Wanted: GOP demagogues; 4 month temp. position, pays well

So this is the kind of rabid, revolting talk that Americans are going to be subjected to for the next 4 1/2 months - fear mongering at its worst about a would-be Obama administration. What a surprise.

Here are a few despicable examples of the many that have been broadcast over the airwaves in recent weeks. Listen to the video clip above as conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt leaves no demagogic stone unturned when talking about an Obama victory in regard to the USC/Ohio State game on Sept. 13. (Too bad the game isn't on Sept. 11 - that would have been too perfect.) An excerpt:

And none of the USC people will give up their tickets to me. I'd pay fair price. They — they know Ohio State's gonna slaughter the Trojans. They know that they're gonna slaughter the Trojans, and therefore they do not want me there at the bloodbath, since it's probably the last football game we'll ever get to see before the United States gets blown up by the Islamists under Obama. I — I would like to see Ohio State slaughter USC. This is what I'm living for right now.

And they said that Jerry Falwell is dead.

But wait, there's more.

John Gibson of Faux News fame recently entertained former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton on his radio show. Wild comedy ensued when the two began fear mongering discussing a possible (probable) Obama Presidency. Take a listen to this claptrap...

GIBSON: The Obama team is going back to some of the old complaints about the war and the war on terror... that the left has been articulating for a long time now, and not really coming up with anything new.

BOLTON: Yeah I think honestly that's an optimistic view of it, that it will simply be a replay of the Clinton administration. It will simply have more embassy bombings, more bombings of our warships like the Cole, more World Trade Center attacks. That would be the best outcome from that perspective.

Does Bolton have any credibility at all? Did he ever as our ambassador to the UN? Many who look at his record would probably strongly conclude that he has none. My favorite Bolton bon mot - speaking about the UN in 1994, he is purported to have said, "There is no such thing as the United Nations. There is only the international community, which can only be led by the only remaining superpower, which is the United States. [...] The Secretariat building in New York has 38 stories. If you lost ten stories today, it wouldn't make a bit of difference."

Quite naturally, Bush nominated him to be our UN ambassador. And Bush wonders why he couldn't get Bolton confirmed in the Senate. In fact, Bush had to use a recess appointment to get him to the UN in the first place. That one ranks right up there with appointing Michael Brown as head of FEMA, a man who had as much experience at handling natural disasters as I do.

Someone needs to give Bolton a little history lesson...

• The September 11 attacks happened on Bush's watch

• The 1993 WTC attack happened a mere 36 days after President Clinton took office

• The attack on the USS Cole happened on Oct. 12, 2000, and the FBI's final report was issued on Jan. 19, 2001. Just imagine those headlines from the right-wingnuts in the media had Clinton responded in the waning hours of his presidency: Bill Clinton retaliates for Cole attack to deflect attention from presidential pardons!!! would have screamed Faux News, etc.

• The embassy bombings? Yes, they happened on President Clinton's watch, and when the U.S. military retaliated on Aug. 20, 1998, Repubes in Congress, who were busy impeaching him for a blow job, cried that he was trying to deflect attention away from the Lewinsky witch hunt scandal.

I'm not absolving President Clinton of all blame for the terrorism that rocked U.S. locations around the world in his second term (and the first WTC attack early in his first), but to blame him for these attacks is absurd, and in the case of 9-11, utterly laughable.

The myth that Clinton did nothing to combat terrorism in the 1990s has been thoroughly debunked, so I'm not going to waste a whole lot of time on it here. All I'll add is that it's been refuted by people who were there, such as Richard Clarke and George Tenet.

My point is that trying to blame Clinton for every bad terrorist attack is absurd, but we've seen these plays called by Republicans before, most recently before the 2006 election. Let's hope they keep trotting out this cliché time and again before November. I don't think a majority of voters could possibly be naïve enough to believe it.

Anna Nicole - the new JonBenét

I certainly hope I'm not the only person in America who is sickened and disgusted by the incessant media coverage of Anna Nicole Smith? It feels as if many media gossip shows are dancing on this woman's grave, even though she's not in the ground yet.

JonBenét, Chandra Levy, Monica Lewinsky, Anna Nicole Smith, Pamela Smart, Susan Smith, the Runaway Bride, Amy Fisher and back again. I really do tire of these media circuses ~ and the morons who run news departments wonder why Americans are tuning out. At a time when Americans should have access to contemporary news stories that are affecting their everyday lives, this is the crap we are force fed on a daily basis.

It's utterly amazing to me that with all that is going on domestically and in our foreign policy right now that this story is getting that much play at all. Granted, celebrities will always get some media coverage, but Smith? She was a B-List celebrity when she was alive, and now in death she's turned into a media darling.

Press only she could love.

And that I despise.

I've already written that I'm not kowtowing to the PC police about Smith - I always found her very annoying when she was alive, so I'm not going to put both hands on my face and say, "Oh, it's so awful!" I feel bad that her baby, 1. Won't know her mother, and 2. By most media accounts, may never know who her father is, because of the behavior of #1.

Two more thoughts, and then I won't add any further (albeit in a very minuscule way) to the coverage of this whole debacle.

The faux sadness and sympathy in some circles cracks me up. The media hounds covering this story don't give two craps about Smith, her family or her baby. This is just the media's celeb story du jour. Thank God it will be over in another 10 minutes.

Larry King (right) really took on on the chin in the immediate aftermath of Smith's death. The day she died, he was stuck interviewing super scary Chyna, a former female professional wrestler and alleged friend of Smith's. Once Chyna got through with her shtick, the wife of TrimSpa CEO Alex Goen came on the the program and got in a cat fight of sorts with Chyna, telling King's audience that Smith "didn't consider Chyna a friend." Snore.

What the hell has happened to King, anyway? One night he's hosting a discussion on Smith's death with nobodies that would bore the homeless, and a week later he has Rudy Giuliani on his show declaring he'll run for president. King needs to fire the person responsible for booking his guests, and if it's him, he should just retire already.

The only thing I find remotely interesting about Smith's death is whether TrimSpa, the diet pill that Smith used to get paid to pimp, will make a comeback. Most seem to think the company won't survive.

Robert Passikoff, an industry analyst, told CNN, "Given the double whammy of who their spokesperson was and the other tangential difficulties, I don't think they're [TrimSpa] going to come back."

Even before Smith's death, the company had struck an agreement with the Federal Trade Commission to pay a $1.5 million settlement for false claims about TrimSpa.

Right now, Trimspa's Website contains a black and white montage of Smith pictures with the message below from CEO Alex Goen:

Whippany, NJ, February 8, 2007 – Today, Anna Nicole Smith’s grief stricken and tumultuous personal life came to an end. Anna came to our Company as a customer, but she departs it as a friend. While life for Anna Nicole was not easy these past few months, she held dear her husband, Howard K. Stern, her daughter, Dannielynn Hope, her most cherished friends, beloved dogs, and finally, her work with TRIMSPA.

Anna knew both the joy of giving life, and the heartache of losing a child. We pray that she is granted the peace that eluded her more recent days on earth, and that she find comfort in the presence of her son, Daniel.

-- Alex Goen, CEO and Founder, TRIMSPA

Hmm. Goodbye Smith, Alex, and Trimspa.

A little Monica - yes, THAT Monica

I found an article about an article on Monica Lewinsky yesterday, and it was so well written (and short), I wanted to share it. It's from The Huffington Post, one of my favorite blogs, in a column called Eat the Press. It's a brilliant piece by Rachel Sklar, a witty woman the same age as Lewinsky. I was laughing before I even read the article - even the title is funny. Anyway, here's the piece, and I'll offer my thoughts afterward.

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Richard Cohen Defends Monica Lewinsky, Weeps for Her Barren Womb

WaPo's Richard Cohen makes some very good points in his defense-of-Monica article today — she was young; she had the misfortune to have her dirty laundry aired in public (cue blue Gap dress joke); she's always been remarkably dignified in the face of public scandal; she's just received her Master's from the London School of Economics; and as if you haven't messed around with skankier than a sitting President, for God's sake. Cohen was reacting to this WaPo article by Libby Copeland, which poked fun at Lewinsky for graduating from LSE, which she rather snottily said made one "question your fundamental assumptions about the world," but really just made me question where Libby Copeland was a year and a half ago when the news broke that Lewinsky would be entering that program.

Cohen offers a fair and chivalrous defense of someone who has probably about served her debt to society by now, hmm? (For God's sake, even Nixon got a pardon!), and I would have cheered it had he not felt the need to wander into Lewinsky's private life:

But she is now a woman with a master's degree from a prestigious school and is going to be 34 come July. Her clock ticks, her life ebbs. Where is the man for her?

OH MY GOD SHE IS GOING TO BE 34 COME JULY!!! WHERE IS THE MAN FOR HER? HER CLOCK TICKS! HER LIFE EBBS! Cohen says "It would be nice, too, and fair, also, if Lewinsky were treated by the media as it would treat a man... Where, pray tell, is the man who is remembered just for sex?" I would add, where, pray tell, is the 34-year old man whose sad prospects of singledom are bemoaned in a national newspaper? Practice what you preach, Richard; but as for the rest of it, I and my wasting, shriveling 34-year old ovaries couldn't agree with you more.

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Well done, Rachel. I certainly sympathize with Lewinsky, mostly. I really do. What Clinton did was inexcusable, and how he and his administration moved to discredit her in the wake of the scandal is also indefensible.

Having said that, I don't feel totally sympathetic for all of the publicity she's received in the wake of the scandal, because in many ways, she sought to capitalize on her notoriety by appearing on reality television shows and even launching her own line of handbags.

At the risk of sounding condescending, it is good to see that she is making something of her life and moving on, finally. God only knows the press has not made it easy for her to do that, so good for her.

One more note on the Lewinsky matter, and then I'll close. I didn't intend to get on some diatribe about a political scandal that is dead and buried, but, some people (Sean Hannity) have selective memory & neglect to remember that the scandal was between two consenting adults. I got a kick out of Hannity's bringing Clinton up in the wake of the Mark Foley sex scandal this past fall. Hannity is the reason mothers sometimes eat their young. I've got great video of Hannity that I'll share soon.