Rudy's family values

Rudy Giuliani(pictured here counting his wives) is a different kind of Republican. You can't deny him that.

Let's see:

He's been married so many times (including once to his cousin) that he's got rice scars.

He has, on several occasions, publicly appeared in drag.

He's shared living quarters with a gay couple (not that there's anything wrong with that).

He's been on all sides of the abortion question, finally settling on the pro-choice side.

He's been on all sides of the gun-control question. (The guy flips and flops more than Mitt Romney.)

He pretends that the ashes and soot he got on his suit on 9/11 make him an expert on foreign policy.

And today, we have this piece about how his kids want nothing to do with him.

Yet, amazingly, the polls show that Rudy's still ahead in the race for the presidential nomination in a political party that's supposed to be strongly influenced by the Christian right.

Go figure.

U.S. weapons used against U.S. troops

But, we needn't worry too much about this, because the Pentagon has the problem under review.

Pro-lifers are strangely silent on the question of whether women who get abortions should be prosecuted on murder charges

In a post here back in May, I asked this question:

If a fetus is a person, and abortion is the unwarranted killing of that innocent person, why don't any of the pro-life candidates [for the Republican presidential nomination] favor a law under which the mother would be charged with murder?

A similar question was raised last week by Anna Quindlen in a column in Newsweek magazine.

Quindlen also provided a link (as I'm doing here) to a video of anti-abortion protestors in Libertyville, Ill., facing the question of what kind of punishment should be meted out to women who get abortions.

Let's face it. If all the pro-lifers started running around calling not only for a legal ban on abortion but also for stiff criminal sanctions against women who get abortions, the backlash against their movement would be huge.

By the same token (as I noted in that previous post this past May), the anti-abortion position is highly unpopular when it makes no exceptions for cases of rape or incest. So, we're left to surmise that most pro-lifers want exceptions for cases of rape and incest. And we're left with the fact that a fetus produced by rape or incest is no less innocent than any other. The conclusion, then, is that most pro-lifers stand on very shaky moral ground.

Mad Money dude goes bonkers

I don't know a hedge fund from a hedge clipper, but I discerned that there's cause for alarm when I saw Jim Cramer, that screaming stock market guy, completely lose control in an interview the other night on CBNC.

Cramer was upset about something the Federal Reserve is doing or is not doing, and he seemed to think that the sky was about to fall. Accordingly, I've converted my vast stock holdings to cash, and I'm hiding in a cave.

Jesus Christ, Macho Man!

As we noted here recently, many of our Republican friends are strangely fearful that their masculinity might be lacking a bit -- or at least that it might be perceived that way.

One of these pathetic fellows, Rod Dreher, also is worried that not enough menfolk are showing up in churches these days, and he figures it's because they're not fully aware of what a manly man Jesus was.

There are too many chicks in the pews, argues Rod, which means that Christian leaders have got to reposition the product in the marketplace so as to attract more fans of wrestling and NASCAR.

Toward that noble end, Dreher borrows an idea from Catholic blogger Dom Bettinelli:

We might also look at the Mass and wonder if it too has been over-feminized. Men like ritual. Don’t believe me? Watch the stands at a professional baseball game. When the home team is losing in the late innings see how many rally caps appear. But it must be a certain kind of ritual. It must be majestic, soaring, even martial. It must challenge and call you on. In many ways that’s what the Tridentine Mass was. Even the fact that it was in Latin made it a challenge, something you had to work at, rather than become a passive observer.

But my favorite part of Dreher's essay is this one:

I believe one reason so many male Christians responded deeply to Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" was because it depicted a masculine Jesus who chose to endure excruciating pain to rescue those he loved. The Christian faith teaches that this is what Jesus did, but somehow the intense physical courage that that act of love required is easy to overlook. Gibson didn't overlook it. The Jesus Christ of his film embodied manliness par excellence: a strong, brave man who was willing to suffer and die to save others. After I saw that film in a press preview, then went to Ash Wednesday services and heard the plush priest give a homily about how Lent is really supposed to be about learning to love ourselves more, I wanted to slug the guy.

Yeah, that's the spirit. Whup his ass for Jesus.

Newtie indulges in still more apostasy

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is becoming more and more the Republican maverick these days, dissing his own party and its president at almost every turn.

In his latest salvo, Gingrich told a gathering of college conservatives that President Bush is losing his "phony" war on terror and that the nation needs "leaders who are prepared to tell the truth...about the failures of the performance of Republicans...failed bureaucracies...about how dangerous the world is."

Last week, Gingrich said in a nationally televised interview that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is "a liability for the United States of America" and should resign.

As for whether he'll run for the Republican presidential nomination, Gingrich remains coy, not exactly ruling it out but acting as if it's unlikely.

Gonzo's still hanging on

Well, it's Friday night, and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales hasn't yet resigned, despite my prediction of a few days ago that he would have bowed out by now.

But, hey, he can't possibly survive through the remainder of George Bush's presidency, right? I mean, really?

And I'm like, "No, I don't agree with this"

I'm not exactly a grammar snob, and heaven knows I've made my share of mistakes with the King's English. But still, I can be persnickety about the language at times.

One of my pet peeves is the use of the word "like" as a quotative -- as in: "I was like, 'No way," and she was like, 'Oh, yeah!'" This sort of thing is ubiquitous among young people these days, and it's creeping into conversations among the not-so-young.

In The New York Times Magazine of a few weeks ago, linguist Patricia T. O'Connor wrote a defense of "like" as a quotative, arguing that it's "a handy tool for quoting or paraphrasing the speech of others, often with sarcasm or irony."

But it's too often used, I contend, as a substitute for paraphrasing rather than a vehicle for it. Young people seem to have almost a phobia about paraphrasing; they prefer to use even the most prosaic quotations from a conversation:

"I was like, 'What do you want to do tonight?' And she was like, 'I don't know.' And I was like, 'Wanna go over to Heather's house?' And she was like, 'Heather is such a drip.'"

Come on. Paraphrase it: "I said maybe we could go over to Heather's house, and she said Heather's a drip."

I can agree with O'Connor's defense of "like" when it's used with facial or vocal imitation. But that's not usually the case.

And let's face it, the word can make you sound vapid, especially when it's combined with meaningless uses of "like" elsewhere in your statement. For example: "We were like walking to school, and we were like way late, and this kid comes up to us, and he's like, 'What are you looking at?' And we're like, 'Nothing.' And then he like tries to start a fight.'"

I don't put much hope in the possibility that "like" as a quotative might eventually fade away, as was the case with "go" and "goes," which served the same purpose for young people of the 1970s.

As O'Connor puts it: "Like definitely has legs."

A line worth remembering

I was reading some stuff today about the YearlyKos Convention in Chicago, and I ran across this insightful observation from blogger Jill Filipovic of Feministe:

"The left wants the media to be accurate, and the right wants the media to be conservative."

Ain't it the truth?

The mainstream media often lie about the war

I wish it weren't so, but even a schmuck wearing a bathrobe in front of a computer in an apartment on the east side of Rockford, Illinois, can, without much effort, punch holes in the mainstream media's rosy assessments of the war in Iraq in midsummer 2007.

Consider these factors:

On Monday of this week, under a headline reading "U.S. Observers Note Progress In Iraq Surge," David Martin, the national security correspondent for CBS News, reported on the network's Web site that "American casualties in July are the lowest since the troop surge began in February" and that "civilian casualties are down by a third."

Here's the truth of the matter: There were 81 American deaths in Iraq in July, a figure no lower than in February or March of this year, which was before the surge began in earnest, according to the Pentagon. The figure also is more than 17 percent higher than the monthly average of American deaths since the start of the war in March, 2003. If your fatalities are running far above the average for the pre-surge period, how can you say the surge is successful in that respect?

As for the civilian death toll, David Martin was way off the mark. The toll was up by one-third, not down. Some progress!

And then there's the laughable matter of Kenneth Pollock and Michael O'Hanlon, a pair of scholars from the Brookings Institution, appearing in media all over the place to tell of their favorable impressions of the war effort gained during a brief visit to Iraq. They had an op-ed column in The New York Times and were interviewed on all the major networks.

Incredibly, Pollock and O'Hanlon, who have been cheerleaders for the war since before it started and big supporters of the surge, were almost invariably identified in the past week as erstwhile "harsh" critics of the Bush administration's Iraq policy. Critics? Time and time again over the past four years, these guys have seen military victory just around the corner and have counseled patience on the part of the American people.

Moreover, this latest visit to Iraq by Pollock and O'Hanlon was, as Pollock was forced to admit, "largely organized by the military," which raises the question of whether the brass outfitted these eminent scholars with rose-colored glasses.

For more on Kenneth and Michael's excellent adventure, check here and here and here.

Meanwhile, don't buy that nonsense that the mainstream media are undermining the president's war policy. In fact, the media often pimp for that policy with lazy and inaccurate reporting.

UPDATE: It seems that the Pentagon's top dude suddenly seems less optimistic about the surge than are Pollock and O'Hanlon. This is from the Los Angeles Times:

Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates acknowledged Thursday that the Bush administration underestimated the difficulty of getting a political truce in Iraq, where Prime Minister Nouri Maliki’s government has been crippled by a walkout by Sunni Arab ministers.

The Pentagon chief’s remarks Thursday were his closest yet to acknowledging that the Bush administration’s top political goals for Iraq may not materialize during the buildup, even if it is extended into next spring, the latest the military could sustain the increase. He also is the top Bush administration official to express such concerns publicly.

Why does Don Manzullo hate our troops?

If Democratic challenger Bob Abboud doesn't hit Republican incumbent Don Manzullo (of the 16th Congressional District in Illinois) with stuff like this, I doubt that he can win.

The House voted 229-194 yesterday in favor of a bill that would require active duty forces to be guaranteed that their time at home match the length of their deployment. National Guard and reservists would be home for three times the length of the deployments.

The bill would allow the president to waive these requirements to meet the national security needs of the country, and allow service chiefs of staff to allow for the voluntary mobilization of members. These requirements would apply to those serving in Iraq.

The bill also expresses a sense of the Congress that the goal for the time between deployments for regular components should be one year deployed to two years at home station, and the goal for the reserve components should be one year deployed to five years at home station.

Manzullo voted against this measure.

By the way, the bill now goes to the Senate, where it previously was supported by a majority of members but was blocked by a Republican filibuster.

Talk about hypocrisy!

Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert got his undies in a bundle the other day at the mere thought that his colleagues might pass legislation that would expand federal health insurance for children of the working poor.

"It's government-paid health care," sniffed Hastert. "It's a bad bill..."

This is the same Dennis Hastert who, as a member of Congress, enjoys government-paid health coverage that provides for unlimited doctor visits, no deductibles and no co-pays. Oh, wait. The government doesn't pay the whole tab. Hastert has to come up with $35 a month.

The bill Hastert so strenuously opposed passed the House 225-204 on a vote that was mostly along party lines.

When will this kind of disaster happen on a bridge you're crossing?

And when is this nation, which is losing billions of dollars to fraud and waste in Iraq, going to fix its crumbling infrastructure?

Is Bush afraid to fire Gonzo?

Time magazine says he is, but The Rascal still expects that Gonzales soon will be gone.

Might Manzullo not run again?

According to this Web site, there is "speculation" that U.S. Rep. Don Manzullo, an eight-term Republican from the 16th Congressional District of Illinois, won't run again next year.

The site links to a piece published Tuesday on RollCall.com., but it's available by subscription only, and The Rascal is not prepared to subscribe.

Democrat Robert Abboud of McHenry County announced Monday that he's running for Manzullo's seat.

WaPo says Rockford guy at Justice meddled in OxyContin case

The Washington Post reported today that Rockford native Michael Elston, who was a senior official at the Justice Department at the time, phoned a U.S. attorney in Virginia last year and tried to get him to slow down in his prosecution of the manufacturer of the dangerous painkiller OxyContin.

The Post said the prosecutor rebuffed the effort and then soon found his name on Elston's list of U.S. attorneys to be fired.

Elston, who has been embroiled for months in the controversy over the sacking of eight federal prosecutors, quit his job at the Justice Department in June.

Four of the prosecutors who were fired have said that Elston implied by phone that they would face embarrassing recriminations if they didn't leave quietly.

Can Bob Abboud defeat Don Manzullo?

Barrington Hills Mayor Bob Abboud (right) announced Monday in Rockford that he'll seek the Democratic nomination to challenge incumbent U.S. Rep. Don Manzullo next year in the 16th Congressional District of Illinois.

Does Abboud have a chance in what's considered a fairly safe Republican district?

Well, according to somebody named Sean on the Swing State Project (I can't provide a direct link, because the post at issue is gone), a Democratic victory is not out of the question:

What a Democrat must do to win the district is not that hard. They must run at least even in the small counties along the Wisconsin border like Boone, Stephenson, and hold Manzullo to about 53% in Jo Daviess, 55% in Carroll, and to 58% in Ogle. As for the big population centers, they have to win big in Winnebago county(about 57%), and hold Manzullo to 56% in the district's portion of McHenry county.

Gonzo waves goodbye

The Rascal has learned -- well, actually it's an inescapable conclusion based on intensive study of all the factors involved -- that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales will resign within the next 96 hours.

Remember where you heard it.

Gonzo's situation is simply untenable. His web of lies is too much of a tangle to straighten out. Virtually everybody recognizes this fact. Consequently, all but the most buttheaded of Republican right-wingers want him out.

The man is saddled with the distinction as the worst attorney general in American history. Nothing's going to change that.

He's gone by Friday night.

Bill O'Reilly is quite the scamp

I don't know for sure what was going on when this photo of Fox News Channel blowhard Bill O'Reilly was snapped, but I now have a pretty good idea.

I knew that O'Reilly was hit with a sexual harrassment suit a few years back, but I never knew the details. Well, thanks to a few links to TheSmokingGun.com provided today by Atrios, I've come across the full text of the initial complaint. It's a doozy.

(Start here and then follow the subsequent links at the bottom of each page.)

No matter how much you previously disliked this guy, you'll never think of him in the same way again.

What about the next 9/11?

Who will perpetrate it?

How will we react to it?

Could a U.S. victory in Iraq have prevented it?

Marty Kapan has some provocative thoughts on the matter.