Merry Christmas!

Light blogging this holiday season which we figure we might as well enjoy for once! The Christmas Message still rings out loud and clear over 2,000 from the day it was first proclaimed: "Peace on Earth. Good will towards men."

Sadly, mankind has had a tendency since then to ignore this simple message. But we're working on it.

Meanwhile, may our small legion of readers and their families have the best of Christmas holidays. We'll be back soon, as Congress and the 500 or so 2008 presidential candidates will return from their own holidays, probably queuing right up at the "Returns" window looking for a bit of extra post-holiday cash.

No Giuliani Scandal? Who Knew?

For those of you who have been following the semiotics of the perfectly awful Rudy Giuliani scandal, here's a startling revelation from the generally scurrilous HuffPo via Instapundit:

HUFFINGTON POST: Giuliani's Exoneration Over Expense Scandal Falls On Deaf Ears. "Over the past several weeks, Rudy Giuliani's presidential aspirations have been weighed down by allegations that he hid trip expenses to see then-mistress Judith Nathan by billing them to obscure city agencies. Now, however, a new review of records has partially exonerated Giuliani for what was widely perceived to be a cover-up. And conservatives and even impartial observers are bemoaning that the scandal received far more attention compared to the revelations of innocence. "

Gee, let's see. The media blows way out of proportion an alleged scandal surrounding the then front-running Republican presidential candidate and flogs it for all it's worth, day after day. Rudy has to defend himself against nothing on TV day after day. Rudy drops in the polls.

Now the story has been proven to be almost entirely false, Rudy is largely vindicated, so from the media we get—silence? Has all the earmarks of another Clintonista hit job. Point in fact is that internal and external pollings over the past few months have viewed Hillary as increasingly vulnerable due to her persistently high negatives. Vulnerable to the point that an unconventional Republican opponent like Rudy might sink her presumed upcoming Queenship rather handily in the hinterlands.

What to do? Smear your opponent with moral allegations that the MSM will surely lap up, trumpet your own plausible deniability, and let the smear do its dirty work. Very effective. Rudy's unusual campaign strategy has been at least temporarily derailed, right at the wrong time. Hillary's minions have wounded the man who has arguably been the surprise Republican front-runner up to this point. And with the press withdrawing and not correcting their string of false stories, many of the public now view it as an established fact that Rudy is a crook. Mission accomplished.

Kind of reminds you of another ongoing brouhaha that's occurring within Hillary's own party: the horrendous and perfectly awful meme about Barack Obama's drug use as a callow youth, which is also getting the full treatment in the press:

A top adviser to Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign said Wednesday that Democrats should give more thought to Sen. Barack Obama's admissions of illegal drug use before they pick a presidential candidate.

Obama's campaign said the Clinton people were getting desperate. Clinton's campaign tried to distance itself from the remarks.

Bill Shaheen, a national co-chairman of Clinton's front-runner campaign, raised the issue during an interview with The Washington Post...

Here we get the name of the smear-artist: Bill Shaheen. Except you'll note that the first graf here again gives Shaheen some culpable deniability to hide from as, on behalf of his patrons, he goes for the one Democrat who is genuinely giving Hillary a run for her money. In this case, Shaheen can claim he's only "mentioning" something that's already been reported so that Obama supporters can give "more thought" to the issue. One that, lest we forget, dogged Bill Clinton himself in the 1992 campaign where he famously "experimented" with marijuana but "didn't inhale."

As Wonker himself can attest, having attended Georgetown University at the same time as Bill, the only way you could avoid inhaling was to have a girlfriend who baked the stuff into "Alice B. Toklas" brownies. (But then, what's okay for Bill and Hill may be wrong for everybody else because they say so.)

Republicans, and Obama, should learn that the only way to counterattack the standard Clinton propaganda machine, geared not only toward discrediting an opponent but driving his or her reputation into the gutter forever, is to lay out the truth, get it on the web, and mount an equal if not greater counterattack based on the Clintons' real scandals involving the same offenses. Like Bill's own admitted indulgence in illegal substances. Or maybe Hillary's firing of career White House travel office people on totally false, trumped up charges, just so she could hire her pals.

Whether it's Rudy or Obama, always remember: if it's a lousy, lowlife smear story on a candidate or politician deemed dangerous to the Clintonistas, dimes to donuts it came from the Clinton camp. Scoundrels and opportunists all, lusting only for power and with no program save for warmed over, feelgood socialism, they are all leftists without morals, skilled in Stalinist tactics but devoid of realistic solutions for anything, save for extracting more money from your wallets.

If the press had any sense at all, they'd refuse to grab at these stories. But most of them, though not all, are still in the pockets of the Clintonistas, eagerly awaiting another 8 years of amoral fun and frolic while Al Qaeda rebuilds its forces, once again unmolested.

As for Shaheen, husband, BTW, of New Hampshire Democrat Governor and current U.S. Senate candidate Jeanne Shaheen:

Officially, Bill Shaheen is off the Hillary Clinton campaign.

Sure. But he'll be hanging around the sleazy periphery, as more FOBs (Friends of Bill) try to grab the reins of power in Washington next year. Be sure to vote against 'em all, or we are all in big trouble fiscally, politically, and internationally.

Meanwhile, for a little more background on the current anti-Obama shenanigans from the source just cited above—a "progressive" website no less—click here. Apparently, even some sober leftists are getting wary of the Clintons as Hillary's campaign.

"Global Warming": Propaganda Begins to Crumble

Via Little Green Footballs, nothing less than a recent, little-noted U.S. Senate Report casts very serious doubt indeed on the relentless "global warming" propaganda that seems to have taken the place of hard scientific evidence in current discussions:

Over 400 prominent scientists from more than two dozen countries recently voiced significant objections to major aspects of the so-called “consensus” on man-made global warming. These scientists, many of whom are current and former participants in the UN IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), criticized the climate claims made by the UN IPCC and former Vice President Al Gore.

The new report issued by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee’s office of the GOP Ranking Member details the views of the scientists, the overwhelming majority of whom spoke out in 2007.

Even some in the establishment media now appears to be taking notice of the growing number of skeptical scientists. In October, the Washington Post Staff Writer Juliet Eilperin conceded the obvious, writing that climate skeptics “appear to be expanding rather than shrinking.” Many scientists from around the world have dubbed 2007 as the year man-made global warming fears “bites the dust.”

Aside from the odd subject-verb agreement problem in the last sentence above, you get the point. The "global warming" crap has finally gotten an increasing number of scientists so fed up that they've decided to speak out whatever the consequences, forcing even the MSM to pause from their ruthless support for the "global warming" nutcases and take a look at their own sanity.

Nonetheless:

Many of the scientists featured in this report consistently stated that numerous colleagues shared their views, but they will not speak out publicly for fear of retribution.

For many years, Wonk took some encouragement from the fact that far left propagandists in academia had not yet penetrated the hard sciences. The "global warming" hysteria that's gripped academia and most media outlets proves convincingly that even this wall has been breached. Fortunately, however, objective scientists, although obviously intimidated, have begun to speak up, fed up, no doubt, that this socalled movement has been led by a loony Pied Piper named Al Gore, a pompous dope whose intellectual credentials have objectively been proven to be inferior to those of the oft-derided Chimpy BushMacHitler. (And thus were worthy of the Nobel Prize.)

For millions of years the earth has warmed and cooled in cycles that stretch from decades to hundreds of years. That such a cycle is occurring now seems reasonable. That homo sapiens, particularly the American variety, is solely to blame for this is very much in dispute.

This nonsense was, is now, and ever shall be yet another attempt to make George Bush and by extension the USA to appear guilty of crimes against humanity in order to intimidate this country into being ruled by largely European leftist elites. Kyoto, Bali, the corrupted Nobel Prize are all instruments of the left, being put to use in yet another attempt to put American-style capitalism and democracy out of business. Looks like people are finally catching on to these recidivist bozos. Big time.

Thompson Campaign Counterattacks Ron Paul Juggernaut

Just spotted this novel idea advanced by the heretofore flagging Fred Thompson presidential campaign:

(2007-12-17) — Republican Presidential candidate Fred Thompson today, upon hearing that rival Ron Paul’s supporters had raised $6 million in 24 hours to commemorate the Boston Tea Party, called on his supporters to match that figure in gun purchases before Christmas to mark George Washington’s victory at the Battle of Trenton.

Congrats to the Thompson people for a great political stunt!

What? This report is from Scrappleface? That's very different.

Never mind.

Return from the Blizzard Bowl

Posting has been a bit thin here of late. Yours truly was called up to Cleveland last week on personal matters, ending up in the middle of a classic lake-effect blizzard this weekend past that challenged his latent Midwestern driving skills. Fortunately, the memory banks were activated and the rented silver Dodge Avenger was more than up to the snowy challenge.

So were the Cleveland Browns who bested the Buffalo Bills 8-0 in a lakefront football slugfest where the line judges needed snow and leaf blowers to uncover the yardage lines and hash marks.

Now that we're back in Dixie where we belong, we'll be back on the prowl, looking for the latest offensive moves by the Democrats and their pals in the MSM, the judiciary, academia, and the entertainment world. It won't be difficult to find the latest outrages. Our lefty friends no longer even bother trying to cover things up any more.

We'll be back...

Slow Blogging this Week

As if it isn't already obvious. The Wonk actually has wall to wall business meetings this week as his company continues its work to make America great. Blogging time will be grabbed as the occasion arises, but don't expect much.

With primary season almost upon us, however, look for plenty of prognostications and concomitant cultural tie-ins here.

And as usual, we'll frequently be wishing you all a Merry Christmas during December, which also happens to be Wonk's birth month. Yes, indeed, we're in that Christmas mood again, highly appropriate during the most wonderful time of the year. Our Yuletide cheer is only intensified by the fact that wishing our readers a Merry Christmas is SO non-PC.

The Nanny of Lake Woebegone

Power Line's Scott Johnson opines on the most recent screed of Minnesota's Chief Scold, the increasingly tedious and obviously socialist Garrison Keillor who explores the subprime mortgage issue (clearly his speciality) and comes to the inevitable conclusion that It's Bush's Fault.

Johnson sums up Keillor's platitudinous gasbagging thusly:

If most Americans are too stupid to understand that the "A" in ARM stands for "adjustable," and that mortgage rates can, in fact, adjust upwards...

...if our business leaders are too greedy to avoid making bad decisions ...

...if we're all somehow left "holding the bag" for problems caused by the aforementioned stupidity and greed...

...then, the logic of Keillor and other Nanny State fans kicks in, like this:

a) We are smart, unlike you;
b) We are free from greed, unlike like you;
c) Therefore, we must save you from yourselves, by regulating more of your life.

Higher taxes? Less freedom? A sclerotic, French-style welfare state? These are but a small price to pay for a total absence of suffering, bad decisions, worry and fear.

Which brings us to a fundamental difference between conservatives and liberals. Conservatives want the freedom to pursue happiness on their own terms. Liberals think they have a right to happiness and that it should be delivered, like a pizza.

Or, for analogy fans:

When you understand this, you understand why the liberal version of the American dream -- no worries, free health care and a guaranteed income, among other things -- would be like living in your parents' basement, for life.

Read the whole thing.