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Enter stage left a bumbling second-rate double-digit IQ misfit from Florida who happens to have stumbled into being re-elected by facing a less-than-competent Republican. The photo of Sen. Bill Nelson sitting with Bashar Assad is comic, in an opera bouffe fashion. As the term implies, both of these fellows are buffoons, but Assad is a murderous buffoon who killed Rafiq Hariri and is exerting every effort to halt the UN Investigative Committee's Inquiry by trying to overthrow the Lebanese government. I wonder if Bill the bland buffoon asked Assad the killer buffoon whether he had anything to do with it? Billy did admit to getting Assad to say he's interested in working with the US on the Iraq border and Iraqi internal security issues. But on the only issue that Bashar has any influence over, this criminal told Nelson that the situation in Lebanon and Syria's support for Hezbollah and Hamas were none of the US's business. Billy allowed that that was not as encouraging. Duhhh...

The Wall Street Journal has a serious article which makes a case for Congress getting more involved, but unfortunately, Nelson isn't the only buffoon wanting to visit Damascus. A real parade of fools, three more of the most mendacious slippery mike-hogging show-offs in Congress, Sens. Dodd, Specter, and of course, J[ust] F[or] Kerry are eager to demonstrate their heft and gravitas by going to Damascus, getting the photo-op sitting next to the stick-insect [can't wait to see the bouffant Kerry and crew-cut baby-Assad photo], and then coming back to be interviewed by "serious" journalists like Baby-Face Russert and Earnest Brian Williams. And don't forget Matt Lauer.

These solons are ostensibly going to Damascus about Iraq, but the Arab world will interpret their visits as paying homage to Assad, thereby increasing this incompetent blustering murderous nitwit's prestige and emboldening him to more excesses in Lebanon, the only place that Assad has real influence. Except in Jim Baker's fevered brain.

So serial recidivist megalo-mikehogs like Dodd, Nelson, Specter and Hairdo are going to visit an all-but-open-and-shut-case murderer-wannabe of the country next door. And giving American foreign influence in the region an even less enviable profile.

President Bush and Condi Rice are going to have to exercise what little political clout they have left, and use it wisely, to counter these grandstanders on their self-promoting junkets.

Ah, but there's always Dennis Kucinich, now a presidential candidate. That photo-op will be precious as this five-foot wonder stands next to six-six stick-insect Assad!

To be fair, the noted that the Drudgereport reflected the media bias rather than focussing or spotlighting liberal media items, which of course the Groseclose study showed was reflected in 70% of the media items and publications studied. But The New York Times and CBS-TV were over eighty percent on the ADA scale, according to the ADA ratings long used by liberals to denote fidelity to their causes. The author goes on to give the media forty whacks and Pinch Sulzberger 41:

[Gates said] "We are not winning in Iraq." Did he really say those words? No. At Mr. Gates's confirmation hearing, Senator Levin, a Democrat of Michigan, asked him if we were winning in Iraq, and he answered, "No."

Lucianne, of course, pointed out that Mr. Gates went on to say we're not losing, either. His exact words were: "Our military forces win the battles that they fight; our soldiers have done an incredible job in Iraq. And I'm not aware of a single battle that they have lost. And I didn't want my comments to be interpreted as suggesting that they weren't being successful in their endeavors."

Mr. Gates, you can be 100% certain that everything you say from now on as secretary of defense will be misinterpreted by a certain New York publication headed by Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger.

Actually, a lot of the frauds on cable and broadcast TV actually said we are "LOSING" the war, which is even worse than "not winning," which is worse than the terse "no" of Mr. Gates. The CNN gorgonette Suzy and circus performer David Gregory at NBC came forward with this inaccuracy, and Baby-face Russert chimed in as well. Matt Lauer has not yet been heard from.

[Sulzberger] is the man who in the 1960s, according to author Harry Stein, when asked by his father whom he'd rather see shot when an American soldier runs into a North Vietnamese soldier, replied: "I would want to see the American get shot. It's the other guy's country."

That statement is something Mr. Sulzberger appears to be proud of, as he repeats it from time to time. Maybe he actually believes that this lack of nationalistic empathy is necessary for good journalism. I think the truth would be a better measure of it, but the Times is continuing to put out news that is completely mendacious, even when it's not about Mr. Bush or Iraq.

It's fair to say that Pinch fits the profile that Thomas Sowell was alluding to in his excellent piece early this year on RCP that "The Fourth Estate is the Fifth Column" or, as Lucianne would put it, the "enemedia." The Sun writer goes on the frisk and fisk the NYT for its multitudinous unforced errors and points out the following:

I was certain Pope Benedict XVI had given in to Muslim pressure. Why? Because the New York Times reported this in a headline: "In Reversal, Pope Backs Turkey's Bid to Join European Union." Of course it was posted on the Drudge Report. Was it true? Not according to Richard Neuhaus, the editor and founder of First Things, a distinguished religious publication. On December 1, he wrote, "Even by today's standards, this is a breathtaking instance of journalistic shoddiness, if not downright dishonesty."

But mendacity pays in this town, whose residents survived the worst attack on this country in history, yet they still can't recognize the danger of lies in wartime if reported in the Old Gray Lady.

The enemy abroad monitors our defeatist cadres who are cluelessly following their script, which assumes that turning the American public against the war is the only way they will win it---following the Vietnam template which gorgon-in-chief Maureen at the NYT prates about bi-weekly at the very least.

The American media's Iraq trope is a mare's nest of complex flimflammery unknowingly propounded by gullible dupes. In effect, these elitist journalists are fellow-travellers of murderous terrorists they would never invite into their oh-so=toney salons and cocktail parties, let alone a sit-down dinner.

But these socialite-socialists just keep on being a transmission belt for defeat. They proclaim on a daily basis a Recessional for American Power. Their grandkids will wear burkas and kifayehs, perhaps, and these long-gone "journalist" won't know how it happened. For their efforts, they'll have passed on to those 72....oh, never mind!

One of the reasons BP bought Amoco Corp where I used to work was to get the large Russian gas fields and other good plays that Amoco had sagely negotiated.

Russia in its implacable clumsy ham-handed fashion is buying and bribing and strong-arming its way into putting the EU into an energy vise.

No media outlet has noted that Russian pressure on Georgia aims someday to influence or control the Baku/Ceyhan pipeline transiting Georgia and ensuring its energy independence from Russia, along with income from pipeline fees.

But the larger goal would be to pinch off the hose from the Azerbaijan oil spigot and put that country under the Russian sphere of influence.

The Russians are cozying up to Iran for the same reason, and along with China are going to support Iran's nuclear weapon development in the UN for "raisons d'etat" that have more to do with energy than any other goal. Russia has even got Iranian support for its brutal Chechen campaign, although the Muslims in Chechnya are ethnically and linguistically Iranian. Armenia is also an ally with both Iran and Moscow in the Russian near-abroad phalanx moving to take over control of the Caucasus.

Now if the Iranians can somehow control or even preponderantly influence Iraqi energy after the US defeatists manage to cut and depart from that sad country, the Saudis and Gulfies will cower. Believe me, they are afraid of Iran all by itself, and under the combined weight of natural gas powerhouses like Russia, Iran, and tiny Qatar, will bend in the new wind blowing from the north and east. Among the three of them, they have more than 50% of the world's proven gas reserves.

Jonathan Stern of London's OxfordEnergy may disagree, but as Ukraine found out early this year, the Russians play hardball without gloves, in the middle of winter!

Vladimir Putin's may be uttering platitudes that the March 2006 EU Green Energy Policy gurus to the extent that these ostriches don't foresee a problem, but the IEA World Energy Outlook note there is more than one cloud out there on the horizon.

And an OPEC for Natural Gas, with Venezuela hosting this year's Forum [the Venz don't even have a gas export program yet], is in an inchoate nascent stage. This ONGEC might be to the 21st century 20 years down the road, what the Oil Exporter's OPEC was in the twentieth.

Dick Cheney for one is concerned, and a lot of EU countries are starting to stir from their slumber, although German Judas-Goat Gerhard Schroeder at Gazprom's pipeline keeps lulling them back to sleep.

Like a chess player, Putin in his mid-fifties may be planning strategically with a lot of moves already in his head. We'll know for sure what's up if he decides to overthrow the Constitution and run for a third term next year. [Oops, I meant revise the Constitution!]

But to end on a high note, there is one joker in the pack. And that is the continuing development of oil and gas extraction technology far beyond what is anticipated. That has been the case since I first got acquainted with the oil industry and may continue, in the which-case, the entire scenario will be rosier.

Unless Al Gore is elected Prez in '08 and Global Warming hysteria causes the collective collapse of energy exploration and development.

They used to say that the road from socialism to communism was alcoholism. Now they might say that the road from socialism to capitalism would be de-monopolizing alcohol.

And yes, drugs in the US do need to be de-oligarchized, but that's politically unlikely with the Congress we have today, almost bought by big-Pharma and not just rented full-time.

Carter claimed that people "in the real world" have been buying his book. However, Carter's allegations that people don't listen to him may indicate that he is aware of the fact that most Americans regard him as hopelessly addicted to self-promotion, mouthing platitudes of ultra-left sloganeers and sounding like Cindy Sheehan on a particularly bad day. His statements are disregarded because of his foolish policies and incompetent administration during his [thankfully] short tenure in the Oval Office. He managed to get double-digit inflation and interest rates at the same time as running the country into a recession after his seven economic plans---a true Trifecta of ineptitude.

His foreign policy was so badly-conceived and poorly-executed that Iran spiraled into Islamic Revolution, largely because this inept peanut farmer's Human Rights chief in the State Department, Pat Derian, refused to sign off on allowing the Shah's police rubber bullets---months later the Shah's police used live ammunition on students, killing hundreds, and then even the bazaari middle class opted for ridding Iran of the Shah. Another tale of Carter's serial brainlessness.

And his fact-checking makes even the third-rate New Yorker look competent by comparision, although Carter does not commit the solecism of "Saudia Arabia" in a Hertzberg column a while back.

And I must, while I'm at it, again express my sadness at the passing early this year of Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg, who was one of the sole sane influences at Columbia University's Middle East department and was my mentor on the Middle East while I served as a Middle East consultant for John Anderson in the [ultimately successful] national effort to rid the country of the bane of the Carter Presidency.

I thank God every day for Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, who saved the US and UK from eventual capitulation to the Eurocommunism that Carter and his Labour analogues in Britain aspired to. And greased the skids for the final downfall of the Soviet Union into the dustbin of history.

As they say in the green machine, sh!t rolls downhill, or in this pick-up analog, downcage.

I just saw Congressman Tom Tancredo at Michigan State get the Columbia U. treatment. Even though the police tried to protect the Congressman, the riffraff pulled the fire alarm twice and the building was evacuated both times.

Too bad the Young Repubs don't have a contingent of the Guardian Angels around to protect them from the thugs. That sure would have helped at Columbia.

And good luck running for Congress, even though you might regret your committee assignments or get disinvited from the Bush White House like Tancredo claims on Hannity that he has been [Karl Rove was the culprit, TT says].

There were flaws in the intelligence and the military victory completely neglected to mop up, preferring a quick conquest of Baghdad. From then on, the incompetent desk-jockey Rumsfeld and his scattershot boss Cheney hijacked the post-war rebuilding from State Dept experts under Gen. Garner, elbowed out Khalilzad as co-honcho with Jerry Bremer, and let Bremer manage to completely bungle every single decision during his tenure as Pro-Consul in Baghdad. If GWB had consciously set out to completely mismanage the situation, he probably would have been unable to mess up things more, even with his Harvard MBA. As Colin Powell told him before the invasion, "Pottery Barn Rules: you break it, you own it."

But Fouad has written another profound and brilliant book, The Foreigner's Gift, concerning the expedition into Iraq. This describes the opportunity which the Iraqis were given, a rare and priceless gift, to overthrow millennia of historical detritus and to construct a new nation out of the horrific dictatorship of a ruthless savage. Perhaps like France was bled white in WWI and thus turned tail and skedaddled in WWII, the Iraqis had simply had too many good people, professional and artisanal and otherwise, eliminated by Saddam's frequent purges of brave independent souls. The herd had been culled of its bravest animals. The rest were not ready to rule themselves.

Or perhaps the land of Iraq succumbed to the ancient evils lurking in this riverine basin of multiple religious sects and creeds and simply reverted to default position---a stasis of brittle paralysis devoid of true civic virtue and punctuated by terrible acts of terror and then reprisal.

So the Middle East is again reverting across the landscape, and Lebanon again is seeing its best leaders murdered by an autocracy next door which has no pretense of being democratic, and fears democracy as a threat to its own vested interests. And desires the wealth and talent of Lebanon being sluiced into Damascus's hands through corrupt Lebanese quislings.

And Iran asserts its own murderous interests in the regional hegemony it seeks, by assisting Syria in Lebanon and against Israel, and aiding Moqtader Al-Sadr in Iraq.

And meanwhile the Sunni autocracies of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan wring their hands and ask for US assistance, as do the beleaguered Sunnis now in Iraq as they face repression by the Shiite majority.

James Baker may come now into the picture and start talking to Iran and Syria, but the prospect of any real success coming out of these talks is probably far-fetched. The best he can do is persuade these two deluded autocracies, Iran and Syria, to relent a bit, copping a plea, so to speak, to let the US off the hook. And Baker will sell Lebanon down the river, as Kissinger did the Kurds in '75 in his negotiations with the Shah, as fast as he can get the Lebanese out of the way.

Realpolitik, they call it.

Yes! The deranged Bush=basher retort cures all ills.

Yes! The deranged Bush=basher retort cures all ills.

Sorry, the HTML must have gone haywire on this article, which begins with the word "Canada."

Yes, a black UT on one of the cable shows defending Richards insisted he was Catholic, but I'll take it from Rubenstein's mouth.

Richards had a certain antic charm, but he fell victim to the Seinfeld Curse, as his talents were meager and his whack-job persona unfortunately close to his real persona. A real one-trick pony!

And the blacks in the audience weren't even heckling him, according to attendees at the event, but talking to each other and ignoring him, which probably insulted this thin-skinned marginal-sociopath past the breaking point.

When he told them to shut up, reportedly they kidded that he couldn't even get hired in a movie, which sent him ballistic. Then the n-word spewed out of his mouth.

If this Jew wants to make amends with the black community, why doesn't he hire a black PR expert, instead of a grandstanding jackass masquerading as a friend of the black race? Or like the leftie blogs, put on blackface?

I noticed a couple of C Block interruptions on a couple of other Glenn Beck shows. CNN has so many ultra-left moles that any interruption of their whack-job agenda merits an interruption of programming of sensible material.

I expect Lou Dobbs to suffer the same mysterious glitches as he grows more sensible on immigration issues.

Oh dear. Last I checked, a question can be supercilious. You sound a bit apodictic and a bit off base yourself. And how would you know how wide my credentials are in TV? And my other unmentioned credentials, how would you know about those? And your reading comprehension sure missed para 1 in my original post. A more subtle reading of my post than you seem capable of would discern that I'm not actually supporting the ticket, just suggesting it would win. Evidently that's not in your skill-set.

Pedantic and apodictic, you certainly have those bases covered. Plus what the psychologists like to call "projecting."

To answer your supercilious question: I've been national staff in three presidential campaigns and many smaller ones. Am very acquainted with both McCain and Rudy. Also worked for three TV networks. And that is the reason McCain and Giuliani might be the only possibility, since working for TV makes one believe that a conservative no longer has a chance, unless he is another Reagan running against a total lame-o like Carter. Reagan had had the previous media exposure to surmount the MSM bias toward Carter. This will not happen to Mitt Romney, a person who otherwise I think much better than the "dream ticket" members.

Also, reading skills: The third sentence in the first paragraph does address the VP problem.