicago circus for as long as she did will have to revert to bitter, whining type sooner rather than later. Count on it.

Beldar on why Ayers matters:

I know myself well enough to know that the odds would skyrocket that I’d get into a fist-fight, and even that I’d throw the first punch, were I to find myself face-to-face with a would-be cop killer whose motto is “Guilty as hell, free as a bird — America is a great country!” Even if he wasn’t trampling on an American flag at that precise moment, I could no more break bread with such a man, or share a round of beers, or shake hands with him, than I could with Osama bin Ladin.

If Bill Ayers and his wife Bernadine Dorn are what pass for respectable members of liberal Chicago society now, that’s among the most shameful indictments I’ve ever heard of the honesty and integrity of that city’s citizens.

They are — and it is.

If there’s anyone who ought to have been (metaphorically) ground into paste already under the rear wheels of the Obama campaign bus (along with Tony Rezko and Rev. Wright) a long time ago, it’s Bill Ayers. Obama’s association with him, and his continued insistence in defending this terrorist who won’t repent his own violence, is the single most contemptible thing I know about the Democratic nominee for POTUS.

Ayers was a twisted dollop of evil scum in the 1960s and 1970s, and he’s still evil scum. It is absolutely inconceivable to me that someone who might become the president of the United States could call such a man “friend.”

It is wholly insufficient — a pathetic joke of an excuse — for Obama to “denounce Ayers’ crimes” when Ayers won’t denounce those crimes himself. A four-year-old child can understand that. Why can’t Barack Obama? Or rather, why does Obama pretend not to understand it?

Right on the damned money, every word of it. The people who claim to be baffled by the uproar over this, or those who indignantly try to dismiss it as a “distraction,” a “smear,” or somehow otherwise out of bounds, are revealing a lot about themselves and how they really feel about their country — just as Obama has by his embrace of the filthy bastard, and his subsequent attempts to run from the clear implications and just consequences of it. And none of what they’re revealing speaks remotely well of them; it matters, and it damned well ought to. And if being deeply revolted by Obama’s close friendship with this villainous, evil cur — and his ongoing, frantic scratching like a cat in a litter box to cover it up — is wrong, well, I don’t wanna be right.

Any ideology that demands that its adherents — much less its opponents — ignore such an offense against all decency, simply because he’s “one of us,” is worthy only of contempt and, ultimately, extinction.

(Via DRJ)

Pathetic and feeble assassination plot by morons thwarted; Jim Hoft sums it up nicely:

If the meth addicts had not been arrested… And, if they had not sold sold their truck and guns for drugs by Thursday… And, if they had not rolled their vehicle down off a mountain cliff… There was a chance that they may have attempted to shoot Barack Obama from 750 yards away… If they did not have the the DT’s too bad.

Lock the morons up, throw away the key. Expect Leftist nitwits who have urged the assassination of Bush and other Republicans for years now to go absolutely bug-fuck nuts over this near-comic attempt. Not to excuse or minimize it, naturally; it’s most certainly inexcusable and disgusting. But then, so is this, and it ought to be noted somewhere besides Righty blogs.

It won’t be, sad as that is.

And in the correct sense of the word, too — somebody’s daring to tell the truth about him and his cozy relationship with despicable American terrorist Bill Ayers. And apparently, the King of Kings can’t handle the truth:

Sen. Barack Obama has launched an all-out effort to block a Republican billionaire’s efforts to tie him to domestic and foreign terrorists in a wave of negative television ads.

Obama’s campaign has written the Department of Justice demanding a criminal investigation of the “American Issues Project,” the vehicle through which Dallas investor Harold Simmons is financing the advertisements. The Obama campaign — and tens of thousands of supporters — also is pressuring television networks and affiliates to reject the ads. The effort has met with some success: CNN and Fox News are not airing the attacks.

Bauer’s letter called on the Justice Department to open “an investigation of the American Issues Project; its officers and directors; and its anonymous donors, whoever they may be.”

“This is a sad ploy to circumvent the First Amendment by a campaign who has no arguments with the merits of our ad. It’s the classic maneuver: If you can’t win on the merits, file a lawsuit,” said a spokesman for the American Issues Project, Christian Pinkston, who said his group’s non-profit status allowed it to participate in elections as long as it does a majority of policy work, which it plans to do.

Captain Ed says:

Obama should never have posted defenses of William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn on his campaign website in the first place. He should have realized that these defenses would make him look as radical as they are, especially with both of them still talking about overthrowing the American system and their mistake in getting out of the underground terrorism business. If the only answer Obama has to counter this is to threaten people who talk about it with criminal prosecution, then he’s essentially confirming everything this ad has to say.

Well, sure he is. What else can he do? The real trouble here is that the radical Leftists and their Dem baglappers simply don’t care about his long friendship with Ayers, and his lying about it. They agree with Ayers, and don’t see what all the fuss is about.

Just don’t question their patriotism, which I supposed I might as well abbreviate from here on out as JDQTP.

Update! GP has the ad the Messiah is trying to suppress through threats and intimidation.

For the PR-seeking idiots making it, that is:

Palestinian disappointment: A Gaza activist told Ynet Saturday that local residents were disappointed by the small quantities of food brought in by two boats carrying international leftist activists.

“Many people thought these boats will make a significant contribution to break the siege, not only politically but also in terms of brining in goods, equipment, food, and medicine,” he said. “However, once it turned out these boats contain too little food and mostly activists…some people left the beach disappointed.”

Well, I can certainly understand their disappointment, at any rate. Too bad, and sort of odd, that nobody thought to bring any bags of rocks to throw at their heads. As Emmanuelle Ottolinghi says:

No surprise there. As Israeli officials said, humanitarian aid can go through the regular crossings by land. This stunt was not about rescue and deliverance: it was about the romantic self-aggrandizement of a few radical chic buffoons and a propaganda stunt by their puppet masters–the not-so-innocent International Solidarity Movement. Israel acted wisely in letting them through and denying them the much hoped for moment on live camera–being boarded by Israeli naval forces.

Oh, I don’t know. I myself would’ve gotten some serious enjoyment out of seeing a flight of IAF F-16I’s descend on these puds like the very wrath of God, guns a-blazing and bombs a-bursting. But when it comes to halfwit, terrorist-loving commies, I’m bloody-minded like that. Maybe once the Paleoswinians start using the hapless boobs and their boats to smuggle arms and explosives in. Which we all know is inevitable, and likely enough to be undertaken with the full cooperation and support of these Leftards.

AND THE RIGHT TO FREE SPEECHES

Our undercover espiono…espeanaj…spies here at Cold Fury have been strategerally-placed in Denver in order to secretly monitor Democrat communications. This afternoon, we hit paydirt, intercepting Joe Biden’s Acceptance Speech!

Senator Biden:

“Friends, Romans and Country-people, bitterly clinging to your guns and religion, lend me your ear plugs. Also your hair plugs;

I have a dream, that someday you’ll ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country. It seems like only yesterday when all my troubles seemed so far away that Barack America asked me to serve as his running mate. That day, which will go down in infamy, was four score and seven years ago.

All I have to offer is blood, toil, tears and sweat, so that you shall not crucifiy mankind on a Cross of Gold. In conclusion, let me say, in my very own words, give me Liberty or give me Death and Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

Thank you.”

Remember, you heard it here–and somewhere else–first!

As Tom says, hopefully this is just the beginning:

HAIFA, Israel (Reuters) – paralyzed for the past 20 years, former Israeli paratrooper Radi Kaiof now walks down the street with a dim mechanical hum.

That is the sound of an electronic exoskeleton moving the 41-year-old’s legs and propelling him forward — with a proud expression on his face — as passersby stare in surprise.

“I never dreamed I would walk again. After I was wounded, I forgot what it’s like,” said Kaiof, who was injured while serving in the Israeli military in 1988.

“Only when standing up can I feel how tall I really am and speak to people eye to eye, not from below.”

The device, called ReWalk, is the brainchild of engineer Amit Goffer, founder of Argo Medical Technologies, a small Israeli high-tech company.

Palestinian “scientist” barbarians immediately set to work on new and more savage ways to blow it up, and to murder any paralyzed Jew pigs who might be given some small hope by it.

More on Obama family values:

Someone who made $4.2 million last year and lives in a mansion that a mobster helped pay for should not be throwing stones. When Mr. Obama’s flesh-and-blood lives in squalor, raising the standard of living of his opponent’s extended family is probably not a smart idea.

It’s scary to think that this could be a preview of an Obama presidency in which attacking the rich is all the rage, and the rich in the news media pretend it’s OK.

Yep. But that’s exactly what it is.

Mr. McCain, of course, would be publicly eviscerated if he funded an ad campaign called “12″ - as in the amount of dollars a year Mr. Obama’s half-brother subsists on. The message also could accurately point out that Mr. Obama and his wife, Michelle, have consistently fallen short of the national average in charitable contributions since they entered the highest income bracket - despite their ballyhooed “progressive” religious faith that touts “economic equality.”

Well, sure. But hey, that’s what we have a government for, right? So that limousine liberals can feel good about themselves without actually having to do anything more inconveniencing than sneer at successful and productive people and vote Social Democrat every four years?

There’s plenty more, as you’d expect with these self-righteous hypocrites.

Well, I suppose since it’s Lou Dobbs there might be an element of man-bites-dog to it, but it ought hardly to be news to most people either way:

LOU DOBBS, HOST: You know, it’s really not working because the fact is we have a tied race here. You know, with all the national media, as I’ve been saying here for months, in the tanks. My colleagues in the national media are absolutely biased, in the tank supporting the Obama candidacy while claiming the mantle of objectivity. Whether they’re in the front page of “The Washington Post,” “The New York Times,” whether it’s any one of the news casts, I mean, it’s ridiculous.

It is that. Also insidious, and dishonest to boot.

DOBBS: What happened to the post partisan lofty elevated discourse we’re going to have, Miguel?

MIGUEL PEREZ, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: I’m still waiting for it, unfortunately.

WEST: But who wants it?

PEREZ: Look, what the media has failed at here is putting pressure on Obama, especially, because McCain wanted to do those meetings together with Obama, those public forums.

DOBBS: The town hall meetings.

PEREZ: Yes, and Obama has really evaded the issue and the media has not been after him for it. And I think that’s disgraceful.

DOBBS: Well, I think the way the national media in this country right is performing, is disgraceful. And I mean, when we - “The Washington Post” had the courage to admit that it - Deborah Howell, the public editor, the ombudsman for the “Washington Post” ran a piece this past Sunday acknowledging that “The Washington Post” has put Barack Obama on the front pages of the Washington Post three times as many times as Senator McCain. “Time” magazine has run seven covers with Obama. McCain two. I mean, this is not close, folks. And it is ugly. It is nasty. And I guarantee you, we are watching a shift in the way in which the media in this country, which is already reviled by the public, I believe it’s going to be even worse.

Count on it. I certainly intend to continue to play whatever small part I can to see to the worsening of that well-earned excoriation, at least.

HANK SHEINKOPF, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Good for democrats, not so good for the nation in the long term. Barack Obama is interesting, he’s new, therefore he is news. OK. The fact that a black man can reach that pinnacle of success, raise the amount of money, run this kind of organization, beat Hillary Clinton is big news. At some point there has to be some fairness in the discussion.

One would think. However, it would be inadvisable in the extreme for one to hold one’s breath waiting for it.

DOBBS: I mean, I’ve said for some time, Diana West, that I believe, because I issue from time to time, like you, a few strong opinions. But as I say, everyone knows where I come from and I’m making no bones about what I’m doing. I’m an advocacy journalist. But I truly believe, Diana West, that every - I like you all to think about this, maybe every reporter on television, every editor, every reporter in the newspapers and magazines and on the web, there ought to be a little identification like we put on the lower third of the screen for an elected official, D or republican from Iowa or Des Moines or whatever, put that under there, we’re journalist, declare yourself.

PEREZ: That’s why newspapers have an opinion page.

DOBBS: Right.

PEREZ: It should be, opinions should be left to that page, not to the front page.

Hats off to these guys (um, and gal) for their honesty. Now just wait for them to be viciously drummed out of all Progressivistdom for their heresy and RACISM! in daring to question the MSM’s drive for the coronation of their King of Kings.

Not to impose on your generosity, Dear Readers, but our old friend Chris Muir could use a little assistance. Check it out, and do what you can for one of the Good Guys. As Chris says, “In a time of free content, DBD will live or die by its value to its readers every day, every month, every year.” That goes for this site as well, and for most of the other cogs in the Right Wing Death Machine. Help him out if you can.

The gates of the asylum have been flung wide at the Moonbat National Convention in Denver; photo-reportage at GP and LGF. I’m kinda hoping for riots, violence, and mindless destruction myself, just so mainstream Americans can get a good, long look at exactly who and what the spineless Dems are pandering to. But then, Dead Media would bury any such as best they could anyway. It would seem that the “revolutionaries” are already going a bit wobbly, and lack the courage of their convictions. I’m sure you’re all as surprised by that as I am.

Nut up, you wimps, and Fight The Power. This is your time, this is your hour. Show us clingy, bitter bastards what you’re made of.

Oops, never mind; it would seem you just did: pure, diseased dung — mushy and foul in appearance; offensively odoriferous; sickly yellow in color; and of no use to anyone, best excreted and then flushed away without a second thought or a look back.

Very sad indeed. And of course the vile, bilious Nutrooters will be shrieking with joy over it, as always. After all, Lady Thatcher isn’t human and therefore deserves none of their overhyped “compassion,” you know, what with being a conservative and disagreeing with them politically and all.

Update! Their near-boundless sympathy for religiofascist terrorist scum has pretty much used up the “compassion” quota, I suppose.

What Nutrooters and other moonbats mean by “freedom of speech:” apparently they’re as fond of commie-dictatorship methods of intimidation and oppression as their Savior is.

Common sense thwarts the bleeding heart:

“Panhandling has gotten especially bad in cities that have a reputation for being liberal and tolerant. They have tried to be open-minded, but now many of them see the problem as out of control.”

No shit, Sherlock. As in most aspects of life, you get what you settle for. Any bets on what havoc this idiotic nonsense, for instance, will wreak?

WASHINGTON — The Home Depot is tired of being forced by local governments to accommodate the day laborers who turn up in its store parking lots seeking construction work. So the Georgia-based company turned to Congress for help.

The Senate could respond this week by attaching language to the immigration bill that would prohibit city councils from requiring home improvement stores to pay for shelters or other services to help maintain orderly day labor sites.

The amendment, sponsored by Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., is designed to curtail a practice in the California communities of Mountain View and Burbank, where city councils recently have forced Home Depot to build facilities for day laborers onsite or elsewhere, hire security staff and offer bathrooms in order to get the permits necessary for its operations.

Local governments in Los Angeles, San Francisco and other cities, including in Illinois and Washington, D.C., have imposed or are considering similar measures.

And they’ll turn Home Depot store parking lots into havens for lawless illegals and potentially dangerous vagrants; in other words, just another liberal “solution” that will end up turning a mere vexation into a full-bore disaster…at which point blockhead activists and untouchable bureaucrats will step forth to prescribe more of the same. At which point Home Depot ought to start just shutting down stores in municipalities in which the incompetent authorities have decided to blithely pass along the burden of providing various social services — many of which are wrongheaded and counterproductive in the first place — on to hardware store chains and other business entities.

Update! Simply mind-blowing — and have a good look at the URL to see who’s hosting this disgusting and abominable aberration. Your tax dollars at work — panhandlers helping panhandlers, aided and abetted by government thieves.

Say, how deep does this rabbit hole go, anyway?

Updated update! Martin upbraids me a bit in the comments — quite rightly, I think. I’ve alway much preferred Lowe’s to Home Depot anyway, and Martin’s comment offers one more reason to.

Thanks once more to all who have donated to Ye Olde Begathon so far. The Begathon continues, but I’ve unstickied the original Begathon post so as not to intrude on new posts any longer, and have moved the PayPal button to the top of the right sidebar so as to make it more, uhh, prominent. I’m over halfway to paying for the new machine, but here’s the really cool thing: a family member with decent credit most kindly offered to front me the dough for a refurbed 24-inch iMac last week, and it arrived on Saturday. Spent the weekend installing software and transferring files from the work computer, which goes back to the office today. The new iMac is just amazing, and what with its more than timely arrival and having access to my work machine here, I haven’t fallen too far behind on work. Now all I gotta do is repay said family member before the credit card involved gets whacked with the interest, and as I mentioned, thanks to your kind generosity I’m over halfway there. Sincere thanks to all of you once more, both for donating and for reading. You people rock, no foolin’.

THE LITTLE OLD LADY

Joe Biden? Senator Joe Biden? …of Delaware?

You woke me up at three a.m. on a Friday night to text me that?

Oh, please. Joe Biden nor anybody else will help shore up Obama’s lack of foreign policy judgement as long as Obama praises Russia and China over America.

Obama on China:

“Everybody’s watching what’s going on in Beijing right now in the Olympics. Think about the amount of money that China has spent on infrastructure. Their ports, their train systems, their airports are all vastly superior to us now, which means if you’re a corporation deciding where to do business, you’re starting to think Beijing looks like a pretty good option.”

–Dude, did you also notice how China sentenced two frail old ladies to a year in the “reeducation” labor camps because they applied for a permit to protest? Or were you too busy watching the eye-catching Potemkin ceremonies to notice? Did you also notice how China felt the need to use little girls to cheat its way into victory in gymnastics? If that’s how they do business in Beijing, I’d pass.

Obama on Russia:

“We’ve got to send a clear message to Russia and unify our allies that they can’t charge into other countries with impunity. Of course, it helps if we are leading by example on that front.”

–You’ve sent a clear message to Russia, alright; “We’re just as bad as you are. We have no moral standing to criticize you. You pushed an old lady into the path of an oncoming bus and we pushed an old lady out of the way of an oncoming bus, so we’re both guilty of pushing old ladies.”

And the word ‘impunity’ implies the need for punishment, punishment which you would oppose in Russia’s case, but gladly inflict upon America, just like Rev. Wright teaches.

That’s not the Russia and China I knew.

Remember petty, smarmy, supercilious Eurodickhead Matthew Engel? He’s back:

We exchanged conspiratorial smiles: the Americans had lost and that always goes down well with everyone else at the Olympics.

In the main stadium around the same time, two US relay teams dropped the baton and crashed out of events they might have won. The smiles there, I understand, were less furtive.

American unpopularity at the Olympics is hardly new. It is a natural response to a great and sometimes overweening power. But it has grown: many sports journalists remember the we-know-bestism that pervaded the badly run Atlanta games in 1996; and the effect of George W. Bush’s presidency on America’s global standing is well-attested.

My own theory is that the US has never quite grasped the give-and-take character of world sport. Countries devoted to soccer, cricket and rugby play regular international fixtures; they win some and lose some, and learn to live with that. The biggest US sports (American football, baseball, basketball) are particularly their own and primarily domestic. Neither their athletes nor spectators are well-prepared for the Olympics.

Others stand aghast as they try to follow the logic of NBC, the television network that is the Olympics’ chief paymaster. It is basking in a ratings triumph for these games, so I suppose they are not interested in bleats from me.

Right in one try, shitheel. Bill has a perfect response to such snide puling:

Of course, this mindset is the weird prism through which America is viewed by too many people - including self-loathing Americans - in too many areas.

To these folks, it is somehow unfair that America has so much, especially compared to them. America’s riches are never the result of our hard work, our ingenuity, the fruits of our labor, the excellence of our political and economic systems which permit us to so outdistance the rest of the world, including the world of our self-anointed “betters.” No, we are just “lucky,” or we “steal” our wealth from the rest of the world.

And then, of course, we become “bullies,” because we do what we know is right, what time and experience have proven to us is right, and because we don’t let a global pack of wannabes (without the effort, of course), losers, also-rans, never-weres, and envy merchants con us into giving them what we have earned, what we have made and built and created, and they have not.

Yes, of course they hate us, because they want to be us, and they know they cannot. America is exceptional, and until the rest of the world figures out how to do what we have done - and continue to do - we will remain exceptional.

So, bully for us and our excess. In the wake of World War II we gave you everything you have, and protected it from murderous tyrants when you could - or would - not. Don’t blame us if you have squandered what we bestowed upon you on socialist trinkets.

And you’re welcome for the simple fact that you didn’t have to type up your offensive little snit in German, too.

Wonder why it is that jerks like Engel can rail endlessly against the tawdry unloveliness of the “Ugly American,” but are never reflective enough to notice just how ugly the European version can be, and how poorly such obvious envy and ingratitude reflects on those who self-indulgently wish to present those unworthy emotions as indicative of some sort of superiority and sophistication?

(Via Insty)

And some eventually figure it out, after the damage is damned near irreversible:

Lott even admitted that many in the room, in a state carried by former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee in the Alabama GOP primary, may not be completely happy with the presumptive nominee.

“Yeah, maybe if we had a piece of paper and wrote down our preferences it might not be, in either party, McCain or [Democratic nominee Sen. Barack] Obama, but that’s what it is and we need Republicans to stop saying, ‘Oh, woe is me, I’m not excited,’” he said, exhorting local Republicans, “Well, get excited.”

Sure, I’ll get right on that and get right in line — the minute your hapless party gives me something to get excited about.

Okay, so it would seem he learned nothing about the kind arrogance and Party über alles attitude that’s cost the Republicans pretty dearly. But one thing he does seem to have learned:

Then Lott made a couple of admissions I found startling.

“But you know what, in my heart I knew he was right,” he said of his pork barrel ways. That’s no way to do business, we shouldn’t be doing all that earmarking — it got completely out of control.

“It got out of control with Republicans and that’s why we are being punished a little bit,” he added. “Because we forgot how we got there, what we believed in, the principles that after 30 years put us in the majority, gave us the White House, the congress, the senate, the house. And then we ran out of ideas…

“But that was an aberration, that’s not who we really are.”

Well, it’s not who you’re supposed to be, at any rate, and there’s still enough of those aberrations roosting in the Republican henhouse to make some of us quite leery of you indeed. And the sooner the rest of the GOP realizes that and gets back to being a party that truly represents conservative ideals, instead of one that merely pays lip service to those ideals when it helps them in their pursuit of power and position for their own sake, the easier it’ll be for you to get people excited about your candidates again.

To be, not to seem, as the old saying goes.

(Via Insty)