Twas the Snark Before Christmas

Earlier today Bit wrote:

Ann Althouse, who we quote around here far too seldom, has today’s SOTD 

Well two issues, why don’t I quote Ann Althouse more.   She somewhat down on my reading stack.  I usually find more quote worthy material before I get to Ann.   

Then I have never been able to figure just where to pigeon hole Ann.  She a law professor who doesn’t blog law much and either a very liberal conservative or vise versa.

As to the Snark of the Day, I like my snarks some what on the snarkier side, and Ann is tends to be more touchy feely than snarky.   Now I did snark Clarice Feldman on the same Mrs. Clinton video.    I would have tempted to snark Kyle-Anne Shiver, American Thinker:

Hillary’s holiday adleft me running for the ladies’ room and searching for the Pepto Bismol.  How any self-respecting American could view this advertisement, portraying Hillary as this year’s Socialist Santa, with anything but visceral loathing is beyond my capacity to fathom.

Now Kyle-Anne knows snark.

Can the President simply kill most congressional pork by issuing an executive order.   The Congressional Research Service is of the opinion he can.    Gaius, Blue Crab Boulevard, asks,” Could It Really Be This Simple:”

Mark Tapscott reports that there is a legal opinion out there that says that most earmarks – or at least those not actually attached to bills directly voted on by Congress – could be eliminated by a simple executive order. The earmarks attached to bills by committee reports may not have the actual force of laws

According to the Constitution,  a bill must be presented to and approved by both houses before it can become law.   Obviously, an attachement to a spending bill that was never presented, much less approved, by either house is not law.

Kill the pork Mr. President.

Ann Althouse, who we quote around here far too seldom, has today’s SOTD, where she’s speaking of Hillary Clinton’s new campaign ad:

 “Isn’t this like when you get presents from family members and you know they charged it on your credit card?”

I note over at Right Wing News that John Hawkins has posted an interview he did with Fred Thompson’s wife, Jeri.

John Hawkins: Now Hillary Clinton has been touting her “experience” as First Lady on the campaign trail, as if it’s an enormous asset that makes her particularly well qualified to be President. She’s even taking credit for some of the things her husband did as President. As a potential First Lady, what do you think of that?

Jeri Thompson: Well, I try not to pass judgment on a lot of this stuff because everyone has had different experiences. What I know is that the experiences Fred has had, from getting married at 17 and working in a factory, putting himself through college and then through law school, being a Federal prosecutor at 28, being minority council at 30, moving on to help Marie Ragghianti take down a corrupt Governor, playing himself in the movies, being a US Senator, and doing all the things he has done since then qualifies him to be President.

Marrying (him) doesn’t qualify me to be in any of those decision making processes with him. All that qualifies me for is to be his wife and that’s what I ought to do.

I guess it’s a leadpipe cinch that we’re not going to see her running for president, any century soon. To me it speaks volumes to the man’s qualities, that he has a woman of such quality, and such accomplishment, who is clearly devoting such a large chunk of her life to him. Would that we could be all so lucky.

Makes quite a contrast to one of the current presidential candidates, doesn’t it?

Is Keith Olbermann’s job in peril?  Eric Cartman is now doing sports.

Hat Tips:  Nigel, There it Goes;  Ace, Ace of Spades Hq.

Mike Huckabee campaigns as religious Baptist.  Yet how religious is Huck?

Robert Novak, in the Washington Post, questions the depth of Huckabee’s Baptist support:

More than personality explains why not all his Baptist brethren have signed on the dotted line for Huckabee. He did not join the “conservative resurgence” that successfully rebelled against liberals in the Southern Baptist Convention a generation ago.

Ann Coulter goes farther, and questions both Huckabee’s intelligence and sincerity of his supposed religous convictions.

Hat Tip: Allah Pundit: Hot Air,

Huckabee is a liberal Arkansas politician, who would be a democrat, if the party was not anti-human life .

Addendum I:

Jim Geraghty, Nation Review, adds weight to Ann Coulter’s argument that Huckabee just isn’t all that smart.  Huckebee has picked a fight with Rush Limbaugh:

“It’s elites who want to talk to Iran, not Middle America. It’s the elites who are soft on crime, not Middle America.”

You don’t claim to be running against the Washington elites and then pick a fight with the person who makes his living skewering the same elites.

Addendum II:

Should have checked first, but Michellle is all over the Huckup.

Addendum III: (Bit)

Stop the ACLU is also on the case, with a fairly decent reax roundup.

I said some time ago that it was not going to take a great deal to knock Huckabee of the top. The real trick here, was being patient enough to let him do it to himself.

NORTH BALTIMORE, Ohio —AP- The last World War I veteran in Ohio, and one of only three known remaining U.S. veterans of the conflict, has died. J. Russell Coffey was the last WWI vet in the state, according to the Veterans Affairs Department. He died Thursday at the age of 109, said the Smith-Crates Funeral Home in North Baltimore, about 35 miles south of Toledo.

The funeral home did not say where Coffey died or the cause of death. He had been living in the Blakely Care Center, a nursing home.

The story goes on to say that he didn’t actually see any service in World War I, having enlisted a mere three weeks before the end of hostilities.

109, though… God bless him.

From the Associated Press, B.J. Clinton called Mrs. Clinton a genius:

”The reason she ought to be president, over and above her vision and her plans is that she has proven in every position she has ever had in life, whether it was in elected office or not, that she is a world-class genius in making positive changes in other people’s lives,”

Mean while back at the ranch, Mrs. Clinton once again proves she far from a genius, from Allah Pnndit, Hot Air:

“If they committed a crime…we have to deport them immediately, no questions asked, no legal process. You put them on a plane to wherever they came from.”

You see Mrs. Clinton, there is the this document called the Constitution of the United States, of which as a lawyer you are required to be familar and which as a senator you required to uphold.   For reason far beyond the reasoning of a rational person,  Mrs. Clinton seems to believe  that while the Constitution protects illegal combatents not in the United States, it does not protect residents of the United States.   Then Elian Gonzalez already knew that.

Jake Tapper at ABC is reporting:ABC News has learned that the campaign of Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., has registered the names of two Web sites with the express goal of attacking her chief rival, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill.It’s the first time this election cycle a presidential campaign has launched a Web site with the express purpose of of launching serious criticisms on a rival.

Now look, I am reluctant to turn this site into all Hillary all the time, and I know it’s coming damn near to that… just within the last week.

Thing is, it’s kind of hard to avoid given the unending stream of nastiness coming out of the Clinton campaign. To say the woman’s endlessly ruthless, is to understate the matter on an order of scale. That’s not exactly an enviable position for somebody who is running a campaign ostensibly on their likability. That’s part of what’s so damn funny about all this. I know of very few people who consider her even remotely likable, even her own people are starting to admit that her negatives are sky high. Keep in mind, these are fellow Democrats she’s going over. Can you imagine what it’s going to be about toward October and November if she gets the nomination?

Democrats Against Hillary… over on Blogspot is saying exactly this.. and they give the reason:

Hillary Clinton called Barack Obama a crack dealer for a reason: to prove to Democratic primary voters that she’ll fight dirty against the Republicans and to show that she’s willing to do anything, no matter how disgusting, to become president.

She already has a reputation as an untamable shrew, so none of this should be any surprise to any regular reader of any of the right side blogs, particularly this one. But you gotta figure at some point that the woman is just going to be too hot for the voters to handle. Then again, given those two I was discussing about four o’clock this morning, perhaps there is no limit to the amount of this nonsense the Democrats will put up with. Maybe. The first couple of primaries, I think will tell the tale. All the positive polling data in the world didn’t help Howard Dean. He was in the lead at this point, remember?

The interesting thing about all of this is the amount of money that the Democrats are spending to beat each other up. Most certainly this is money that is not going to be spent going after Republicans. Granted, that under election finance law… laws she and her erstwhile husband have a questionable past on…these are separate books, the primary expenditures and the general election expenditures. And the Clinton machine has lots of money to spend. Does anyone really think the Chinese connection dried up when Norman Hsu got caught?

Yet, consider the average donor to some Democrat other than Hillary. He’s already been fairly generous in trying to fight the well funded… and quite probably illegally funded, Hillary Clinton smear machine. Assuming, despite all that money spent, Hillary Clinton doesn’t win the nomination, (which seems to be the way things are going at the moment) that leaves whoever the eventual nominee is with a donor base that’s fairly well tapped out. That has got to affect the general election outcome.

If I’m a Republican candidate for president, I’m watching this battle on the Democrat side, with some degree of relief. The Republicans are bound to benefit from Hillary Clinton’s scorched earth policy. They could hardly do else, at the end of the cycle.

Addendum: (David L)

All Mrs. Clinton all the time?  I object to the omission of my efforts to include both B.J. and Mrs. Clinton is my bashing err blogging.  The Clintons are a political tag team, one can not exist without the other.

The Clinton tag team allows one Clinton make outragous lies without the other Clinton having to bother to defend the lie.  Witness the B.J.’s yarn about sending Forty-One as an envoy and his claim that his wife was a genius.  If Mrs. Clinton made either of these statements, she’d be obligated t defend them, but could not.  So while B.J makes them, Mrs. Clinton gets a free pass.

Addendum II: (Bit)

Your objection is noted, and stipulated to.
Matter of fact, I heard a story the other day, and I don’t remember exactly… where the story involved Bill Clinton showing up with Hillary Clinton to some kind of presser. Hillary Clinton was busy speaking outside of a shopping plaza, and Bubba decided he was getting bored and went into the grocery store, and, well, most of the crowd that was outside followed him inside, and the situation yet well out of control. Hillary’s left standing on the stage outside wondering where the hell her crowd went, meantime Bill’s inside signing autographs. The fact is that he’s more popular than she ever was, which is a twist in her pantyhose that she’s still having trouble negotiating.

I suspect this disparity is going to be a factor in her losing the nomination, but we’ll see.

Of the two, I suspected he gets away with the grander lies, based solely on that popularity.

Just weeks away from a possible surprise victory in the primaries, Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz has been waging a ferocious behind the scenes battle with the NEW YORK TIMES, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned, and has hired DC power lawyer Bob Bennett to mount a bold defense against charges of giving special treatment to a lobbyist!

That’s Drudge of course.

Wasn’t it just day before yesterday that I compared the New York Times to the National Enquirer?

Mark Halperin asks:

Why is Drudge highlighting the McCain story, but has not touched other political hot potatoes that are swirling in the ether? Answer that, and you probably will have a better handle on who the major parties will nominate than any polling data can give you.

Not surprisingly, I think Halperin misjudges Drudge in this.  (Time after all, has their own motivations, as I mentioned yesterday. )

Say what you will about Drudge, but his big thing was, is, and always will be beating the mainstream press at its own game.  The reason that Drudge is not doing anything about the other stories floating around here is because the New York Times doesn’t plan on printing them anytime soon.  They did plan on printing this one. Far as I know, they still do.

And so the question becomes, why was the New York Times planning on printing this one just now, and they were not planning on printing some of the other stories floating around out there?  I submit that if you answer that question, you will probably have a pretty good handle on who considers McCain a threat.

Hint: Since the New York Times has rarely if ever been sympathetic to Republican causes, it’s a lead pipe cinch that they are acting in their traditional role of being the Democrat party house organ. Therefore, the people that consider McCain a threat, and who are behind this story, are not Republicans.

Radio Equalizer…

Crazed libtalker Mike Malloy is at it again, but this time his on- air “violence fantasy” has a new target: Internet kingpin Matt Drudge.

After telling listeners during Tuesday night’s program that he’s recently been leaning toward supporting John Edwards, Malloy was informed of the Drudge headline and link to the National Enquirer’s story about the Democrat presidential candidate’s alleged “love child”. His response:

MALLOY: Drudge? Aw, Drudge, somebody ought to wrap a strong Republican entrail around his neck and hoist him up about six feet in the air and watch him bounce.

Brian reports this isn’t the first time for this creep.

I say it’s time for action. What say we wrap up microphone cord around Malloy’s neck and hoist him up about 6 feet in the air and watch him bounce?  My guess is the mic cord will give us a better bounce than what he’s suggesting.

Oh… calls for violence make you angry?  Hey, Malloy gets a pass… why not me?

Get the point?

… two people talking about Britney Spears sister getting pregnant… and one of them thought John Edwards was the father. I kid you not.

I mean, am I just too connected to this stuff? I like people, but the abject stupidity like this drives me crazy.

Oh… and the one who thought Edwards was seeing the 16 year old… would still vote for him. Can you beat it? Is it any wonder we’re in the shape we’re in politically?

Honorable mention in the OTB caption contest last night.

OK, I gotta hand this one to Captain Ed. Ed wins our “Snark of the Day” award.

Simply put, Ayman and Osama need some publicity. They need to get more recruits for their murderous enterprises, volunteers stupid enough to commit suicide while the leaders make videos and chat with journalists. No doubt some journalists will oblige them, attempting to discover what makes the terrorist duo tick. If so, they should insist that the first questions will be “What are your exact coordinates?” and “How long will you be there?”, and pass the answers along to the US. Maybe this time we’ll even do something about it.

LOL…. this one made my evening.

DETENTION OPERATIONS HOLD EID AL ADHA RELEASE CEREMONY

Posted: 20 Dec 2007 05:34 AM CST

DETENTION OPERATIONS HOLD EID AL ADHA RELEASE CEREMONY

COALITION FORCES CAPTURE SPECIAL GROUPS CRIMINAL ELEMENT LEADER, DETAIN THREE SUSPECTS

Posted: 20 Dec 2007 05:30 AM CST

COALITION FORCES CAPTURE SPECIAL GROUPS CRIMINAL ELEMENT LEADER, DETAIN THREE SUSPECTS