MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

Panelists on the Weekly Gang-up:
Caroline Daniel, White House correspondent for the Financial Times.
Michael Duffy, assistant managing editor, TIME magazine.
Steve Roberts, syndicated columnist
11:00 panel:
Tom Gjelten, correspondent, NPR and is working on a book about Cuba
David Ignatius, Washington Post columnist and co-moderator (with Fareed Zakaria) of an online forum on international affairs at washingtonpost.com called "PostGlobal."
Andrea Mitchell, chief foreign affairs correspondent for NBC and author of "Talking Back."


This week's panels, especially the 11:00, was classical liberal media group therapy.....It must be nice to sit in the comfort of a radio studio in D.C. pontificating on the major decisions a president must make while actual people die.

Any mention of the Sandy "Burglar" Burger case and its effect on the 9/11 Commission? Barely.

While left wing fanatics and their friends in the Democratic Party and the media give credence to paranoiac conspiracy theories about Bush and 9/11, here we have a real Clinton conspiracy to cover up and change history, and it gets dismissed by the panel on Dianne Rehm as almost just a prank! Other than that, the panels this week were nothing but absolute fluff.

Well, thank God we'll have a few days ahead of repose from politics! Merry Chirstmas, Happy New Year and Happy Hannukah! Pray for Peace! Merry Christmas Diane and Staff!

"LEND ME YOUR EARS...I GET BY WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM MY FRIENDS"

Guests of the weekly Gang-up: John Harwood, reporter, "Wall Street Journal", Margaret Carlson, writes a weekly column for Bloomberg News and is the Washington editor of The Week magazine, Andrew Sullivan, senior editor, "The New Republic," and columnist, "Time".

One of the most endearing characters of American politics was Ross Perot. During one of his presidential debates in funny self-deprecation he uttered, "I'm all ears". The man with the pie charts and crew cut knew, and political cartoons reminded him, that his head cut a particularly unique profile, so he made light of it.

In the current religious media extasis about Sen. Barak Hussein Obama only a few radio talk shows, certainly not NPR or the DR Show, have covered a little incident that happened this week after the candidate for political canonization confronted NT Tymes columnist Maureen Dowd. Ms. Dowd had made some remarks in writing about Sen. Obama's auricular protuberances and he was letting her know he didn't like it!

After finishing his speech (in New Hampshire) Sen. Obama confronted Ms. Dowd, famously known for her dissatisfaction with men and now apparently obssesed about men's ears. Unaware, their words were recorded.

Sen. Obama (off mic): "You talked about my ears, and I just want to put you on notice: I'm very sensitive about -- What I told them was, ''I was teased relentlessly when I was a kid about my big ears.' "

Ms. Dowd (purring): "We're trying to toughen you up."

"Put you on notice"? Imagine if a male Republican or conservative candidate had said something like that! We would hearing that recording for two weeks straight, at least! Feminists would burn him alive! Remember when Sen. Clinton's male opponent approached her podium during a debate? Oh the humanity! He invaded her space! He was threatening!

Of course, as it is obvious, the media is not only "preparing the way of the Lord" so to speak for Sen. Obama, but also coaching him. And he will need a lot of that if he is so thin-skinned about his physical appearance (which is why we have decided to make our own artistic contribution to toughen him up also). Due to the cannonization process, and the lack of coverage of this incident, it would be doubtful whether political cartoonists will exploit the incident to create cartoons about it. In fact, they may practice self-imposed "politically correct" restraint in making sure they don't offend the Senator and his devotees.

Sen. Obama should learn from Ross Perot but he must learn the right lesson. Although he has found a sympathetic ally in the main stream media, not everyone will be so kind. In the end Ross Perot was not thick-skin enough to handle an assault on his daughter and came out with an almost paranoiac excuse to leave the race.

Maybe Maureen Dowd is correct. If Sen. Obama is going for the long haul he needs to toughen up. And although Ms. Dowd might be trying to help in that regard, so far it looks like the mainstream is only doing everything they can to throw flowers at his path.

TRYING TO AVOID THE UNAVOIDABLE WILL BRING ABOUT THE AVOIDABLE

Guests on the Weekly Gan-up: Susan Page, Washington bureau chief for "USA Today" Karen Tumulty, reporter, "Time" magazine Joseph Curl, The Washington Times

The times eerily and truly resemble the 1930s. By trying to avoid a war with Germany the "civilized" nations ended up in a much larger and more costly war. Now that the Democrats are in power, or at least have more than they had, and in the words of Iraq Study Group member Leon Pannetta, "we must come together".

PANETTA: "As I told the president this morning, this war has badly divided this country. It's divided Republicans from Democrats, and to some extent, the president from the people. And policy sometimes, with those divisions, has been reduced to a 30-second sound bite that runs the gamut from “victory” or “stay the course” to “cut and run”. And what this group tried to do, five Democrats and five Republicans, is try to set aside those code words and those divisions and try to look at the realities that are there.

And I would suggest to the president and to the American people that, if you look at the realities of what's taking place there, the fact that violence is out of control, the fact that Iraqis ultimately have to control their future; they have to take care of security; they've got to deal with the region in that area, that ultimately, you can find consensus here. This country cannot be at war and be as divided as we are today. You've got to unify this country. And I'd suggest to the president that what we did in this group can perhaps serve as an example to try to pull together the leadership of the Congress and try to focus on the recommendations that we've made. We have made a terrible commitment in Iraq in terms of our blood and our treasure. And I think we owe it to them to try to take one last chance at making Iraq work, and more importantly, to take one last chance at unifying this country on this war. I think the president understands that he simply is not going to be able to proceed with whatever policy changes he wants to implement if we're divided. That is the principal goal, in my mind, that he has to accomplish." (December 6, 2006 Iraq Study Group News Conference Transcript)

Either I am as stupid as Democrats think I am as a citizen or someone has the kind of gall that is capable of erasing from our memory the fact that the man represents the side in this country which has waged a greater war against president Bush than against the enemy the US fighting!

About the “code words” Mr. Panetta says the Study Group tried to avoid, when Mr. Panetta says, “I think the president understands that he simply is not going to be able to proceed with whatever policy changes he wants to implement if we're divided” and that he “can find consensus here” what he really means is that the President needs to agree with the Democrats or they will continue to wage war against him, not against al-Qaeda in Iraq.

Mr. Panetta also said, that “this war has badly divided this country” and that in Iraq “violence is out of control”. Do Mr. Panetta and the new “conservative” Democrats believe that we all have forgotten the endless speeches, comments, books, “documentaries”, newscasts, editorials, statements from leading Democrats, in other words the whole campaign directed to discredit not only the President, but even the armed forces? And can he really not understand the connection between that domestic campaign and the emboldening of terrorists in Iraq leading to a violence that is not “out of control” but purposefully controlled to create the impression of chaos?

Now the Democrats and a few so-called “realists” are upholding the Iraq Study Group pages as someone by the name of Chamberlain once held a piece of paper as hope for “peace for our time.”

But in these times of news clips and sound bites perception is reality and now the perception around the world is that not only the US is surrendering but also that both Democrats and terrorists are celebrating something in common, the Iraq Study Group. In trying to avoid a greater regional conflict the Iraq Study Group and those who believe this is a road for peace may be mixing elements of delusion with what they think is realism. And that it is not a recipe for peace.

REALITY BITES

Guests in this week's Gang-up:
Frank Sesno, special correspondent, CNN
John Dickerson, chief political correspondent, Slate,Jeanne Cummings, The Wall Street Journal.

Just as we predicted, the Democrats once in power have started backtracking on Iraq. On the way to the elections their cut and run —“redeployment”—“Bush lied, people died”, Murtha-Dean-Michael Moore self-induced, propaganda caused apoplexia was kept unchecked. But now that they have a more direct share in the responsibility of power and the outcome of Iraq they are faced with a reality check: they have found out that it is not as easy to put your money where your mouth is. As the Spanish saying goes, “Una cosa es llamar al Diablo y otra cosa es verlo venir” (One thing is to call the Devil and another one is to see him coming toward you).

This week, after alerting us—“wake up, America, John McCain is bonkers”—“documentary” maker Michael More, the once honored guest at the last Democratic Party convention rotundly pronounced in his website:

“The responsibility to end this war now falls upon the Democrats. Congress controls the purse strings and the Constitution says only Congress can declare war. Mr. Reid and Ms. Pelosi now hold the power to put an end to this madness. Failure to do so will bring the wrath of the voters. We aren't kidding around, Democrats, and if you don't believe us, just go ahead and continue this war another month.”

In his open letter to the American people (eerily similar in tone and content with Iran’s president letter to the American people) titled “Cut and Run, the Only Brave Thing to Do” (really, this is the title) Mr. Moore then proceeds to give us his anti-bonkers plan:

“Bring the troops home now. Not six months from now. NOW. Quit looking for a way to win. We can't win. We've lost. Sometimes you lose. This is one of those times. Be brave and admit it.”

Ironically his letter includes a photo of defeated WWII tyrants as examples fast victories in contrast to a victory in Iraq. Yet, he fails to mention that none of them were defeated by following a “cut and run” policy. And in none of the defeated countries were we welcome as occupiers either, the only difference is that when we occupied those countries we occupied those countries (not half-way occupations), not “cut and run” out of them, nor did we follow time tables of so-called “exit strategies”.

But the issue is not Mr. Moore but what he has represented all along, the relatively small but very strident, sophomoric wing of the Democratic Party and the mostly emotional and highly irrational paradigms for opposing the intervention in Iraq. This same segment of the population which thought it could overthrow Sen. Lieberman, quicker than Saddam was overthrown, by intervening in the elections of a state via the internet has now to face reality. It will be easier for the US to extricate itself from Iraq than for the Democratic Party leadership to do so from its previous positions, or for the “hate Bush at any cost" crowd to have a final say in the new “conservative” Democratic Party.

After trying the Vietnam syndrome unsuccessfully the liberal media (that is, most of the media) is now trying the civil war syndrome. Will it work? They surely hope so, although so far, looking at statements from Democrat leaders and unofficial presidential forerunners the misnomer “war on terror” still prevails.

“House Speaker to be” Pelosi has already caved on Murtha and Hastings, beginning a process of dissociation from the “cut and runners”. And just this week she has agreed with President Bush’s long held position that Iraq is the actual physical battleground against al-Qaeda. Now the Democrats, having voted for the war and then doing everything possible to oppose it for partisan interest, find that the intervention in Iraq has also become the battle ground for moderation.

In a recent list of twenty options for presidential candidates given to the American public for the next elections John Kerry came in last. The process of canonization of Sen. Obama as a moderate is only part of the process and part of the race to watch between him and Saint Hillary for the crown of centrism and moderation. Meanwhile the Clinton camp has already called for the head of Howard Dean. All put together it looks like the Democrat leadership is really listening to the American people. Now reality bites.

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/message/index.php?id=202