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Conservative pundit Tucker Carlson had one of those Homer Simpson moments where he said out loud what he was supposed to think silently.

From the Huffington Post, Out of the Mouths of Twits:

CARLSON: The deep truth is that the elites in the Republican Party have pure contempt for the evangelicals who put their party in power.

Marty Kaplan:

I’m open to the notion that W is sincere in his identification with evangelicals. But from Rove and Frist on down, the Republican elite — as Tucker testifies — is connected to its base not by beliefs, but by contempt; is allied to its constituents not via core values, but by pure opportunism. The corporate party, the tax-cutting plutocracy, comes to power, and holds power, only by faith-based bamboozlement.

Via Swing State Project::

The Other Paper is a free weekly here in Columbus, Ohio. When John Kerry came to town last week, they covered it with a short article. This is how the article ended:

And though his own career doesn’t hang in the balance this year, Kerry looked like he kind of wished it did. However, he declined to say whether he wished his presidential campaign had taken place in 2006 instead of 2004.

“That’s all the kind of silly speculation that doesn’t serve me or anybody any good,” he said.

Aww, he’s no fun! He’s part of the reality-based community.

From CNN:

Gas prices declined an average of nearly 15 cents a gallon in the last two weeks, but are expected to begin rising as the winter approaches, the publisher of the national Lundberg Survey said Sunday.

Prices should start rising, oh, right after election day.

From Time magazine:

Every revolution begins with the power of an idea and ends when clinging to power is the only idea left. The epitaph for the movement that started when Newt Gingrich and his forces rose from the back bench of the House chamber in 1994 may well have been written last week in the same medium that incubated it: talk radio. On conservative commentator Laura Ingraham’s show, the longest-serving Republican House Speaker in history explained why he would not resign despite a sex scandal that has produced a hail of questions about his leadership and the failure to stop one of his members from cyberstalking teenage congressional pages. “If I fold up my tent and leave,” Dennis Hastert told her, “then where does that leave us? If the Democrats sweep, then we’d have no ability to fight back and get our message out.”

That quiet admission may have been the most damning one yet in the unfolding scandal surrounding Florida Congressman Mark Foley: holding on to power has become not just the means but also the end for the onetime reformers who in 1994 unseated a calcified and corrupted Democratic majority.

In explaining why he would not resign, Hastert also explains why he did nothing about Foley.

After the 2004 elections, Speaker Hastert declared that no bill would get a vote in the House, no matter how many elected representatives supported it, unless a majority of the Republicans supported it.

Republicans earlier barred House Democrats from helping to draft major bills such as the 2003 Medicare revision and this year’s intelligence package. Hastert (R-Ill.) now says such bills will reach the House floor, after negotiations with the Senate, only if “the majority of the majority” supports them.

It’s never been about good government, or the American people, or decency or honor — or any other virtue — so far as this bunch of rubber-stamp Republicans have been concerned. It’s never been about the Ten Commandments, or the Bible, or our “Christian nation.” The only thing these guys worship — the only thing — is power. Getting it and keeping it has governed — and still governs — their every move.

This seems like an awkward moment:

Despite a steady downpour that chilled thousands gathered Saturday in the shipyard here, President Bush and his father, George H.W. Bush, basked in the warm embrace of extended family and friends as they celebrated the christening of a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier named after the former president.

…

President Bush also drew laughs when he lauded his steely mother, after noting that the USS George H.W. Bush will be the latest in the Nimitz class of aircraft carriers. “She is unrelenting, she is unshakable, she is unyielding, she is unstoppable,” Bush thundered.

“As a matter of fact,” he added, “probably should have been named the Barbara Bush.”

Uh…

Okay, I realize it was a joke, heh heh. But isn’t there a sort of creepy hostility, when something has been named in honor of your father, in saying it should have been named for your mother, instead?

There is a history here, remember. When Bob Woodward asked George W. Bush whether he consulted with his father in the run-up to the Iraq war, Bush said “You know he is the wrong father to appeal to in terms of strength. There is a higher father that I appeal to.”

In the short-lived CBS TV series Joan of Arcadia, God appears to Joan Girardi in a variety of human forms, and talks to her. When Joan listens and acts accordingly, good things happen or bad things are prevented.

At one point, Joan asks why a passerby didn’t see God. “Just didn’t notice me,” is the reply. “That happens a lot.”

In the even shorter-lived Fox TV series Wonderfalls, Jaye Tyler hears voices. Inanimate objects — a wax lion, a brass monkey bookend, a cartoon bunny printed on the side of a box — deliver cryptic messages. When Jaye deciphers them and acts accordingly, good things happen or bad things are prevented.

At one point, frustrated and fearful, Jaye demands of the brass monkey, “Tell me why you talk to me!”

The brass monkey answers, “Because you listen.”

When George W. Bush appeals to his “higher father,” do you suppose he ever listens? Could he ever hear something that would make him change his mind?

From Talking Points Memo:

Don’t you think that Republicans attacking Pelosi and CREW and bloggers over Foley is just like attacking Iraq when you know the crime was done by bin Laden? There they go again, Republicans attacking the wrong people when everyone knows who did the crime.

The video is shaky. Someone held a camera and pointed it at the TV set. In the background, you can hear sounds from the room. Nevertheless, here is Neil Young.

Did he give me the gift of voice
So some could silence me?
Did he give me the gift of vision
Not knowing what I might see?
Did he give me the gift of compassion
To help my fellow man?

When God made me
When God made me

A few weeks ago I wrote about Lincoln’s character test:

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.

Now Nicole Belle looks to Lincoln for Republican Talking Points I’d Like to Hear:

• Allow the president to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such a purpose — and you allow him to make war at pleasure.
• Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?
• America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.
• Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable — a most sacred right — a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world.
• Don’t interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties.
• I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.
• I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.
• I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.
• If once you forfeit the confidence of your fellow-citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem.
• Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as a heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere. Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors.
• Our safety, our liberty, depends upon preserving the Constitution of the United States as our fathers made it inviolate. The people of the United States are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.

I was going to say “I don’t think Mr. Lincoln would last long in today’s Republican party,” but as I read his words, I think that’s wrong. He wouldn’t be a rubber-stamp Republican, that’s for sure, and he wouldn’t roll over when an imperial president told him to. He was a politician, and could bend with the political winds, but he had principles which he would not abandon.

Is there anyone in today’s Republican party who is fit to shine Lincoln’s shoes?

New York Times conservative columnist David Brooks on the PBS NewsHour:

A lot of people had the idea there was no deliberation in the Bush White House, people were just drinking the Kool-Aid. But we’ve learned from the Woodward book, whether it was Condi Rice, or the NSC advisor, Steve Hadley, they knew. They had a realistic sense of what was happening, and the remedies never came because they either ran into Don Rumsfeld or they ran into President Bush.

For me, this creates a real moral dilemma. I don’t condone torture — no, not even for Osama bin Laden if he should ever decide to turn himself in — but I can’t help thinking that Abu Ghraib is too good for Bush and Rumsfeld.

“Criminal” does not adequately describe their behavior.

What is the president’s job? From The Daily Show:

Really, there are two possible reasons for these low approval ratings. One: the president is doing a very bad job. Or, two, and much more likely, we don’t understand what his job is, even though this president has tried very, very hard to tell us.

Update: The YouTube video has been deleted, but you can see the video here.

I want to get the rubber-stamp Republicans out. Maybe the Foley scandal will help us achieve that noble end. But there are vastly more important stories being ignored right now because of the wall-to-wall coverage this affair is getting, like the O.J. Simpson story before it, or the Gary Condit story, or the JonBenet Ramsey story, or last year’s runaway bride story. Can we talk about something else, please?

I’m not alone. Susie Bright says I’m Not Feeling Foley (warning: strong language):

I’m rather devastated on another front. Our Congress passed bills this past week that dismantle habeas corpus, that legalize torture and free-for-all wiretapping. The emperor’s new edicts target anyone, including citizens, who might have a bad hair day in the President’s almighty estimation.

This is that same club — with their teeth bared, instead of their drawers down. As blogger Ian MacLeod puts it, “The Rule of Law is dead in America.” 

Yet this new regime is apparently a big yawn with the American public.

Let’s be fair, though. Even though Bush can target anyone, he’ll probably focus mostly on Arab-looking guys, at least at first. So long as I don’t say or do anything to provoke him, I don’t have anything to worry about. Just keep my nose clean and my mouth shut.

And, to be honest, not everything that happens can match the latest gossip about Paris Hilton or Tom Cruise or Angelina Jolie or Mel Gibson. They set the bar high, you know.

In Georgia, book banners are on the march:

A suburban county that sparked a public outcry when its libraries temporarily eliminated funding for Spanish-language fiction is now being asked to ban Harry Potter books from its schools.

Laura Mallory, a mother of four, told a hearing officer for the Gwinnett County Board of Education on Tuesday that the popular fiction books are an “evil” attempt to indoctrinate children in the Wicca religion.

Board of Education attorney Victoria Sweeny said that if schools were to remove all books containing reference to witches, they would have to ban “Macbeth” and “Cinderella.”

Nooooooo!!! Don’t give them any ideas!

From Crooks and Liars:

A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side. –Aristotle

If I’ve learned anything in my years on the internet, it’s that you shouldn’t believe everything you read. So I went looking for some sort of verification of this quote. I found the quote itself in many places, but my cursory search didn’t turn up any attribution that said precisely where in Aristotle’s writings to look for it.

Aristotle’s works are out of copyright, so I looked for complete texts online. I found one collection at MIT, and felt this quote was likely to be from Politics. (I found another translation here.)

There was no verbatim match. He wrote in Greek, so I searched for individual words from the quote, and finally found it, in Politics, Book V, Chapter XI.

Aristotle discusses two kinds of tyrants: those who rule by terror, and those who pretend to care about the welfare of their subjects. The quote is about the second kind — the benevolent tyrant. (He distinguishes tyrants from kings who actually do care about the welfare of their subjects.)

This quote, from the beginning of the chapter, is also interesting:

[R]oyalty is preserved by the limitation of its powers. The more restricted the functions of kings, the longer their power will last unimpaired…

I can’t help thinking that Bush and Rove, if they ever read Aristotle, skipped over some parts.

A retro-style campaign ad, via Bob Geiger:

You know we’ve let them take the test too long.
They’ve gotten all the answers wrong.