I'm going to be taking a three day week-end which means that the next update of RWN will be Tuesday. As per usual when I go out of town, I've put up a few websites I like in the daily news section. If I'm not going to be here, maybe I can at least farm out a little traffic to some deserving blogs.

-- RWN appreciates our advertisers at American Realpolitik, Right Wing Stuff, D-42, Zogby Blog, Electric Venom, Ravenwood's Universe, The Catholic Samurai, & Ghost Of A Flea.

Remember, the money these blogs are paying is covering all the costs associated with RWN. So why don't you show them that they're smart to advertise with RWN by taking a look at their blogs? I'd certainly appreciate it if you could...

-- As you know, I've been polling conservative bloggers on a number of issues like the "worst figures in American history," "greatest movies," & the "greatest figures in American history". Well, I'm open to new ideas to poll these bloggers on and I also have now compiled a list of liberal bloggers to poll as well. So if you have something you'd like to see my poll on, post it in the comments section and I'll consider it.

-- By the way, you're going to love the article that I'm going to open up with when I return on Tuesday. Do you remember all the controversy that surrounded the "Bloggers Select The 20 Worst Figures In American History" article? Well, I have already polled bloggers on the same subject again -- left-wing bloggers =) While I haven't actually counted up all the ballots yet, I think you're going to find that it's VERY different than the last list. Feel free to speculate wildly about who'll make the list and then tune in on Tuesday to see who made it.

I'm a huge fan of Rush Limbaugh which is why I was so disappointed when he said the following about bloggers today in response to David Hill's dopey article that I discussed yesterday....

"In the audio links below, I treat you to my analysis of pollster Dr. David Hill's column headlined "Bloggers Won't Match Limbaugh." A blogger is a citizen who gets a website and just opines on various topics unrealted to politics. A friend of mine defined the term, derived from "web log," as "a nerd with a journalist degree and no social life who spends most days and all nights writing e-mails to himself and his friends in hopes of attracting attention from traditional media outlets." Andrew Sullivan is perhaps the best-known political blogger."

I'm really surprised that Limbaugh has that sort of sneering, elitist, take on the blogosphere given his history. I say that because Limbaugh was attacked by members of the mainstream media in almost exactly this same sort of fashion in the eighties. Ya know, people said "Limbaugh is a bombthrower who appeals only to a few right-wing fanatics." Yet, now that Limbaugh is on top of the heap, he's doing the same thing to bloggers.

Worse yet, Limbaugh sounds ignorant about the blogosphere when he says, "A blogger is a citizen who gets a website and just opines on various topics unrealted to politics". Where did Limbaugh get that odd idea? And why would Limbaugh take the "nerds" with no "social life" cheap shot at fellow right-wingers who are helping to spread a conservative message across the web to a small but rapidly growing audience? Again, it smacks of pure elitism, the type that I'd think would be beneath Rush...

Hat tip to Instapundit for finding this one.

This article from CNS News hammers home a point I've been making for a long time -- the problem with our education system is not money...

"According to recent testimony by Heritage Foundation scholar Krista Kafer, despite "considerable" increases in federal education spending, nearly six in 10 high school seniors "lack even a basic knowledge of American history," more than half of the nation's low-income fourth graders cannot read at a basic level, and American kids lag behind their international peers on standardized tests.

In fact, Barton said, average teacher salaries rose more than 11.5 percent in real dollars since 1980, outpacing the national average there, too."

We are not going to solve our public education problems by throwing money at them. So what should we do?

"Instead of spending more money, Izumi believes his state needs to make some changes, including: utilize research-based curricula and teaching methods; use state academic standards as goals for student learning; reform the state's accountability system (making all low-performing schools subject to those standards); reform collective bargaining; and adopt a school-choice plan.

Barton would like to see more of the resources spent on hiring as teachers professionals with expertise in their field who don't necessarily have college-issued teaching certificates - something unions have vociferously opposed."

All those ideas would certainly help improve public education, but none would make as much of an impact as making public schools compete for dollars with private schools through voucher programs. If public schools had to compete, either they'd improve or be replaced by more effective private schools. But whatever we decide to do, it's time to stop buying into the idea that our public school system is mediocre because it's underfunded since that's just not true.

Everywhere you look on the net there are people who are all jazzed up about Arnold Schwarzenegger getting in the governors race in California. Bush says he'd be a great governor, Katie Couric is pulling out the long knives and the editorials are everywhere.

Despite all this excitement, enthusiasm, and energy, I have to admit that I'm ambivalent about Arnold getting into the race. For one thing, no matter how popular Arnold is, he may be mathematically eliminated right from the beginning if there are more serious candidates on the GOP side than the Democratic side. Although we'll know a little more once all the final candidates are set and the real polling begins, Bill Simon & Peter Ueberroth are going to split the GOP vote and could guarantee that a Democratic victory right from the start.

Also, while I have been a fan of Arnold's movies for a long time, his politics leave something to be desired. At best he's a "Bloomberg Republican", a RINO who from what I know about him has probably had his pants around his ankles about as often as Bill Clinton. In fact, if you looked at things Arnold believes in, he probably has more in common with an Al Gore than someone like Reagan or Tom Delay. Given that, it's hard for me to get all fired up about him taking over in California.

Moreover, you have to consider the shape California is in and the fact that Democrats are running the state from top to bottom. Taking over now is like becoming the captain of the Titanic five minutes after it hit an iceberg when you know your entire crew is knocking holes in the lifeboats and planning to blame you when the ship goes down.

So while I wouldn't mind seeing Gray Davis get "terminated", my heart doesn't exactly start wildly palpitating at the idea of Arnold getting in the Cali governor's mansion. If he wins, great, if not, no skin off my nose -- especially since this is a run-off election.

I have grown to appreciate James Lileks writing over time and he has become one my favorite Conservative writers. So I decided to compile a list of my favorite Lileks quotes from his Newhouse columns. Read and enjoy! (Cont)

Back in December of 2002, I did my first evaluation of the Democratic field. Since then, things have really started to shake out. A lot of candidates (some of them were admittedly longshots to get in) have apparently decided not to run this time around. Their ranks include Wesley Clark, Hillary Clinton, Gray Davis, Dianne Feinstein, Al Gore, Gary Hart, & even John McCain.

Of the contenders who are left, Dennis Kucinich, Carol Moseley Braun, & Al Sharpton haven't looked the least bit viable since the beginning. Two candidates, John Edwards and Bob Graham, both of whom looked like they might at least have had an outside chance to win, have not only dropped far out of the top tier, but have actually seen their poll numbers plunge to the point where their Senate seats could be vulnerable in 2004.

Of course, that leaves us with Howard Dean & three other guys =D The turning point for Dean was winning the Moveon.org PAC Primary. Since then, Dean's campaign has been steadily surging while the other candidates have been floundering. The other candidates are already desperate to stop Dean's momentum before it's too late and they've been launching blistering attacks on him. Here a couple of samples of what I mean...

"A Dean nomination could again [mean] Democrats lose 49 out of 50 states." -- Mark Penn, Lieberman's pollster

"This 'security mom' thing is real. Women are even more hawkish than men. Until you can convince the voters that you, too, can keep the country safe, you don't get heard on the other stuff." Can Dean beat Bush? "Absolutely impossible." -- Jim Jordan, John Kerry's Campaign Manager

Those acidic attacks indicate that Kerry and Lieberman are VERY WORRIED about Dean building up too much momentum to be stopped. Of course, Kerry and Gephardt have been running listless campaigns that don't seem to be resonating with the base. Lieberman has recently tacked hard to the right in an effort to capture the moderate Dems and put himself in position where he can win if he actually manages to make it out of the primary. However, Dean is currently the only candidate who seems to be generating any buzz or excitement among the Democratic base right now. Unfortunately for Dean (and the other candidates) the constant calls for Hillary or Gore to get into the race is making everyone else look like left-overs the party will have to settle for if they can't get their top two candidates to run.

In any case, it's still very early, but Dean's campaign manager deserves a gold star and briefcase full of cash for the work he has done so far. Since I believe Dean would have the hardest time matching up against Bush out of the 4 top tier candidates, let's hope he can keep on riding the wave all the way through the primaries.

So I'm reading this article by a Republican consultant named David Hill who says that he, "doubt(s) that blogging or any specific bloggers will match Limbaugh’s record-setting pace for gathering influence in the political process". That quote reminds me of when Bill Gates said, "640K ought to be enough for anybody." It just seems to be a very premature thing to say given the growing influence & readership of the blogosphere. After all, as Hill himself alludes to, if you would have claimed that Rush Limbaugh was going to have 20 million listeners one day back in the eighties, I'm sure there would have been plenty of people slapping you on the back and saying, "Yeah and one day there will be a Conservative cable news channel that pulls better ratings than CNN. Har, har, har, tell me another one."

Now had that been all that Hill said, I wouldn't have bothered commenting on his editorial. However, his reasons why the blogosphere wouldn't grow as large as Rush were so asinine and ridiculous that I felt compelled to write about them the way you feel the need to remove a pebble from your shoe. Here is the short version of his 4 reasons why bloggers will never be as big as Rush....

"First, most bloggers don’t match what Rush calls “show prep.”
What the heck is this guy talking about? I can't speak for anyone else, I bet you I peruse 50+ political websites per day, almost every day, to help put together RWN. But that's not good enough for Hill who says...

"By comparison, many bloggers’ preparations for their stream-of-consciousness commentaries seem limited to reading the ruminations of other bloggers and scanning Internet news."

Can I be frank here? The internet absolutely annihilates radio talk shows and TV as a source of news. I say that because you can scan select relevant news from a wide variety of sources in a minimum amount of time on the net, while you can't do that on TV. For example, Instapundit covers more news in the average day than a Bill O'Reilly or Larry King discusses in a week. That's not in any way, shape, or form, a put down of TV or radio, they're just different, slower, formats.

Hill then goes on to complain about plain-jane websites not being as slick as Rush's production values...

"Few (bloggers) seem to care about the principles of effective Web design. Some even seem to consider the primitive style of their blogs a badge of honor."

I have two words for you Hill -- Matt Drudge. He has the plainest, most basic, web site out there and he has pulled almost 7 million hits in the last 24 hours.

Hill then talks about Rush's humor, "His use of highly produced song parodies and other irreverent spoofs keeps a segment of his audience entertained that would desert him if he were “serious” 100 percent of the time. Some bloggers use humor effectively to punctuate their commentaries; few exhibit Limbaugh’s comedic skill, timing and wit."

While I could easily point to a large number of funny bloggers out there (Lileks, Frank J., & Scott Ott being 3 of them), it's also worth nothing that there are plenty of talk show hosts with millions of listeners who aren't particularly funny. I like Sean Hannity and G. Gordon Liddy for example, but neither one of them is exactly a barrel of moneys on nitrous oxide.

Last but not least, Hill says "Limbaugh builds bonds with his audience", while on the other hand, "the most influential political bloggers reveal few intimate details about their personal lives, making it more difficult for their readers to bond with them."

Yes, Limbaugh occasionally talks about his private life, but not all THAT often. Lots of bloggers talk about their personal lives as much as Limbaugh. Personally, I've talked about getting blood clots, hitting a deer, getting in a life-threatening car wreck, my favorite music and movies, etc, & that's not unusual in the blogosphere.

In summary, this article is so far off target that it makes me wonder if Hill even regularly reads blogs. My guess is that he probably read a couple of articles on the subject, took a quick look at a couple of big blogs, and then passed himself off as someone qualified to write about the whole "blog thing" for the The Hill.

Now I can't pull a Nostradamus and tell you what the future of the blogosphere is going to be, but I am confident that the internet is going to continue to grow and that the audience sizes are going to grow with it. There are already what are essentially one man operations pulling huge audiences, (Drudge at almost 7 million and Fark at around 1 million per day come to mind). So I think that anyone who knows anything about the subject should be VERY reluctant to rule out the idea that elite bloggers could pass the 20 million mark within let's say the next 15 years or so. Stranger things have happened as Rush could tell you...

Scott Ott from Scrappleface was giving me the blow by blow of Al Gore's speech from this afternoon on instant messenger and I was responding with snarky commentary. I thought it was entertaing enough to post (after a bit of editing) and it has to be better than actually listening to Gore's soul-deadening droning about the issues....

Scott Ott: Listening to Al Gore on CNN radio online right now.

John Hawkins: Oh, is he giving his "big" speech? =)

Scott Ott: He just accused Bush of systematically lying to achieve his policy goals.

John Hawkins: Sounds about his speed.

Scott Ott: He says Bush has squelched debate, bypassing democratic procedures to keep things secret -- slow speed -- still speaks like a metronome.

John Hawkins: Bush...has...squelched.....debate...bypassed....democratic.....procedures....

Scott Ott: The test of compassion is action, and what the administration offers with one hand is the rhetoric of compassion, what it takes away with the other hands are the financial resources to make compassion more than an empty....blah...something, something...

John Hawkins: ...My question is...when do people stop caring what the old VP says about anything?

Scott Ott: Wow...this is a "major" policy speech. He now wants Bush to release intelligence briefings pre-9/11.

John Hawkins: Does he actually seem to be talking about any policies?

Scott Ott: Well....he seems to be trying to slam Bush on every point.

John Hawkins: So it is a policy speech, he doesn't like Bush's policies. =)

Scott Ott: Now, the new generation of small nuclear bombs is...true madness and the point of no return to the comprehensive test ban treaty. ah...moral equivalence....we should stop building bombs so we're not like N. Korea.

John Hawkins: Yada, yada, yada, we're too tough on terrorists, yada, yada, yada, we should ask why they hate us, yada, yada, yada.

Scott Ott: Here comes Kyoto -- Bush protecting the oil and coal industries from any protections at all -- addiction to carbon based fuels -- OPEC is a crack dealer...in so many words.

John Hawkins: Windmills, solar power, horses, rickshaws, these are the power sources of the future!

Scott Ott: Far from uniting the people, the presidents ideologically narrow agenda has seriously divided America....a civil coldwar.

John Hawkins: Lol -- the left wanted detente during the real cold war, now it's "we must attack and win" -- Reagan could have used more liberals with that attitude.

Scott Ott: Wow, he's raving about the honesty of the Clinton/Gore administration.

John Hawkins: No, you've got to be kidding me. Nobody buys the honesty of the Clinton administration -- not even the left -- anymore.

Scott Ott: We can have that kind of nation, what you are doing will make it more possible...we have work to do...thank you. -- roar of applause -- moveon.org -- They love the man who invented the internet that they so skillfully use.

John Hawkins: Hehe -- they made Dean -- the moveon poll was what sparked him.

Scott Ott: Don't forget Kucinich, he was second.

John Hawkins: They only have so much magic...

Scott Ott: True.

John Hawkins: They can't carry DEAN & tinfoil hat man to the top...

Scott Ott: (Gore) basically gave a summary of what all the candidates have been saying. Although very slowly...methodically...statesmanlike, one must say.

John Hawkins: He does everything slowly & methodically. I bet it takes him 40 minutes to brush his teeth. Now...I...will...squeeze...the....toothpaste....like....an....alpha....male....

Ben Murnane wrote an article based on an email interview he did with me for a print zine in Ireland called "Totally Fushed". Unfortunately, the internet edition of the mag is defunct, so I don't have a way to link to Murnane's article. However, I do have a copy of the original interview and I decided to put that up instead. Do keep in mind that this interview was conducted BEFORE the war in Iraq. The delay was because "Totally Fushed" is published bi-monthly and I told Ben I wouldn't put anything up before the article came out. Of course, everything in it is still just as relevant today as it was before the war, so I don't think the fact that it's a bit old is a problem. Enjoy the interview! (Cont)

-- I think Kobe Bryant is in a lot of trouble. We've already heard that his accuser told a bellhop what happened and was "disheveled and had red marks on her neck and face immediately following her encounter with Bryant". Today, it emerged that Bryant's accuser had vaginal tearing. Folks, that combo is about as damning as it gets in a rape case. If Bryant was anyone other than a rich, famous, and well liked NBA star, he'd be as good as in a cell right now.

-- I don't know if the Israelis are releasing Palestinian prisoners because they actually view it as some kind of goodwill gesture or because we're pressuring them to do so, but it's a really dumb idea. Just read the opening paragraph from this article on the prisoner release...

"Israel released more than 330 Palestinian security prisoners on Wednesday in what it called a good-will gesture, but Palestinians quickly scorned the move."

If they're scorning the move, why is Israel bothering? It's not part of the roadmap and you know that some of the Palestinians are going to end murdering Israelis down the line. What does Sharon say to the Israeli people when one the terrorist he just released blows himself up on a bus a few months from now?

-- Here are a couple of funny quotes about Howard Dean. First off, from Best Of The Web Today...

"The Washington Times relates this anecdote from the Howard Dean campaign:

Does anyone really wish this trash nanny were the most powerful man in the world."

The "trash nanny" -- hehehe. Then in our comments section, Aaron looks at Dean's 3rd and 4th place standing in most states and says....

"If these polls are true (taking a leap of faith here), Dean has gone from complete and total obscurity to 'Hey, doesn't he kinda look like Mr. Potatohead?'

Gee, if I were Bush I'd quit now."

-- Iran is saying that they refuse to give up their nuclear program & there's a claim that North Korea is threatening to develop nukes with Iran. We'd be better off going to war than standing by while Iran gets the bomb or North Korea starts selling nuclear technology to terrorist supporting states. So a lot of those disingenuous Democrats who were saying, "we should be doing something about North Korea or Iran instead of Iraq" may get a chance to put their money where their mouth is in the next few months.

Today, on the 58th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, Nicholas Kristof wrote a convincing column about why dropping the bomb on Japan was necessary. Here are a few key excerpts...

"...The Japanese scholarship, by historians like Sadao Asada of Doshisha University in Kyoto, notes that Japanese wartime leaders who favored surrender saw their salvation in the atomic bombing. The Japanese military was steadfastly refusing to give up, so the peace faction seized upon the bombing as a new argument to force surrender.

One of the great tales of World War II concerns an American fighter pilot named Marcus McDilda who was shot down on Aug. 8 and brutally interrogated about the atomic bombs. He knew nothing, but under torture he "confessed" that the U.S. had 100 more nuclear weapons and planned to destroy Tokyo "in the next few days." The war minister informed the cabinet of this grim news — but still adamantly opposed surrender. In the aftermath of the atomic bombing, the emperor and peace faction finally insisted on surrender and were able to prevail."

Nuking Japan was the right thing to do, not only because it saved countless American AND Japanese lives, but because the terrible doom we inflicted on Hiroshima and Nagasaki helped convince the world that it was madness to attack the United States.

Many people have noted (Dean Esmay for one) that the Democrats are positioning themselves to take advantage of another stateside terrorist attack. However, I am of the opinion that another attack on American soil would probably help Bush politically, not hurt him. Now that may seem counterintuitive, but let me explain my reasoning.

To begin with, a large majority of the American people are sophisticated enough to understand that terrorist attacks against America can happen no matter who the President is. Furthermore, as poll after poll has shown, the American people EXPECT more attacks. So if a car bomb goes off in American city tomorrow, few people other than diehard partisans are going to blame Bush for it.

Now of course, the Democrats & their willing allies in the mainstream media will try to pin any attacks on Bush. But that's a dumb mistake, similar to the one that Republicans make when they try to compete with Democrats on social spending issues. Republicans aren't serious about social spending while the Democrats are. Conversely, Republicans are dead serious about protecting our country and the Democrats aren't. So when Democrats start claiming we need to spend more money on homeland security or need more policemen on the streets, the Bush administration is going to respond with the Patriot Act 2 & other real security measures. That is going to cause the Democratic base to scream "1984" & "Fascism" until the Democrats back off and start to look like wimps who aren't tough enough to deal with threats against America -- again.

Moreover, as the impact of 9/11 has started to fade from the consciousness of Americans, security issues have become less of a concern to most people. A new terrorist attack would once again make national security a top priority issue and the Democrats -- no matter who they run -- are going to be huge losers on that issue.

That's why it's so dumb for the Democrats to attack Bush on security issues in the first place. All the Dems are doing is making their Achilles heel one of the focal points of the campaign. The smart thing to do would be to hug Bush on national security in order to try to take it away as an issue. But the Democratic base is too angry for that, so Democrats are being forced to fight a poorly chosen battle against Bush on security issues.

In any case, if we do all we can to defend America and take the war to our enemies doorsteps, we may be able to keep them from being able to successfully plan & execute attacks here at home -- at least for a while. But even if the terrorists do get off an attack, it's a mistake to assume that Bush is going to be hurt politically by the attack when all is said and done.

PS: Some things should be "beyond politics" and this, along with the whole war on terrorism, should be one of those things. However, sadly, since a new terrorist attack is going to be treated as political issue by the Democrats, it has to dealt with as such.

So far, the Democratic candidates have been playing coy and not one of them has called or sent me an email begging for my endorsement. However, the time to bribe me has passed and I am officially ready to throw all of RWN's might behind a Democratic candidate. But of course RWN's loyal readers deserve an explanation of my thinking. So read on and you'll see why RWN is endorsing....HA! You didn't think I would just give it away at the start of the post did you?

-- I thought about getting behind Carol Mosely Braun so that Meryl Yourish would stop calling me a sexist, but alas it was not to be. Wait, when I said I wanted to get behind Carol Mosely Braun I didn't mean it like it sounded -- seriously! Now if we were talking about Condi Rice or one of the Bush twins here -- I think it might be better if I just move on to the next candidate...

-- If he could win, Dennis Kucinich would provide me with four years worth of tin-foil hat jokes...if he could win...snicker, see, he's funny already =D! But unfortunately, a vote for Dennis is a wasted vote.

-- A Bob Graham presidency would mean four years worth of notebook parodies and I'm sure that would get old pretty fast. So I can't in good conscience give Graham my endorsement.

-- Let's face it, having a Reverend Al vs. W. match up could be a lot of fun because the Rev is so wacky. If Sharpton became President he might be nutty enough to create a national holiday for Louis Farrakhan or sell Michigan to Canada and use the money for reparations. But Sharpton has no chance, so I decided that I couldn't back him.

-- It was tempting to vote for a hometown boy, John Edwards. But so far, his whole platform seems to be, "Vote for me because I'm a handsome man who'll pander to trial lawyers" and I can't endorse either of those positions. Thumbs down on John Edwards.

-- Dick Gephardt has missed 90% of his votes in Congress this time around. Since he can't even do his old job, how can RWN support him for President? Besides, Republicans...ehr, Democrats need Dick Gephardt's fine leadership skills in the House.

-- I do have to admit that John Kerry has a lot of potential. He's a "French looking" Democrat who finds a way to insert the fact that he served in Vietnam into every sentence and that can be amusing.

Person 1: Wow, look at that sun Mr. Kerry, it sure is hot.
Kerry: It was always hot when I was serving in Vietnam.
Person 2: Boy, I hope our ice cream doesn't melt because of the heat.
Kerry: Back when I was Vietnam, I wished we had ice cream. But even if we did, I would have been too busy heroically killing Charlie to have eaten it.
14 year old high school student: "Vietnam? Did we get into a war with them?
Kerry: Yes we did son and it was a terrible thing. Have you got a few hours so I can bring you up to speed on what a horrible thing the whole war was and how I served my country there?

Like I said, Kerry has a lot of potential, but I had to pass.

-- I would enjoy having Joe Lieberman in the White House just because it would freak out the Middle-East and the anti-Semites in Europe. Heck, Lieberman might draw so much crazy rhetoric that we might actually be able to convince the Democrats to get behind bombing some terrorist supporting countries over there. If that didn't work, maybe we could get Ken Star to move to Iran and that could be enough to motivate them. But, I just couldn't give the nod to Lieberman, even though he's my fave Dem in the race.

-- So now we're down to the final man, the man who's getting the coveted Right Wing News endorsement, Howard Dean. But with all these fine candidates to choose from, why Dean? Well, I think that can best be explained by paraphrasing a few lines from the Simpsons....

CHIEF WIGGUM: (He's) easier to beat than a prisoner in shackles.
LOU: It's pretty easy to beat a prisoner in shackles chief.
CHIEF WIGGUM: That's the joke Lou, about (Dean's) easy beatability.

Other people may not give Dean the credit he deserves, but RWN understands his potential! If Dean works hard enough and gives it his all, he can break Walter Mondale's record and lose every state. What else can any good Republican say besides "Go Howie GO?"

Gov. Howard Dean cemented his Democrat presidential frontrunner status today when he healed a man of leprosy then walked across the surface of a small lake to his next campaign appearance.

The Vermont Governor also shocked the pundits with his simultaneous appearance on the covers of Time, and Newsweek.

Print journalists are writing about all the Dean talk and broadcast reporters are talking about all the ink he's getting.

"Momentum is everything in politics," said one unnamed political consultant. "Dean has grabbed it by doing startling things like criticizing the President, and rolling up his shirtsleeves. You should see the forearms on that guy."

Professional journalists continue to chronicle the miracles performed by this former medical internist. Besides healing lepers and walking on water "Dr." Dean has also raised hundreds of thousands of dollars on the Internet -- a feat previously accomplished only by online pornographers and gambling companies.

Actor-Director Mel Gibson has optioned a script about the last 12 hours of Howard Dean's life.

If you enjoyed this satire by Scott Ott, you can see more of his work at Scrappleface.

We have tobacco, fast food, & reparations lawsuits going on, but here's one dumb lawsuit that I think Austria has beaten us to -- Gamblers suing the casino to get some of their money back...

"An Austrian court has ordered a casino to pay damages to a man who lost 2.5 million euro at their tables.

Casinos Austria, which owns the Velden casino, now has to pay 499,000 euro in damages."

This sort of litigious culture has been created by lawyers convincing people to try to get rich by playing "lawsuit lottery". We're replacing the "rugged independence" of the Americans who settled the Western frontier with a bunch of sheep who don't even think they should be held responsible for the food they put in their mouths or how their own lives have turned out.

But the problem with that is that you, whoever you are, are entirely responsible for your own life. If you turn out to be failure, it's not because your parents didn't raise you right, racism, because the government didn't help you enough, or because some casino enticed you into spending all your money, it's because of you.

Nobody owes you a living or is responsible for your life except you. Once you take that responsibility, you can try to steer your life in the right direction. If you don't accept it, then you're nothing but a jellyfish floating wherever the current of life takes you.

That's what all these lawsuits, these lawyers telling everyone that nothing is their fault is helping to produce -- a bunch of people with the mentality of jellyfish and sheep.

Democrat National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe said today that America is not ready for his party to nominate its first openly-liberal candidate in the post-Reagan era.

"Officially we have a 'don't ask-don't tell' policy regarding liberalism," said Mr. McAuliffe. "No openly-liberal candidate will receive the nomination."

The DNC manual suggests that secretly-liberal candidates refrain from public displays of affection for big government, higher taxes and weaker national defense. Studies show that while mainstream Americans favor tolerance for liberal ideas -- like increasing government control of schools and tax-funded prescription drugs -- they would rather call it something else, like "compassionate conservatism."

Mr. McAuliffe said that none of the top Democrat candidates is openly liberal.

"Everyone knows that Dean is a fiscal conservative," he said. "Lieberman is a social conservative, and John Kerry is a professional Vietnam veteran married to a wealthy heiress. If any of them are closet liberals, they only act on it in the privacy of their offices."

If you enjoyed this satire by Scott Ott, you can read more of his work at Scrappleface.

As expected -- well, at least by anyone not from cloud cuckoo land -- it looks like the Palestinian terrorist groups were only interested in using the "ceasefire" as a convenient opportunity to take a breather. Haaretz has the details...

"Military intelligence warned Monday that Hezbollah and seven cells in the Ramallah-Nablus area are planning separate terror attacks on Israel. The warnings come on top of an earlier statement by Hamas, which called on all militant groups to be ready for confrontation with Israel, and a threat from a Fatah-affiliated militant group that it too would carry out an attack on Israel.

A senior military intelligence officer also told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Monday that Hamas had spurred the assembly of Qassam rockets in Nablus and fired them at West Bank settlements, Israel Radio
reported. He said the rockets pose a serious threat to the center of the country."

I thought this paragraph from later on in the piece really got across the futility of trying to negotiate with these terrorist groups...

"The leader of the (Al-Aqsa Martyrs) Brigades in the West Bank city of Tul Karm said his group planned revenge for the killing of a man who the army said had been planting a bomb by a road near Tul Karm, but would otherwise stick to the truce."

Ehr...if one of your men is planting a bomb, you're not sticking by the truce in the first place.

What I said about a week and a half ago still stands...

"Anyone who's paying attention knows that Israel is going to make a lot of concessions, the Pals will stop the violence for a little while, and then the terrorists will say "Truce over -- we blame the Israelis" and everything will start back-up. Until the terrorists are dead or disarmed (preferably dead), nothing is going to be accomplished. Since that's not happening and Abbas (Mazen) shows no signs of doing it, we're just killing time until the Palestinians start blowing themselves up on buses and in pizzarias again. "

Can I make a suggestion, one entirely reasonable suggestion? After this latest "peace plan" fails miserably (and it will), can we demand that all of these Palestinian terrorist groups either be disbanded or hunted into extinction BEFORE we even try to implement another one of these worthless peace plans?

Can we just state the plain, honest, truth -- that either the Palestinian people can have a state or they can support a bunch of bloodthirsty terrorist who want to murder Israelis, but they can't do both? That's the reality of the situation and it doesn't become any less relevant just because the Palestinians and the rest of the Middle-East doesn't want to hear it.

Some people are annoyed by crying babies in a movie theater, people driving under the speed limit in the passing lane, any movie with Pauly Shore in it -- you know, normal stuff. While all those things irritate me too, I get more perturbed with some of the things the mainstream media does on a regular basis. I know, I know, it's a bit odd to find Dan Rather to be more irritating than Carrot Top, but that's the price you pay for being a right-wing political junky. Here are my biggest pet peeves with the media... (Cont)

Yesterday, the Washington Post seemed to have broken a big story. Here's what they said...

"Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and his deputy, Richard L. Armitage, have signaled to the White House that they intend to step down even if President Bush is reelected, setting the stage for a substantial reshaping of the administration's national security team that has remained unchanged through the September 2001 terrorist attacks, two wars and numerous other crises.

Armitage recently told national security adviser Condoleezza Rice that he and Powell will leave on Jan. 21, 2005, the day after the next presidential inauguration, sources familiar with the conversation said."

So we have the WAPO quoting an anonymous source about a conversation between Richard Armitage & Condi Rice. But a variety of White House officials have been willing go on the record and say that conversation never happened....

"(Phillip) Reeker and (Scott) McClellan said the conversation that the Post said Armitage had with Rice never occurred.

"Welcome to Washington in August, where some of these goofy stories tend to hit the front page," Reeker said. "But there is no basis to that story."

Even Colin Powell has gone on the record to say this story is bogus...

"(T)he story has no substance and the so-called conversation that took place between my Deputy, Mr. Armitage, and National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice, did not take place. And therefore, the story has no source or basis in the beginning; and most of it is just all gossip and speculation from no source."

So we have two directly conflicting stories about this conversation between Richard Armitage & Condi Rice. On the one hand, we have three members of the Bush administration, including Colin Powell, who are willing to go on record and say that the post story is a lie. On the other hand, all the WAPO has is some anonymous sources who aren't even willing to put their names to the story.

Now in any sane world, the WAPO would have a big credibility problem right now. Their editor should be demanding that the reporter who wrote the story, Glenn Kessler, come to his office and reveal his sources. Then the editor would either be contacting those sources to find out why they were wrong or he'd be telling Kessler never to use them again because they apparently burned the WAPO with this false story. Heck, maybe the editor would even be suspending Kessler for making this whole thing up if he couldn't back up what he wrote. In any case, the WAPO should either be offering more evidence for their story or they should be retracting it & explaining what sort of corrective steps they're taking to make sure this sort of story doesn't get into the news again.

Now I know some of you are probably thinking, "Come on Hawkins. Papers print these sorts of anonymous stories all the time and sometimes they pan out and sometimes they don't. You can't expect papers to take responsibility for their anonymous sources." Why not? Are these supposed to be trusted newspapers or gossip rags like the Enquirer? If the WAPO is going to print something like this based on anonymous sources, they have a responsibility to their readers to make sure it's accurate. But the WAPO -- and let's be honest here, the majority of the mainstream media -- tends to just shrug their shoulders and say, "no big deal" when they publish stories based on anonymous sources that don't pan out. That's not responsible journalism and I wish more people would be willing to say so...

Ya know, I love animals -- and not just with a side of mashed potatoes. Take my dog, Patton. He's just the greatest dog and I don't think twice about spending money left and right on him, taking him on long walks, playing with him when I don't feel like it sometimes, etc. Heck, I almost think of him like a kid.

Even when I was little, I felt that way about dogs. One time when I was about 6, my dog took a nip at some kid's little sister. Well, big sister, who was about 12 or 13 and twice my size easily, started walking over with a stick to lay into my dog. Uh-uh, I wasn't having it. I got between her and the dog because if anyone was going to take a beating, it was going to be me and not my dog (luckily, she decided it wasn't worth it to pound me to get to my dog, so she left).

All that being said, Patton is a dog, not a human being. So if for some reason I had some psycho with a knife who said, "I either kill the dog or this woman -- you choose!" Well obviously, I'd just shoot him -- OK, so that's not a good example. All right, let's say Al Gore & Patton were both drowning in the ocean and I could only save one of them? Well, I would make sure I dried Patton off really fast so he didn't get a cold -- yes, I would, and then I'd tell him he's a, "really good dog!" Sigh..that one didn't work out either, but I think you get the general idea. A human being is not the equivalent of a dog. A dog's life, a cat's life, a cow's life, an ant's life is not as valuable as that of a human being.

I feel compelled to point that out after reading about PETA making a cruel comparison between turkeys & Jews at Auschwitz and some nut who runs a mall and refuses to let stores sell animal products or even kill ants. Unfortunately, these people are not alone in their bizarre beliefs.

Way back in the day when I doing print stories for tiny local Charlotte area publications, I interviewed a couple of animal rights whackos. They had chained themselves to fur racks in Belks, put glue in the locks of McDonald's, & went to the rodeo and chanted "Cowboys are Cowards" outside. You want to know what they believed? Animals should have the same rights as people, you shouldn't be able to use products made of animals, scientific testing of animals should be banned, you shouldn't be able to own pets, etc, etc. Now of course, they were huge hypocrites (one of them had 8 dogs and even had a leather couch which she said she got before she got into animal rights), but setting that aside, these people don't get it and probably never will.

Animals, wonderful though they may be, are inferior to human beings. That doesn't mean we should be cruel to them, mistreat them, or willfully wipe them out on a whim, but they're not as important as human beings and if we can benefit from their deaths or carcasses, so be it. Maybe that's a little too blunt for some people, but it's the real world and it's how it should be. Just remember, if we weren't on top of the food chain, the gators, wolves, & lions of the world wouldn't hesitate to eat us alive. That's what nature is like and we're just another part of it, red in tooth and claw.

Vermont Gov. Howard Dean announced today that he hates President George Bush more than any of his Democrat presidential rivals do, especially Sen. John Kerry.

"I acknowledge that Senator Kerry has a certain disdain for George Bush," said Gov. Dean. "But my hatred for the president is pure, and deep and wide. My rage about him is unfettered, palpable and savage."

"Americans want to know that the Democrat nominee is no pretender," Gov. Dean added. "Whoever we nominate must really despise George Bush to the core of his being. I am Bush-hate incarnate."

DNC chairman Terry McAuliffe said today that the party will release the official Bush Loathing Index (BLI) for each Democrat candidate later this week.

If you liked this satire by Scott Ott, you can read more of his work at Scrappleface

Out of all the gangsters, serial killers, mass murders, incompetent & crooked politicians, spies, traitors, and ultra left-wing kooks in all of American history -- have you ever wondered who the worst of the worst were? Well, we here at RWN wondered about that too and that's why we decided to email more than a hundred bloggers to get their opinions & 39 replied.

All bloggers were allowed to make anywhere from 1-20 selections. Rank was determined simply by the number of votes received. Also, it's worth keeping in mind that this was a fairly conservative group of bloggers and their selections reflected that. Also, I made a decision to combine the votes given to the Rosenbergs and Julius Rosenberg into one group since most people associate the two of them together. Some people may disagree with that decision, but I thought it was the best way to go.

Well that's enough about the rules -- without further adieu, the worst figures in American history are as follows...(Cont)

***Update***: Here's my list...

Aldrich Ames
Benedict Arnold
John Wilkes Booth
Ted Bundy
Aaron Burr

Al Capone
Jimmy Carter
Noam Chomsky
Jeffrey Dahmer
Eric Harris & Dylan Klebold

Alger Hiss
Lyndon Johnson
Jim Jones
Ted Kaczynski
Henry Lee Lucas & Ottis Toole

Charles Manson
Timothy McVeigh
Madeline Murray O'Haire
The Rosenbergs
John Walker

***Update #2***: Just to clear something up, John Walker Lindh & John Walker are two different people. John Walker Lindh fought with the Taliban in Afghanistan and John Walker was a spy for the KGB who was busted in 1985.

***Update #3***: Just a few comments on the selections. Bill & Hill didn't make my list and wouldn't have made it if I went fifty deep. I don't care for either of them, but there were a lot of mediocre Presidents in the 19th century comparable to the Clintons. Because of that, I don't think they did enough to merit a selection.

Byrd, Sharpton, & Walker Lindh, wouldn't have done enough to make a top 50 of mine either. McCarthy might have made my list of the 100 greatest Americans, despite all of his flaws, because of the important work he did in fighting against Communism in his day.

FDR was a tough call for me because he really did permanent and lasting damage to our country with his social programs. On the other hand, he was a great leader in WW2. Take away the social programs and he's a top ten greatest American for me, take away his leadership in WW2 and he's one of the top 10 worst Americans, so to me, they just cancel each other out.

I decided to include the Columbine killers not only because of the number people they killed, but because they spawned so many imitators. I was also surprised Jim Jones didn't make the list and that Aaron Burr didn't rank higher.

Last but not least, Jimmy Carter and Lyndon Johnson are not evil, unpatriotic, bad men, etc. However, each them did massive damage to our country. They were definitely the two worst Presidents of the last century and perhaps the two worst Presidents our country has ever had.

Now some people may say (Allison Kaplan Sommer for example) that it's not fair to put those men on a list with men with Charles Manson & the Columbine killers. Hey, better to take the serial killers off the list than Carter & Johnson. Carter did such a lousy job as President that some people even thought America was done as a super power & even if you didn't count Johnson's social programs against him, he would deserve high placement on the list just for how he botched Vietnam. Both of them definitely deserved to make the list.

PS: Two women did make the list this time & my own list had two women on it. So I guess I don't have to worry about any sexism charges this time eh?

***Update #4***: Michele Catalano has convinced me to do something I was thinking about doing anyway. Next Tuesday, look for this same article -- with left-wing bloggers participating =)

***Update #5***: There may be two women on the list, but according to Meryl Yourish, it's still sexist =D