A weird set of circumstances had me going through 5 different airport security checkpoints over 3 or 4 days this week.  What a nightmare.  Frequent fliers are slowly but surely getting disgusted with the security screening procedures.  Shoes off, ziploc bags, 3 ounces of liquid, no gels, but some gels...c'mon, let's face it:  the TSA guidelines are a total joke.  For instance, for 4 of the 5 trips through security hell, my Mennen Speed Stick deodorant was absolutely fine in my carry-on.  I just sailed through.  During one screening, in Tampa's airport, I suddenly because Abdul the Terrible.  You'd have thought I had robbed a bank because I didn't have the offending 3 ounce anti-perspirant in a ziploc bag.  Since it was in a shaving kit, not a plastic baggie, it was confiscated as if it were crack cocaine.  The TSA screener calmly explained to me that the speed stick really isn't a stick, it's a gel that is CALLED a stick and needed to be in the ever-wonderful ziploc baggie.  No baggie, in the trash.  Wonderful.   Meantime, we continue to refuse to implement measures that include profiling passengers because we're so terrified of what the ACLU might say.

Anna Quindlen of Newsweek happened to have a terrific article on the problem this week in Newsweek http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15562940/site/newsweek/  

She's right.  Let's wake up and stop spending billions strip-searching little old ladies in our nation's airports.  Enough is enough.

Settling in to watch a TV show the other night, I was disgusted to see a department store TV commercial that was a full-blown Christmas spot.  I mean, we're talking snow, Christmas tree, the familiar carol music, the whole works.  The date?  October 29th.

Can we just knock it off?  Christmas is coming earlier and earlier every year.  The charming little town square where I live now all all it's Christmas lights up -- and running.  It's only the first week of November, for cryin' out loud.

Over the past few years, conservatives have mounted a successful rally against the secularization of Christmas.  Fox News Channel's John Gibson even wrote a book last year about "the war on Christmas."

I'm all for that battle and let's keep fighting.  But let's include the lousy trend of force-feeding this special time of year down our throats earlier and earlier.

Celebrating Christmas from October until January completely ruins the sprit of the season.

I just returned from the Fox News studios where I did an early morning exchange with Democrat strategist Bob Beckel.  Like my wife, Bob's just politically misguided, but he's a good guy.  He takes his party's line that this election today should be about Iraq.

I hope he's right.  Americans are smart enough to recognize that Democrats have absolutely no alternative to what we're currently doing in Iraq, other than to come home.  Coming home is precisely what Osama bin Laden wants.  How awful it will be if Democrats are in charge and we concede this war.  Americans are smarter than that and more importantly, we don't like to lose.

So in addition to record-low unemployment numbers, a healthy Dow, and a thriving economy overall, let's hope Americans think about Iraq when they pull the lever today.

If they do, maybe we'll catch a break and keep the grown-ups in charge.

I had been suffering from an NFL hangover.  You know the feeling, the team you root for blows it and winds up losing a game they should have won.  In my case, the Dallas Cowboys snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by handing a bizarre victory to the error-prone Washington Redskins.  Yesterday, somehow, the Cowboys managed a "Bad News Bears" performance that allowed the 'Skins to look like geniuses.  An easy Cowboys field goal with :06 seconds on the clock which would have sealed the Dallas win wound up being blocked and then run back by the Redskins.  Thanks to a terrible officiating mistake (a 5 yard facemask penalty was somehow turned into 15), it gave Washington one last play, with no time remaining, and their awful kicker managed to squeeze it through the uprights from 49 yards out.  Ugh.  I hate football.

So trudging into work this morning, I had those NFL blues.  I was jolted into reality by a Townhall.com reader who wrote me an email reminded me to keep my chin up because, as he put it, "let the Democrats be all gloom and doom -- we're the optimists!"  

How right he is.

Despite scandal after scandal being thrown our way, I'm reminded that we need to keep our chins up and stay positive.  It's no coincidence that scandals from the pages of the National Enquirer are all  happening in the hours before the election.  Heck, the male prostitute who outed Rev. Ted Haggard admitted he waited to time the revelation until a few days before the mid-term election in order to maximize the damage to conservatives.

We'll find out tomorrow night if it worked. 

There's no question that a lot of damage has been inflicted.  Between a difficult war, a number of Republican scandals, and a general feeling of unrest in the country, perhaps the Democrats were right to have been measuring for drapes in the Congressional office buildings.

But another scenario is possible:  voters are going to wake up and go to the polls in huge numbers tomorrow.  Enough of us will see through the deliberately timed tactics, the overwhelming effort by the mainstream press to assist Democrats, and have the ability to ask ourselves a simple question:  do Democrats really offer a better solution to ANYTHING?  Since the Democratic Party has made President Bush and the war the centerpiece of their campaigns, it's a pretty simple task to ask if they offer anything whatsoever that makes more sense than our current goal of defeating our enemy.

Naturally, the answer is a resounding no.

Republicans aren't perfect.  There are bad apples in the Democratic bunch just like there are bad apples in the GOP's.  

But maybe, just maybe, enough people will realize that we're better off with Republicans in control than the Democrats.  And that they'll show up tomorrow to say so.

So I'm keeping my chin up and staying positive.  Besides, surely my Cowboys won't figure out a way to let Arizona beat us next Sunday....

 

I can hear it now:  poor John Kerry, in exploring another (failed) presidential bid, stands before a roomful of people and announces, "I actually DID apologize for calling our troops stupid after refusing to apologize."

Remember the Mel Brooks' movie, "The Producers", turned into a smash Broadway hit with Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick?  There's a scene where one of the characters, facing complete ruination and scandal, is curled up on the floor in a fetal position clutching a baby blanket and repeating, "No way out....no way out....no way out...."

Can't you just see poor, pitiful John Kerry curled up on an Oriental rug in his Beacon Hill townhouse saying the same thing?

Man, I've seen politicians self-destruct before, but not quite to the extent of this particular meltdown.  I'm not sure what's more offensive:  Kerry's arrogant tirade or his wimpy little five-sentence statement on his website that purports to be an apology.

Do you think there's any single American, Democrat or Republican, who believes he's sorry?

Voters should go to the polls next week with the image of John Kerry emblazoned in their minds.  Or, better still, consider what liberal/Democrat investigative reporter Seymour Hersch had to say this week about our brave men and women fighting the good fight:  "There has never been an American army as violent and murderous as the one in Iraq."  This is the same Seymour Hersch who had the big "scoop" about American soldiers putting panty hose on the heads of some prisoners at Abu Ghraib.  Think this guy might have an agenda?  "Violent and murderous?"  And you can be certain this clown isn't a registered Republican.

It's simple, these folks simply despise our troops.  They "loathe the military" (remember who said THAT?  It wasn't a Republican...) and want America to lose.  I know it sounds hard to believe, but how else would you describe it?

Liberals are screeching and howling and wailing and thrashing.  Check out that lunatic Keith "I-think-I'm-Edward-R.-Murrow" Olbermann on MSNBC. 

I hate to dare to dream, but could Democrats realize that their supposedly guaranteed victory isn't such a foregone conclusion after all? 

So Sen. John Kerry was kidding?   He called his ugly, mean-spirited attack on every single American who has ever served or is serving in the military a "botched joke" about the President?

As Dr. Evil from the Austin Powers movies would say:  "Riiiiiiight."

The junior Senator from Massachusetts looks out at a group of college kids and tells them that if they do their homework and study hard, they won't wind up being "stuck in Iraq."  After the stuff hits the fan, he marches up to another podium and insists he was just "joking" about President Bush and his "broken policies."   And refuses to apologize to anyone.

Nice try, Senator.  Classy.  Bright.  Insightful.  And boy, are you funny.  There's nothing like joking about our troops and their commander-in-chief during a time of war where our soldiers are fighting and dying that can bring down the house.

Please remember to tip your waitress.

But since humor is the order of the day, I think I can just join the crowd:

Did you hear the one about the junior Senator from Massachusetts who likes to wear women's lingerie?

Oh, never mind - that was just a botched joke about the economic policy of France.

In the scheme of things, I wonder what voters will consider a more important "scandal":  a disgraced Republican Congressman who was immediately drummed out of his job after it was revealed that he sent nasty e-mails to pages or a sitting U.S. Senator who claims that our troops are lazy, ignorant and uneducated?

I hear that John Kerry beats his wife so often that her nickname is "Black-and-blue Teresa."

Oops, another botched joke, I meant to address the climate conditions of Brazil.

Kerry's angry press conference yesterday was really a classic.  This is a guy who has practically topped Al Gore or Howard Dean in falling apart at the seams.  "Doughy Rush Limbaugh?"  "Stuffed shirt Tony Snow?"  But most importantly, he's a man who doesn't even have enough honor or courage to apologize for his ridiculous slur.  He spends so much time bragging about what a "war hero" he was that he doesn't even have the decency to say he's sorry to the family members of slain American soldiers, or the heroic, SMART men and women at Walter Reed who have lost their limbs but not their spirit.

John Kerry pulls the wings off flies, kicks his dog, and is an internet porn addict.

There I go again, just another "botched joke."  What a riot, eh?

The other gutless Democrat in this whole debacle is the unnamed Democratic congressman who told ABC News, "He blew it for us in 2004, what's he trying to do, blow it for us in 2006, too?"  If only that Democrat would have been willing to go on the record and identify him/herself, Americans might be able to have one shred of hope for this shameful political party.  So far, not a single Democrat has had the sense or decency to denounce Kerry for what he said.  That's pretty typical for them.  Compare that to all the Republicans who had no trouble throwing Mark Foley out to the curb, where he belongs.

John Kerry is a national disgrace who will never again hold any other political office than the one he has and has forced a number of decent people to vote for Republicans next week.

And that is no joke.

 

Ever read Vanity Fair?  It's quite the adventure.  Mixed in-between glossy photo spreads and gossip about the latest Hollywood scandals is a constant, unwavering, Chinese water torture-type of rallying cry about how evil the Bush Adminstration is, how awful the war is, blah, blah, blah.  I suppose the rantings and ravings of editor-in-chief Graydon Carter and cry-baby-in-chief James Wolcott are simply playing to the magazine's core audience, a bunch of spoiled, pampered, pitifully out-of-touch Hollywood liberal elitists.  I mean, check out Graydon Carter's pompous picture that accompanies every one of his anti-Bush columns (which appear every single month the magazine is published).  If that photo doesn't scream out "total jerk", nothing does.

So this morning, a friend of mine sends me a link to Wolcott's blog. In it, he calls fellow radio host Michael Medved and me "useless loads."   The reason for his ire, of course, is the recent meeting we had with President Bush in the Oval Office which was written about in the New York Times.  I just knew that when the meeting was chronicled in the Times, liberal jackals like Wolcott would go bonkers.  After all, when they're doing everything they can to destroy the Bush Administration on a daily basis, how fair is it that they be kept outside the White House windows, trying to peer in to get a glimpse, while such "useless loads" as Hannity, Boortz, Ingraham, Medved and Gallagher, represesenting our 30 million weekly listeners, would get a seat at the table?  How painful it must be for whiny little malcontents like James Wolcott to be left in their stuffy, upper East Side apartments to crank out their bitter columns while some of us actually get a seat at the table of the newsmaker-in-chief.

Meantime, practically on-cue, Democrats are self-destructing in the final days before the election.  If it's not Harold Ford accusing Republicans of not loving the Lord, it's John Kerry proclaiming that only ignorant, college-deprived dunces put their lives on the line in the U.S. military.  Who would have ever thought that Bill Clinton's admitted "loathing" of the military would look tame compared to John "Purple Heart" Kerry?

Some cynical liberal Democrats have predicted that the Dems will snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.  I'm starting to think they're right.

It's a great day.  Believe me, being called a "useless load" by someone like James Wolcott is truly a badge of honor.  I must be doing something right...

So Michael J. Fox, in what he termed "full disclosure", didn't even bother to read the constitutional amendment he was championing in that controversial campaign TV ad for Claire McCaskill.   He goes on television touting Missouri Amendment 2 and attacking the Republican challenger to McCaskill and yet admitted to George Stephanopoulos on ABC's "This Week" that he hadn't even read the amendment which critics claim could lead to human cloning.

"Although I'm quite sure that I'll agree with it (Amendment 2) in spirit, I don't know, I -- in full disclosure, I haven't read it, and that's why I didn't put myself up for it distinctly", he said. 

Wow.  You sure seemed to put yourself up for it distinctly, Mr. Fox.  Why else would you have done the ad?  And yet once more, we watch a Hollywood celebrity inject himself into the middle of the debate without really knowing what the debate is about.

Friday night, it was glorious fun to watch Bill O'Reilly make a complete and utter fool out of angry, bitter David Letterman on CBS's "Late Show."  Despite Bill's earnest and almost constant seriousness, he knows how to charm an audience, just like he did in the Ed Sullivan Theatre.  Just like Bill's earlier appearance, Letterman just tried to hurl insult after insult and claim that O'Reilly doesn't know any facts, makes most of his opinions up, and is a general all-around "bonehead."

And yet Letterman continues to insist, both on-air and off, that he has never watched Bill on television, has never heard his radio show, nor has he ever read one of O'Reilly's columns.   So pray tell, Mr. Late Night Funnyman, where does all your contempt come from?  How do you KNOW you don't like O'Reilly or what he stands for if you've ever seen, heard or read him?

Some might suggest that Letterman is just pulling the old liberal trick of claiming never to have heard one of us radio blowhards while secretly listening to every word (just about every newspaper columnist who has ever ripped me in the past and claimed to have never heard my show almost always has been discovered to have been devout listeners).

But when Letterman says he's never heard or read Bill O'Reilly, I believe him.  I think he lives his life in blissful ignorance out there in his Connecticut mansion, just working on the next comedy bit.  He knows what he knows:  that patriotic Americans who support our troops and our country are somehow bad.  When O'Reilly pressed Letterman on whether or not he "wanted" the USA to win in Iraq, he just danced around it, refusing to answer a pretty obvious question.

Thanks, Michael J. Fox and David Letterman.  You make it so easy to see what you're really about.  Since you're famous, you have huge platforms with millions of people to play to.  And you don't even bother to find out what it is you're actually talking about.

Shameful.

In reading about Virginia Democratic Senate candidate Jim Webb and his sordid, vile writings as a fiction writer in the 90's, I keep thinking about the difference between the overall philosophy of the Republican Party versus the Democrats.   Consider the Mark Foley scandal.  A GOP congressman is discovered to have written inappropriate things to teenage boys, and he's out.  Finished.   No Republican supported him, he's universally denounced.  But Jim Webb, in a neck-and-neck race for Virginia Senate against incumbent George Allen, wrote some of the most disgusting things imaginable.  This "fiction" included a story about a man having sex with his naked son, strippers performing physical acts with their anatomy, and more.  So where's the scandal?   How about Democrats demanding that Webb immediately step down from the race?   I'd take ANY Democrat stepping up and saying that it's pretty disgusting for a man who wants to be a U.S. Senator being capable of fantasizing about a man and his naked little boy having sex.

This double standard helps define the difference between the Democrats and the Republicans.  The Dems are all about the politics.  Never mind right or wrong. 

Shame on them.

 

I've been getting a lot of flak lately for my visit to the Oval Office last month to spend some time with President Bush.   Five of us radio hosts were invited there for an "off-the-record" conversation with the Commander-in-Chief (well, six were actually invited, but Rush declined).

It was obviously an incredible opportunity for five of us radio blowhards to ask the President some tough questions, have him describe a lot of what goes into his decision-making process, and learn a thing or two about things like the war, taxes, terrorism, and even how he copes with the pressure of that fishbowl of a life.

My close friend Sean Hannity, who sat across from me on the other Oval Office couch, was so right when afterwards he said that if every American could have that experience we did, President Bush would have about an 80% approval rating. 

And yet when the New York Times called the other day to ask about the meeting, I knew the ensuing article would stir up the proverbial hornet's nest.  Sure enough, after the article about the visit ran in the Times, complete with a White House photo of the five of us in the Oval Office meeting, some of the rabid lefties went bonkers.  Keith Obermann on MSNBC referred to us hosts as the "legion of doom"; a radio host from the bankrupt Air America network actually compared us to prostitutes (something to do with the Jeff Gannon scandal).

And yet none of the critics seem to mind when President Bush sits down with former Clinton right-hand man George Stephanopolous on ABC and admits that it's understandable to be able to compare Iraq to Vietnam.

Every time I see Stephanopolous on TV, I cringe.  Some objective "journalist", eh?  At least those of us who are paid to express opinions on radio or TV wear our biases on our sleeves -- Georgie boy pretends to be objective.  

So when the President gives ammo to the left by agreeing that Iraq feels like the Vietnam Tet offensive, where are the cries of Bush wasting his time on a meaningless interview?   Why don't liberals seem to mind if the President visits with loyal Democrats on-air?

Boy, I don't know what's going to happen on November 7th.  But I sure can't wait for November 8th.

So Bill Clinton throws a hissy fit about an upcoming ABC mini-series, "The Path to 9/11" before he even sees it, eh?   How noble.   Seems he's got his joe boxers in a wad because he was "told" that the ABC series portrays him as being distracted by the impeachment debacle and let Osama bin Laden slip through his fingers when he had the chance to nab him.  Well, let's just ponder something for a moment:  do you think a U.S. president, facing impeachment over his official lies, might just be a bit distracted from the business of the day?  Isn't it true that the United States knew all about Osama during Clinton's presidency?   So ABC dared to connect the dots and suggest that perhaps the president, who seemed mighty busy doing things like chasing interns around the Oval Office desk with a cigar, might have been a bit preoccupied.  Big deal.

Now comes the reaction from ABC:  Don't panic, no one has seen the final product yet and we're still in the editing process.  Oh brother.   You know what that means, right?  A team of editors, sweating profusely, are working 24/7 to snip out all the offensive scenes detailed in Clinton's stupid 5 page letter to ABC honcho Bob Iger.  In fact, I can picture the editing team sitting at their editing bays with copies of the Clinton lawyer letter scotch-taped above their machines so that they can check off, one by one, all the scenes that the Clintonistas are objecting to.  After all, ABC can't possibly afford to tick off the Hollywood crowd that treats Billary like a pair of rock stars, right?

Prediction:  the scenes will be deleted, ABC will claim they were never there in the first place, and once more, the blowhard liberals win.

In the end, I suppose that's okay.  The people who stained the integrity of the presidency still have themselves to look at in the mirror, no matter what an ABC mini-series does or doesn't portray.

Boy, the TV news channels can't play the videotaped beating of the investigative reporter in Miami enough, it seems.  We love seeing an act of real-life violence, I guess, especially if it's directed towards a pesky, nosy reporter. 

But two questions keep popping into my brain when I see this guy get pummeled.  First, have you noticed how he makes absolutely no effort to fight back?  Who lets a guy walk up to him and start pounding away without any attempt to retaliate?  Is it possible that the reporter knew the camera was rolling and allowed himself to get beaten into a bloody mess for the benefit of his viewers?   And secondly, how about the cameraman who watched his reporter get beat up for about six minutes without lifting a finger to help him?  Witnesses said the attack lasted six minutes!  At no time, did the camera operator see fit to lay down his camera and come to the rescue of the reporter being attacked.  You know, if the reporter, the sound man, and the camera operator all fought this creep, he could have been the one with the blood running down his face, not the reporter.  But evidently, the cameraman has the same instincts as the reporter:  do whatever it takes to get a compelling story.

I think we're left with only one logical conclusion:  people who work in TV news are nuts.

 

 

A lot of callers to my radio show today were quick to remind me of my frequent and enthusiastic support for Mel Gibson during his "Passion of the Christ" days -- you'll remember that his magnificent, powerful film was met with howls of protest in some quarters by people who accused Gibson of anti-Semitism, since there are people who don't believe the Biblical account of the crucifiction.   Now that Gibson is back in the news over his arrest this past weekend for drunk driving and an anti-Semitic, profanity-laced rant ("All the wars in the world have been caused by Jews" and "Are you a Jew" to the arresting officer), Gibson's critics are back with a passion.   So what did I say to those callers today?   It's a fairly easy answer.  There was nothing anti-Semitic about "Passion."  But it sounds like there is plenty of anti-Semitism in Mel Gibson.  I was always troubled by his refusal to denounce or renounce the Holocaust-denying comments made by his father.  But this latest incident should be proof that Gibson is an angry guy who has a lot of issues with Jewish people, issues that most decent people should condemn.  His apology is preposterous, that being drunk led him to say things that he doesn't believe.  I've seen more than a few drunks in my life and I never found alcohol to be something other than a type of truth serum.   Anyhow, what does this mean for Mel Gibson and his future?   It ought to mean that ABC-TV drops him from plans to have him produce a mini-series on the Holocaust.   After what we've learned, Mel Gibson should be the last person in the world chosen to be responsible for something that important on national television.

 

 

I've been making the rounds on Fox News over the holiday -- seems a group of Hollywood types are joining Cindy Sheehan, aka "Peace Mom", in a hunger strike to protest the war in Iraq and a number of Fox segments have featured the protest.  Yesterday, I had the joyful experience of talking in front of a live studio audience, on Fox's daytime talk show, "Dayside."  What a blast it was to hear this studio full of people jeering and booing the idea of a bunch of pampered Hollywood multi-millionaires giving up their bean sprouts and mocha lattes for a brief period of time.  As if that could possibly have any impact on America's support of the war whatsoever.

And the real kicker:  they're not even fasting for any extended period of time.   It appears the usual suspects (Susan Sarandon, Sean Penn, et al) are going to do their hunger strikes in "relay" fashion -- one of them will fast for 24 hours, then pass it along to the next celebrity, and on and on.   Geez, these folks can't even make a decent committment when it comes to doing a hunger strike.

If they wanted to REALLY get our attention, let's see them go on a hunger strike like Dick Gregory used to do.  Let's see Michael Moore and Susan Sarandon turn into sickly skin and bones, weighing just a fraction of their former selves. 

Perhaps then some of us might take these clowns seriously.