A fine day all around, Wednesday.  Mitt Romney, Ted Olsen, The Smart Guys (Erwin Chemerinsky and John Eastman), Lynne Cheney and Jeffrey Toobin.  So much show it almost leaves you breathless. And yet, that was just the beginning of the night for me.

Coach Jerry is somewhat of a local icon in Southern California, and a former friend of Hugh Hewitt. The Coach is one of these guys who will call you out of the blue, talk a little shop, and then see if you want amazing tickets to go see a game, whether it's baseball, basketball or hockey.  Usually, the call goes to Hugh.  Tonight, Hugh fell like the Trojans out of the Coach Jerry top ten, and the Generalissimo climbed up the call list with a bullet.  The venue?  The Honda Center, home of the Stanley Cup winning Anaheim Ducks, in their first home game as reigning champions.  Just the opportunity to see the pregame production, including a spotlit Stanley Cup descending from the scoreboard high overhead from a silver cage to thunderous applause, and seeing the Stanley Cup banner hoisted high over center ice, definitely was the first part of the perfect sports night.

The video package showed the Ducks' path to the Cup last seaon, including an absolute thumping of their first round opponent, the Minnesota Wild. When the Ducks-Wild series highlights were shown, there was a lustful booing of the Wild players.  I keep being told about Minnesota being the state of hockey and all, but I think I'm going to have to send the knitted and embroidered cloth replica of the Stanley Cup banner that all fans got as a souvenir on the way out to my friend Jay Larson, so he can get a sense of what it must be like to actually see hockey played on winning ice. 

The icing on the cake?  The opponent tonight was the Boston Bruins, which feature a seven foot Croatian basketball player on skates and a bunch of other guys with sticks who essentially skated around a lot and didn't really do anything.  The final score was 2-1 Ducks.  Finally, at least for 24 hours, us SoCal people can relish in the fact that a Boston team sucks.  It doesn't completely ease the pain of the Angels' anemic performance against the Red Sox last week, but it sure helps.   

After sitting through every inning of the 3:45 long funeral of the Angels this afternoon, with all due respect to my friend Dean Barnett, I have only two bitter, bile-filled words to say.  

Go Tribe.

 

Game MVP?  This guy and about 5 million of his little Canadian soldier friends.

At least that's what TBS' field reporter called them.  Others have described them as your garden variety swarm of midges, or these things.

The wind off the lake died around the 8th inning, and as Hugh has described it, a swarm of Heaven-sent locusts showed up in God's country to help the Indians any way possible go up 2-0 against the New Yorkers in the best of five ALDS.  How miserable was it? 

Apparently not bad enough to bother Indians starter Fausto Carmona, but certainly bad enough to help cause Yankees reliever Joba Chamberlain to throw two wild pitches in the 8th allowing the Indians to get off the deck and onto the scoreboard. 

So you want to be a Major League pitcher? 



I talked to Dean Barnett about the bugfest, and he said it was disgusting enough to watch that he switched down from HD to normal resolution.  I don't blame him.  Fortunately, I hear the health care plan is top notch for the pros, and even includes treatment for Malaria.

Some days, A Robert Byrd Senate speech is fun to lampoon because of his advancing age, rhetorical style, and subject matter that has little to do with anything.  Today, however, Byrd was all business in a ten minute address regarding our policy towards the menace in Iran, and Byrd must be challenged on his views not just because he's dead wrong, but because he is the chairman of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, and he is three heartbeats away from the presidency.  Here's some of the key excerpts:

Mr. President, last week the Senate voted on an amendment to the Defense Authorization bill that designated a portion of the Iranian armed forces as a terrorist organization. I joined 21 of my illustrious colleagues in voting against that amendment. It was a dangerous, unnecessary provocation that is escalating the confrontational rhetoric between the United States and Iran. In response to the passage of that amendment, the Iranian parliament on Saturday designated the U.S. Armed Forces and the Central Intelligence Agency as terrorist organizations. Would someone please explain to me what has been achieved by this exchange of international verbal spitballs?  

Not that I have any expectation that he'll read this and understand, but what has been achieved is a monetary victory.  Senator Byrd, as Chairman of Approps, should realize this.  By classifying that part of the Iranian Army as a terrorist organization, which of course is a perfectly appropriate moniker to a wing of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard that trains radical extremists to become terrorists, that gives the U.S. government more lattitude in seizing assets internationally to try and defund them.  Iran's economy is not a stable one.  They do not have unlimited resources like many of their other Middle East neighbors.  If we can seize the assets of companies that deal internationally with the Iranian regime, and therefore weaken Iranian military capabilities, that's a good start.  Robert Byrd doesn't see it that way.  He likes Iran just the way they are. 

I am no apologist for the Iranian regime any more than I was for Saddam Hussein.  But I fear that we may become entangled in another bloody quagmire.

If you have to spend time on the Senate floor to explain that you are not an apologist for the Iranian regime, the bulk of what you're saying must be being perceived as apologizing for the Iranian regime. 

Four and a half years ago, Secretary of State Colin Powell made a speech before the United Nations Security Council claiming to have evidence that proves Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, and was an imminent threat to U.S. and international security.

Legacy of Ashes author Tim Weiner, a man of the left and a reporter with the New York Times, wrote, "This was not a selective use of intelligence. It was not cherry-picking. It was not fixing the facts to fit the war plans. It was what the intelligence said - the best intelligence the Agency had to offer. Colin Powell had spent days and nights with George Tenet, checking and rechecking the CIA’s reporting. Tenet looked him in the eye and told him it was rock solid."  As for the imminent threat part, President Bush himself said that the reason for action in Iraq was precisely because he did not want Iraq to become an imminent threat on his watch.  Byrd's staffers who clearly wrote this speech are misleading the American people in order to perpetuate the myth that George Bush misled us to war.  

The proponents of war compared Saddam Hussein to Adolf Hitler, warning ominously of the dangers of Chamberlain-like appeasement. That is a seductive analogy, but it is a dangerously specious one. Every foreign adversary is not the devil incarnate.

True, not every adversary is the devil incarnate.  But when they propose genocide and seek nuclear weaponry in order to make that fantasy a reality, they become the devil incarnate.  Saddam Hussein was trying to achieve nuclear capabilities, as Christopher Hitchens has frequently documented.  He also sought to wipe out Israel, and then, weapon technology permitting, eventually desiring to hit us.  Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called for the destruction of Israel, and is trying to achieve the nuclear capacity to make that happen.  Even French President Sarkozy understands this.

The intelligence that suggested he was an imminent threat was flat wrong. Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction. Saddam Hussein had not attacked our country.  Saddam Hussein was a ruthless tyrant, but he was not an imminent threat to national security.

More perpetuation of the same lie.  The Hussein threat was growing, not imminent. We didn't want it to become imminent.  That's what the preemption doctrine was all about.  He did have weapons of mass destruction.  Ask the Kurds, where thousands were slaughtered at the hands of Hussein chemical weapons.  Saddam didn't attack our country, just like Germany hadn't attacked our country in 1941. 

While there may be some superficial similarities between Hitler and Ahmadinejad, it does not mean that our only option is to start World War III.

World War III was the Cold War, Senator.  We're on number four now.  Try to keep up. 

Every day it seems that the confrontational rhetoric between the United States and Iran escalates. We hear shadowy claims about Iran’s destabilizing actions in Iraq with little direct evidence offered to back it up.

Shadowy claims?  This is where he is reflecting widespread Democratic opinion that the American military is populated with generals who are all liars.  Members of the Quds force, the foreign terrorism wing of the Revolutionary Guard, have been captured trying to kill American troops in Iraq. IED's that have killed American troops have Iranian signature characteristics.  Generals Abizaid, Casey, Pace, Myers, Simmons and Petraeus have detailed the existence of Iranian interference in Iraq.  Byrd saying there's little evidence is akin to looking skyward and saying there's little evidence the sky is blue. All he has to do is look. 

The President telegraphs his desire to designate a large segment of the Iranian Army as a terrorist organization. And instead of counseling prudence, the United States Senate rushes ahead to do it for him. I hope that we can stop this war of words before it becomes a war of bombs. We have seen the result when the U.S. Senate gives this administration the benefit of the doubt.

The Dinner Jacket just said to the attentive youth at Columbia recently that there is no meddling by Iran in Iraq. Robert Byrd seems quite content to take him at his word, yet he's unwilling to give the benefit of the doubt to either our own military commanders or our President. 

We need to talk directly to the government of Iran without preconditions or artificial restrictions, and indicate that regime change is not our goal. Unfortunately, the President seems unwilling to take that step.

Michael Ledeen, AEI scholar and author of The Iranian Time Bomb, just said on the program yesterday this about the folly of our government the last few decades trying to negotiate with these people:

HH: Carter began it, and he tried, and this came as a surprise to me, he armed the Mullahs and pleaded with the Mullahs, rather than resisting the Mullahs.  

ML: Yeah, well, he wanted, he had various reasons. First, he was completely misled on the nature of Khomeini. Nobody in the American government at that time understood what a monster Khomeini was, and how terrible this regime was going to be. Secondly, he desperately wanted to show that he had not lost Iran, because if it turned out that Iran had fallen into the hands of these evil people, they were afraid in Washington that they were going to be blamed for it. And so in a lot of the cables back and forth, you find people saying you see, we haven’t lost Iran after all, we can make an agreement with these people, these people are reasonable, we can work with them, etc. And then as time passed, and it became more and more urgent to deal with the Iranian threat in one way or another, all the diplomats argued that anything can be negotiated, and we can negotiate it with these people too, just have patience.  

HH: Even after the hostage crisis and the embarrassment of Carter, and the freeing of the hostages on the first day of the Reagan administration, one would have thought that Reagan and Bill Casey and George Schultz and the rest of them would have been on guard against this, but as you recount, Reagan fell for it, too. Can you tell our audience how? 

ML: Well, Reagan was sucked into the Iranian matter by the hostage crisis. The various Americans were taken hostage by Hezbollah, which is to say by Iran, and the it became possible to negotiate with the Iranians to ransom out some of the hostages. And so they got involved with that, and once they were involved in talking to them, then they said well, now we’re talking to these people, we can talk about broader things. And in fact, from the very beginning, the Iranians kept on saying, you know, let’s reach some kind of modus vivendi, because we don’t have to hate one another. Remember, there was still a Soviet empire then, and the Iranians were very active against the Soviet empire. And there were actually things on which there was convergence of interest between the United States and Iran, namely the Soviet business.  

HH: But after the interregnum that is Bush 41, and after Iran-Contra, everyone leaves it along, arrives Bill Clinton, and again, falls for it hard, for the temptation of the Iranian thing. And why the Albright apology? It’s one thing to hope for something, but it’s another thing to embarrass yourself in the quest for that which isn’t being delivered.  

ML: Well, you see, what happened was that in the meantime, Khatami, the so-called great moderate, had become president. And so all the experts in the State Department and the intelligence community went to Clinton and Albright and said everything’s changed, Iran is now a moderate country, now is the time to go all out to normalize relations. And so we did all these terrible things. We enabled the Russians to sell nuclear technology to Iran, and to sell weapons to them. In open violation of American law, we permitted the Iranians to smuggle weapons into the Balkans, which made it possible for them to set up their terrorist network there, and to expand it. And then you know, we let the Iranian wrestling team into the country, the usual symbolic gestures, we eased some of the banking restrictions and so forth. And Khamani spit in our faces. And my grandmother always used to say when somebody spits in your face, don’t pretend it’s raining.  

HH: (laughing)  

ML: But once we were committed to that negotiating track, we just plowed on. And Mrs. Albright even apologized for things we hadn’t done, let alone things we had done. She said she apologized, for example, for helping Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war, when the first assistance we gave went to Iran, not to Iraq. And I think that on balance, we helped the Iranians more than the Iraqis. 

Ledeen, of course, is spot on.  Byrd is 180 degrees off.  Imagine the line about how regime change in Iran is not our goal being broadcast to the 50 million Iranians who would love to have something positive to hang onto to reclaim control of their government, and how dispiriting something like that will be.

And yet, Byrd is not all by himself on his foreign policy views.  His desire to talk with Iran directly is straight out of the Barack Obama playbook.  His version of history about the beginning of the Iraq war sounds like a Hillary Clinton stump speech.  21 other Senators voted with him against the amendment naming the Quds force a terrorist organization.  A fifth of the Senate cannot seem to recognize a threat when it's presented to them. 

Keep that in mind as the election cycle starts to ramp up.  Are Democrats really the ones you want in charge of the Congress and the White House?

Yesterday at Fort Myer, Virginia, the ceremony took place honoring the outgoing Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine General Peter Pace, and swearing in Admiral Mike Mullen.  General Pace spent a few minutes thanking those around him for their support throughout his extremely distinguished military career, and then spoke quite eloquently about the last forty days of his term as Chairman.  This video needs to be watched.

General Pace didn't want to step down, and should be starting his second term as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.  But thanks to MoveOn.org and their puppets on the Democratic side of the aisle in the United States Senate, General Pace was deemed unqualified and unable to be confirmed for a second term. 

A political party that can discard a man of Pace's caliber, character and credibility as easily as throwing out last week's leftovers for no other reason than their opposition to the war in Iraq is not a party that can be seriously considered to be placed in charge of this country in a time of war. 

Make no mistake, Admiral Mullen is a very capable replacement for General Pace, and the country's military opinions will be accurately offered to the President and the Secretary of Defense.  But there is only one winner when General Pace is sent off to retirement earlier than necessary, and it isn't the Democrats or MoveOn.org.  The only one that wins is the enemy we face, because of the propaganda win it provides them.  Al Jazeera hails the change in military leadership as a good chance that the policy in Iraq will finally change. 

Thanks, Dems. Once again, you've let your desire for political power trump one of the best men tot ever serve in this country's military with no regard to the impact of national security. Hope you sleep well.

Oh, the shivers that were sent down the collective spine of the Hugh Hewitt Show audience that fateful summer day when Los Angeles Times columnist and wannabe Walter Mitty, William Lobdell, attempted to show the world how easy it was to host a nationally syndicated radio show.  You can see Bill in the picture above leaving the studio after his three hour long hour of radio, contemplating the column he is going to have to write.  That column appears in the Tuesday editions of the Los Angeles Times.  Here's what Bill had to say about his radio experience:

In the movie "For Love of the Game," announcer Vin Scully refers to the pitching mound at Yankee Stadium as the "loneliest spot in the world."

But I'd argue that it's behind the microphone of a conservative talk radio show that's picked up by more than 110 stations throughout the country. Especially when you're seen by the audience as part of the liberal mainstream media, which is like waving a juicy T-bone in front of a pride of lions.

No, the loneliest spot would have to be at the L.A. Times call center, trying every day to find the one cold call contact that will not hang up on you and actually consider subscribing to the Times.  More Lobdell:

As soon as the show's opening music boomed into my headphones, my mind began to shut down. You wouldn't think being a talk radio show host would be all that tough -- just read a few newspapers, magazine and Web articles others have slaved to produce and then riff about them.

Maybe Bill didn't notice, but radio is an aural medium.  Booming is what we do.  That's why the Marcel Marceau Show wasn't a huge success.  More Bill:

But here's the hard part. It's just you, your voice and the microphone. You are giving a monologue in an empty studio. You can't see your audience or sense their engagement. It felt like being locked in a sensory-deprivation chamber. Time seemed to slow, the awful way it does during a car accident.

You can't see your audience or sense their engagement?  That's just like writing at the Times.  Lobdell should have been a natural.  But the really funny thing here was the fact that Lobdell claims he felt he was locked in a sensory-deprivation chamber.  I was there. Adam was there. Hugh definitely was there.  If only you could hear the coaching Mr. Hewitt gave Lobdell in his headphones during his lay-down of an interview with a fellow Times reporter, sensory-deprivation would not be the right description.  In fact, at the minimum, it was sensory overload.  Andrew Sullivan would most certainly classify it as torture.
 

The technical aspects of hosting a radio show flummoxed me as well. My producer kept barking instructions in my ear, messing up what little rhythm I had going. I had to put callers on the air, a seemingly simple task that resulted in several hang-ups and accompanying dial tones that made the airwaves. And I had to be constantly aware of the time, making sure the show broke away smoothly for commercial breaks and news (another failure).

Bill's rhythm, what there was of it, was impervious to anything I could offer.  It's a simple studio, actually, we have four call-in lines.  Bill acted as though he was Ernestine the switchboard operator from Laugh-In.  

You ought to go read the rest of the whine-fest and watch the accompanying video here for a chuckle.  The best part after watching Bill's sullen, balding head saying how much fun this wasn't, then followed by the next assignment, which was a botox session.  Bill seems hell bent on becoming a living cue ball with eyes.

The real reason Bill struggled is because radio is a real time medium.  What you say, how you conduct interviews, how you think on your feet is responded to directly in real time, something newspapers just aren't capable of doing.  When Bill writes a column, there might be an e-mail or two in a few days, but there's a buffer between the reporter and the target audience, a buffer that does not exist in radio.  

Good luck with the botox, Bill.  All that's left then to do is a trip to the Hair Club, grow a little beard, and then you can try your hand at being Kenny Rogers for a day.

Despite being in the National League, you've got to hand it to the comeback this year by the Philadelphia Phillies, overcoming a seven game deficit with 17 games to play and winning the division in dramatic fashion on the last day of the season. 

Things weren't always so rosy for the Phillies, however.  In fact, I seem to remember when I visited Philadelphia a couple of months ago, they were mired in third place, fighting to claw ahead of the Atlanta Braves.  That was when the ol' Generalissimo took the mound to show the Phillies the way. 

A listener writes to Hugh and I:


I'm flattered by the notion about the playoff share.  I'm much too humble of a person to accept that.  But you have to acknowledge success where success takes place.  The facts don't lie.  The Phillies are gracious enough to let me throw out the first pitch, and they immediately go on a roll.  That doesn't just happen by itself.  I'm sure there are plenty of other teams around the Majors that might like to cash in on the mojo of the Generalissimo.  I am willing to entertain most offers.  The arm is sound, the arm is strong.

I say most, because there are certain teams, like the Dodgers, which are beyond the help and reach my first pitch can bring them.  I'm not a miracle worker, after all.  So if you are affiliated with a professional baseball franchise, and would like to tap into the magic, I can be reached through the Hugh Hewitt Show.  I figure there are 29 MLB teams, 30 if you include the Dodgers, and if I average a couple teams a year, I could have a fifteen year career in the bigs. 

Hugh and I got an e-mail this weekend, asking us to provide the Hillary cackle we played last week for a Halloween party they have upcoming.  Being the old DJ I am, I'm always happy to play requests.

Hillary Cackle MP3

In case you missed it, John Stewart on the Daily Show, in a rare moment of fair play, lampooned the Hillary cackle as well.

Lost in Mahmoud week and the rush to SCHP, a new embarrassing low was held in in the Dirksen Building as Robert Byrd convened the Senate Appropriations Committee looking into the supplemental funding request by Defense Secretary Robert Gates. 

Joining Gates on the panel was John Negroponte, outgoing Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Peter Pace, and about two dozen Code Pink nutters, who couldn't, it seems, miss this for the world.  If there's one thing you have to give them credit for, it's attendance.  The Code Pink gals have shown up at more government public meetings as well as think tank meetings than most politicians over the last few months.  In fact, the only place they weren't was at Columbia University this week.  If only these ladies dogged the Iranian terrorist-in-chief, chanting for him to get out of Iraq, as fervently as they do to U.S. officials and realist pundits on the war, they actually might have served a useful purpose in reducing the propaganda gains Ahmadinejad made while in America this week.

Back to Robert Byrd, the long of tooth Senator from West Virginia.  His opening remarks of the hearing were spent on theatrics about the costs of the war in Iraq. When he asked rhetorical questions, the Code Pink gals stepped in as the Greek chorus.

But then, things got out of hand. The Code Pink gals couldn't contain themselves to merely being backup singers to the Robert Byrd band, and got removed from the chambers. 

Last night, MoveOn.org tried to declare defeat one more time in the United States Senate.  After Republican leader Mitch McConnell successfully blocked the Webb amendment from getting the required sixty votes to move on, the Democrats pulled back to reassess how best to continue on the Defense Appropriations bill.  That's when Texas Senator John Cornyn struck back.

Last week, after the reprehensible MoveOn.org full-page ad ran in the New York Times, Senator Cornyn offered an amendment to the transportation and housing bill, a simple sense of the Senate to condemn the ad, which essentially called General David Petraeus a traitor.  The Democrats, eager not to have to cast that vote, at the direction of Senator majority whip Dick Durbin, made a motion to the Chair to rule the Cornyn resolution not germane to the current bill.  Freshman Senator Jon Tester of Montana, a recipient of at least $88,000 dollars of MoveOn money in the 2006 election cycle, according to Congressional Quarterly reports, ruled to kill the amendment. 

This week, Durbin, who argued so fervently a week prior against resolutions that were not germane to bills, offered his Dream Act legislation, basically an amnesty for students, as part of the Defense Appropriations bill, equally as non-germane as the Cornyn bill from last week. 

But late last night, Cornyn resurrected his amendment, and also tied it to the Defense Appropriations bill, where it is now germane, and actually got the Senate to vote today on it, with stunning results.  First, here's the actual text of what the Senate vote on today:

SEC. 1070. SENSE OF SENATE ON GENERAL DAVID PETRAEUS.

(a) Findings.–The Senate makes the following findings:

(1) The Senate unanimously confirmed General David H. Petraeus as Commanding General, Multi-National Force-Iraq, by a vote of 81-0 on January 26, 2007.

(2) General Petraeus graduated first in his class at the United States Army Command and General Staff College.

(3) General Petraeus earned Masters of Public Administration and Doctoral degrees in international relations from Princeton University.

(4) General Petraeus has served multiple combat tours in Iraq, including command of the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) during combat operations throughout the first year of Operation Iraqi Freedom, which tours included both major combat operations and subsequent stability and support operations.

(5) General Petraeus supervised the development and crafting of the United States Army and Marine Corps counterinsurgency manual based in large measure on his combat experience in Iraq, scholarly study, and other professional experiences.

(6) General Petraeus has taken a solemn oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America.

(7) During his 35-year career, General Petraeus has amassed a distinguished and unvarnished record of military service to the United States as recognized by his receipt of a Defense Distinguished Service Medal, two Distinguished Service Medals, two Defense Superior Service Medals, four Legions of Merit, the Bronze Star Medal for valor, the State Department Superior Honor Award, the NATO Meritorious Service Medal, and other awards and medals.

(8) A recent attack through a full-page advertisement in the New York Times by the liberal activist group, Moveon.org, impugns the honor and integrity of General Petraeus and all the members of the United States Armed Forces.

(b) Sense of Senate.–It is the sense of the Senate–

(1) to reaffirm its support for all the men and women of the United States Armed Forces, including General David H. Petraeus, Commanding General, Multi-National Force-Iraq;

(2) to strongly condemn any effort to attack the honor and integrity of General Petraeus and all the members of the United States Armed Forces; and

(3) to specifically repudiate the unwarranted personal attack on General Petraeus by the liberal activist group Moveon.org.

And now, here's the roll call vote:

Alphabetical by Senator Name

Akaka (D-HI), Nay Alexander (R-TN), Yea Allard (R-CO), Yea Barrasso (R-WY), Yea Baucus (D-MT), Yea Bayh (D-IN), Yea Bennett (R-UT), Yea Biden (D-DE), Not Voting Bingaman (D-NM), Nay Bond (R-MO), Yea Boxer (D-CA), Nay Brown (D-OH), Nay Brownback (R-KS), Yea Bunning (R-KY), Yea Burr (R-NC), Yea Byrd (D-WV), Nay Cantwell (D-WA), Not Voting Cardin (D-MD), Yea Carper (D-DE), Yea Casey (D-PA), Yea Chambliss (R-GA), Yea Clinton (D-NY), Nay Coburn (R-OK), Yea Cochran (R-MS), Yea Coleman (R-MN), Yea Collins (R-ME), Yea Conrad (D-ND), Yea Corker (R-TN), Yea Cornyn (R-TX), Yea Craig (R-ID), Yea Crapo (R-ID), Yea DeMint (R-SC), Yea Dodd (D-CT), Nay Dole (R-NC), Yea

Domenici (R-NM), Yea Dorgan (D-ND), Yea Durbin (D-IL), Nay Ensign (R-NV), Yea Enzi (R-WY), Yea Feingold (D-WI), Nay Feinstein (D-CA), Yea Graham (R-SC), Yea Grassley (R-IA), Yea Gregg (R-NH), Yea Hagel (R-NE), Yea Harkin (D-IA), Nay Hatch (R-UT), Yea Hutchison (R-TX), Yea Inhofe (R-OK), Yea Inouye (D-HI), Nay Isakson (R-GA), Yea Johnson (D-SD), Yea Kennedy (D-MA), Nay Kerry (D-MA), Nay Klobuchar (D-MN), Yea Kohl (D-WI), Yea Kyl (R-AZ), Yea Landrieu (D-LA), Yea Lautenberg (D-NJ), Nay Leahy (D-VT), Yea Levin (D-MI), Nay Lieberman (ID-CT), Yea Lincoln (D-AR), Yea Lott (R-MS), Yea Lugar (R-IN), Yea Martinez (R-FL), Yea McCain (R-AZ), Yea McCaskill (D-MO), Yea

McConnell (R-KY), Yea Menendez (D-NJ), Nay Mikulski (D-MD), Yea Murkowski (R-AK), Yea Murray (D-WA), Nay Nelson (D-FL), Yea Nelson (D-NE), Yea Obama (D-IL), Not Voting Pryor (D-AR), Yea Reed (D-RI), Nay Reid (D-NV), Nay Roberts (R-KS), Yea Rockefeller (D-WV), Nay Salazar (D-CO), Yea Sanders (I-VT), Nay Schumer (D-NY), Nay Sessions (R-AL), Yea Shelby (R-AL), Yea Smith (R-OR), Yea Snowe (R-ME), Yea Specter (R-PA), Yea Stabenow (D-MI), Nay Stevens (R-AK), Yea Sununu (R-NH), Yea Tester (D-MT), Yea Thune (R-SD), Yea Vitter (R-LA), Yea Voinovich (R-OH), Yea Warner (R-VA), Yea Webb (D-VA), Yea Whitehouse (D-RI), Nay Wyden (D-OR), Nay

Alphabetical by Senator Name

Akaka (D-HI), Nay Alexander (R-TN), Yea Allard (R-CO), Yea Barrasso (R-WY), Yea Baucus (D-MT), Yea Bayh (D-IN), Yea Bennett (R-UT), Yea Biden (D-DE), Not Voting Bingaman (D-NM), Nay Bond (R-MO), Yea Boxer (D-CA), Nay Brown (D-OH), Nay Brownback (R-KS), Yea Bunning (R-KY), Yea Burr (R-NC), Yea Byrd (D-WV), Nay Cantwell (D-WA), Not Voting Cardin (D-MD), Yea Carper (D-DE), Yea Casey (D-PA), Yea Chambliss (R-GA), Yea Clinton (D-NY), Nay Coburn (R-OK), Yea Cochran (R-MS), Yea Coleman (R-MN), Yea Collins (R-ME), Yea Conrad (D-ND), Yea Corker (R-TN), Yea Cornyn (R-TX), Yea Craig (R-ID), Yea Crapo (R-ID), Yea DeMint (R-SC), Yea Dodd (D-CT), Nay Dole (R-NC), Yea

Domenici (R-NM), Yea Dorgan (D-ND), Yea Durbin (D-IL), Nay Ensign (R-NV), Yea Enzi (R-WY), Yea Feingold (D-WI), Nay Feinstein (D-CA), Yea Graham (R-SC), Yea Grassley (R-IA), Yea Gregg (R-NH), Yea Hagel (R-NE), Yea Harkin (D-IA), Nay Hatch (R-UT), Yea Hutchison (R-TX), Yea Inhofe (R-OK), Yea Inouye (D-HI), Nay Isakson (R-GA), Yea Johnson (D-SD), Yea Kennedy (D-MA), Nay Kerry (D-MA), Nay Klobuchar (D-MN), Yea Kohl (D-WI), Yea Kyl (R-AZ), Yea Landrieu (D-LA), Yea Lautenberg (D-NJ), Nay Leahy (D-VT), Yea Levin (D-MI), Nay Lieberman (ID-CT), Yea Lincoln (D-AR), Yea Lott (R-MS), Yea Lugar (R-IN), Yea Martinez (R-FL), Yea McCain (R-AZ), Yea McCaskill (D-MO), Yea

McConnell (R-KY), Yea Menendez (D-NJ), Nay Mikulski (D-MD), Yea Murkowski (R-AK), Yea Murray (D-WA), Nay Nelson (D-FL), Yea Nelson (D-NE), Yea Obama (D-IL), Not Voting Pryor (D-AR), Yea Reed (D-RI), Nay Reid (D-NV), Nay Roberts (R-KS), Yea Rockefeller (D-WV), Nay Salazar (D-CO), Yea Sanders (I-VT), Nay Schumer (D-NY), Nay Sessions (R-AL), Yea Shelby (R-AL), Yea Smith (R-OR), Yea Snowe (R-ME), Yea Specter (R-PA), Yea Stabenow (D-MI), Nay Stevens (R-AK), Yea Sununu (R-NH), Yea Tester (D-MT), Yea Thune (R-SD), Yea Vitter (R-LA), Yea Voinovich (R-OH), Yea Warner (R-VA), Yea Webb (D-VA), Yea Whitehouse (D-RI), Nay Wyden (D-OR), Nay

Final score?  72-25, with three not voting.  There are many interesting things about this vote, such as the fact that Jon Tester, the MoveOn.org candidate from Montana, voted against this bill before he voted for it, as did fellow Montanan, Max Baucus, who voted against it before he changed his vote and voted for it.  Chris Dodd of Connecticut, presidential candidate, voted against supporting Petraeus and for MoveOn.org.  Joe Biden, presidential candidate, didn't bother to vote. 

If any of you have any inkling of what kind of presidential timber Illinois Senate Barack Obama possesses, all you have to do is look at this vote.  The Cornyn vote was called, Obama came to the floor, and when he discovered what the vote was for, he left the floor and didn't cast a vote.  He literally ran away from merely casting a vote to support our top military general in the field.  But that's not even the most telling moment of the vote.

Hillary Rodham Clinton, the next president of the United States, unless Republicans decide to run like Republicans again in 2008 and keep the White House in responsible hands, did cast a vote today, and voted against Petraeus, and for MoveOn.org, a watershed moment in her campaign.  If she ever wanted her public image to be that of a moderate, it's gone now with this vote. Hillary is one of three or four people that will be the next president of the United States, and she just tipped her hand that she shows more respect to the radical fringe of her base than she does to the country's top general prosecuting a war that she originally supported. 

Everything else that comes out of Hillary's mouth from here to the election, whether it be smoke and mirrors about health care, education, whatever her polling tells her to say, keep in mind that when you hear Hillary Clinton speak, you are hearing her channel what MoveOn.org has approved her to say.  If Republicans are smart, they'll remind people of this vote from now until the election. 

                                                       Photo courtesy of Palomino

As we wind down Talk Like A Pirate Day, If there ever was a pirate council in American politics, it's MoveOn.org.  They're scurrilous, they play dirty, and they're degenerates in every sense of the word.  So when they announced that they had purchased the Democratic Party, that they own it, they can't be very happy with their captain, Senator Harry Reid.

Reid and the Democrats did their head-counting this afternoon, and thought they finally had a window of opportunity in order to declare rhetorical defeat in Iraq in the Webb troop rotation bill. The Democrats moved up the vote, tried to spring the anti-war trap, had one extra vote going in with the appearance of Tim Johnson, and got 56 votes, four short of what he needed. Reid got beat again.  Instead of marching through the Carl Levin defeat bill, or any of the myriad of defeat bills he had hinted was coming earlier in the day, Reid retreated.  As Joe Lieberman said to the media outside of the Senate chamber, the Webb amendment was the last chance of victory for the anti-Iraq crowd, and they lost.

So what's next for Senator Reid?  At some point, MoveOn.org is going to call the special Harry Reid hotline phone they installed on his desk.  What is Reid going to say?  At what point do the left start in on their own for failing to deliver time and time again? 

Fortunately for the Republicans, Harry Reid is a feckless leader of the Senate, a poor head-counter, and an even worse strategist.  He's not even a good pirate. 

On International Talk Like A Pirate Day, maneuvering is going on today in the United States Senate, with majority leader Harry Reid working to try and schedule a series of votes tonight and tomorrow, trying to make the Republicans walk somewhere between 6-10 planks, hoping that they'll fall off of at least one.  If Reid is successful in getting one through, he can finally go back to the pirate council, MoveOn.org, and finally give them their return on investment.

All of these votes are going to be on amendments to the Defense Appropriations bill that would mandate date certain withdrawals.  Half of them will be Democratic-written defeatist amendments, half will be pseudo-Republican, Democrat-lite defeatist amendments.  Republican leader Mitch McConnell has some work to do.

While there are going to be a flurry of votes that are scheduled, the one tonight to focus on is the Webb amendment to unconstitutionally regulate troop rotation times, a backdoor way of withdrawing troops.  Reid and the Democrats are looking at this bill as a bellwether of how successful this barrage might be.  I'm told it's going to come up for a vote tonight, probably the first of the anti-war votes to come.

When Reid tried to resurrect his 'defeat now' strategy earlier in the summer, he had best opportunity he probably will ever have to get something passed out of the Senate.  Popularity for the war was at an all-time low and there wasn't enough measurable success on the ground in Iraq to help stabilize wobbly Republican Senators.  And yet, McConnell and the Republican leadership held enough of their caucus together to buy time until the September report by President Bush, General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker.  Reid should have a weaker hand to play this time around, but he doesn't.  He actually has a stronger hand with the return of Tim Johnson.

Events in Iraq are much different than they were at the beginning of the summer, unless, of course, you are Chuck Schumer.  General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker successfully spoke beyond the wails of the anti-war left in Congress to Americans, and according to the most recent Gallup poll, America believes Petraeus' assessment.  But the vote tonight on the Webb amendment is being billed as the crucial vote, because Reid has one more vote this time in Tim Johnson, and the Republicans may have lost the vote of George Voinovich.  The vote is going to be tight. 

I'm told by sources on the Hill that although Senator McConnell and Republican leadership is working feverishly today to make sure they've got the votes they need to counter the onslaught to come. 

But here's where you come in.  If you support General Petraeus, if you believe his assessment on Iraq deserves to be supported, if you are tired of the Democrats' incessant desire for defeat, call your Senator today.  Call them right now.  202-224-3121 is the number for the Congressional switchboard.  Call your Senator and demand that no MoveOn.org-led amendment be passed that undercuts our troops and undercuts our strategy that is showing signs of winning.  If you live in Pennsylvania, please call Arlen Specter. If you live in Alaska, please call Lisa Murkowski. If you live in Indiana, call Richard Lugar.  The timing of when the Webb bill is raised tonight is very fluid, so call now.

UPDATE:  Harry Reid just got thumped again by McConnell and the Republicans.  The Webb Amendment, which was supposed to have been voted on later tonight, was moved ahead to vote at 5:30 because the Democrats thought they had enough votes.  They didn't.  The final vote was 56-44, with a 60 vote threshhold being required.  Amendment fails.  We'll keep you posted on which one of the flurry of bills is next to come. 

Preeminent military historian and classicist Victor Davis Hanson appeared on Hugh's show last night, and had some remarkable things to say about a possible sea change in several Middle East countries, a change in how they now view some of the same terrorists that they helped create. 

But when Hugh turned to domestic politics towards the war, and in particular, how Democrats have reacted to the Petraeus and Crocker testimony of last week, here's what Professor Hanson had to say about Harry Reid:

HH: Well, on the weekend, Harry Reid told a Nevada newspaper that a million Iraqis had been killed in Iraq since the invasion. That’s trafficking in propaganda.  

VDH: Yeah, it is. He’s unhinged. I think that people have to realize that he’s unhinged. You know, when he said the war was lost, or that Petraeus was untrustworthy, this was a man, remember, that on October 12^th, 2002, gave a speech and said that he didn’t care about WMD, because we were in a de facto war with Saddam since ’91 when he broke the armistice accords, and we had to go to war with him. So I think he’s just somebody who’s…he’s almost a poster boy for the Republicans.

Read the rest here. 

As Hugh has said before, there is a difference between wrong and rotten.  Robin Williams is wrong on his politics, Bill Maher is rotten.  Wolf Blitzer interviewed the remarkably unfunny comedian on CNN's Situation Room today. Here's what he had to say about George Bush and General David Petraeus.



Maher calls President Bush a liar because he claimed that we've killed an average of 1,500 terrorists and extremists each month since January, and then questions who the enemy even is.  That's the problem with many on the left.  They won't even try to understand who the enemy is, because in their mind, George Bush is their enemy.  He fails to recognize that there are not just Iran and Saudi Arabia backed extremist Iraqis we're fighting, but also foreign fighters from all over the Middle East.  He doesn't understand that the late leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, was directly affiliated with Zawahiri and bin Laden.  It doens't matter to him.  Bill Maher's hatred of George Bush is almost all-consuming. 

Once Blitzer got the soundbyte he was looking for, it was time to try for for the sweep of the doubleheader, and see if Maher would bit and slander General Petraeus.  Maher didn't disappoint, calling General Petraeus and democratically elected Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki stooges of the President.  A career four-star general who has served his country with honor and distinction for decades is now a stooge because he won't recognize world in the same way the anti-war crowd does.

The intellectual dishonesty of Maher, and Blitzer for that matter, is staggering in this clip, because Maher claims Petraeus is a stooge of the President because the report presented to Congress was a "Bush report," and that Bush put the words in Petraeus' mouth.  The dirty little secret is that the reason the White House prepared the formal report to Congress is because it was legally required to by Congress.  The Bush administration was following the directive set out by Congress to report back in September.  But Maher didn't seem to want to realize that fact, and Blitzer certainly didn't seem to want let facts get in the way of a good soundbyte. 

Blitzer at least tried to counter by saying the General stated that his testimony was drafted by his own hand, and was not previewed by anyone in the administration, and doesn't Maher take Petraeus at his word.  Maher said flat out no, essentially calling Petraeus a lying stooge. 

The next thirty days promise to be remarkably turbulent for this country, especially in the Senate where MoveOn.org obviously has taken deep root with the Democratic Party and is demanding hard-core retreat provisions be lined up one after another.  Hopefully, Republican leader Mitch McConnell will be up to the task of defeating the defeatists on the other side of the aisle.

It's really a sad commentary when you have to look at the world today and say that in order to protect the Republic, you have to continue to defeat al Qaeda abroad, and defeat the Democratic Party here at home. 

An interesting statement was made today on the Senate floor shortly after Mitch McConnell and enough Republicans who believe the Constitution actually means what it says successfully blocked the District of Columbia from obtaining voting rights in Congress.  The debate shifted to the Defense Appropriations bill, an overdue piece of legislation that the Democrats are finally gettting to.

After liberal Republican Senator Smith from Oregon tried to attach a hate crimes bill to the Defense Authorization bill by unanimous consent, Arizona maverick John McCain objected, keeping the defense bill from getting watered down.  Shortly after, down to the well of the Senate came Massachusetts' Ted Kennedy, who offered the following:

I have every intention, with Senator Smith, at some time of offering the hate crimes legislation. I know the question comes up why are we offering hate crime legislation on a defense authorization bill? Well, the answer is very simple. the defense authorization bill is dealing with the challenges of terrorism and the hate crimes issue, to try and get a handle on the problems of hate crimes, we're talking about domestic terrorism, domestic terrorism.

Not to mention the fact that hate crimes legislation already exists at the federal level, and exists in 45 states and the District of Columbia, it's another glaring example about why the Democrats have no idea about the nature of the enemy we face in the global war on terror. What one's religious view holds about homosexuality, or whatever race relations exist in this country, it clearly cannot be compared to the threat of radical Islamic jihadism, which demands that one either convert to their particular brand of Islam or be killed.

The bill on the floor in the Senate is to continue to fund the troops who are on the front lines of the war fighting, killing and capturing real terrorists, and Ted Kennedy wants to funnel away money from the military to play political games and make rhetorical gains with the Democratic base in this country.

Since Kennedy is intent on tying hate crimes to the military budget, does that mean he wants U.S. troops to surge in America to combat his perception of a rise in domestic terrorism?

If anyone seriously follows what Democratic elected officials say day in and day out, it is demostrably clear that the party is not capable of leading the country during wartime.