Welcome to The Hoosier Illuminati. Macintosh bigot, clothes horse, motorsports fanatic (as long as they turn right), Anglophile.

Clothes and manners do not make the man; but when he is made, they greatly improve his appearance. --Henry Ward Beecher

Dems, don’t make it bigger than it is.

You’d never heard of the guy until two days ago, and you know he didn’t exactly have a White House pass.  Of course, I’m talking about Rev. Ted Haggard, formerly of Yorktown, Indiana. 

Is the guy a hypocrite?  Well, sure, of course he is, but there’s nothing about being a Christian that shields you from wanting sex outside of your marriage, being a homosexual or taking drugs.  You’re just supposed to know better than to act on those impulses on Saturday if you’re preaching against them on Sunday, but let’s please not turn this into something it’s not. 

This guy isn’t any kind of trusted presidential adviser, and this isn’t any kind of Republican scandal, as much as you’d like to make it one.  In Ted Haggard we have just another sad case of a man falling prey to his own dark desires.  It happens every single day of the week.  This particular case made the media only because the man happens to apparently be a high-profile Christian minister.  I say “apparently” because, like all of you, I’d never heard of the guy either.  Such is his power in the conservative community.  And, of course, because of the mind-numbing hypocrisy involved, but this is hardly the first time a minister has ever fallen from grace either.

We have a failure on the part of Ted Haggard to be what he claimed to be.  Now is an opportunity for the New Life Church to show that it is what it claims to be.  It clearly can’t have Haggard in its pulpit, but it can show him compassion.  It can help him with his addiction and it can help him with his marriage.  Now is an opportunity for New Life Church to show that it is bigger than its former leader by not casting him aside when he needs its fellowship the most. 

We’ll know if New Life Church is what it claims to be when the satellite trucks drive away.  Will they minister and witness to Ted Haggard and give him the help he and his wife need, or will they pretend they’ve never heard of him before?  Will they do the easy thing ... or the right thing?  This is a huge opportunity for them.  Let’s watch. 

I’m trying to decide…

Am I more tired of political advertising or of Borat? 

You know, I’m thinking Borat. 

Rush on Michael J. Fox

I didn’t intend to say anything about this, but since it just doesn’t seem to want to go away, why not?

Rush was right the first time.  Michael J. Fox has admitted to appearing while off of his medication in order to exaggerate his condition and make it appear that he is more ill than he is, and that he did this purely for the shock value.  It was not out of bounds for Limbaugh to suggest that he might be doing it again. 

He’s appearing in commercials for a candidate who has voted against funding fetal stem cell research while suggesting that electing the Democrat candidate is an obvious plus for such research.  It’s fair to call him on this. 

He admits to not having even read Missouri’s cloning/stem cell amendment, despite stumping for it in campaign ads for a Democrat, he has no idea what the thing even says. 

Worst of all, he would like for you to believe that stem cell research is illegal, and is illegal because evil Republicans made it so.  No and no.  Stem cell research is not, nor has it ever been, illegal.  What is illegal is federal funding of such research.  Our friends down the road at Eli Lilly can pour as much money into stem cell research as they’d like and absolutely no one is going to stop them.  In fact, if there’s as much promise for a cure from such research as Drs. Fox and (John) Edwards would like for us to believe, Lilly should be pouring money into it by the billions because freedom from disease is just right around the corner, right?  Fox’s tremors will stop and Christopher Reeve would have gotten out of that chair and taken a jog. 

The fact of the matter is that for once the Administration is absolutely right about something.  They’re allowing the private sector to spend money on research, and they’re keeping the government out of it.  Is that the politically correct attitude?  Of course not, the PC thing is to go awwwwwwwww when we see our friend Alex P. McFly in the shape he’s in and charge the government with eradicating this disease once and for all.  But that’s not the government’s job, that’s private industry’s job, and they do it in a far better and more financially responsible fashion.  If Fox wants to make the maximum effort he needs to be working with private foundations to raise real money to pour into research with a company that stands to reap a metric buttload of reward by selling curative medications. 

Michael J. Fox is not unassailable.  When he steps out of his role as actor and into one that is political, he has to be willing to accept everything that comes with that, including speculation about his truthfulness and his motivations.  I do not know how ill Michael J. Fox is, nor does Rush, but it’s fair game to ask the question.  Particularly so when there’s precedent for Fox exaggerating matters by voluntarily going off the medications that control his symptoms. 

I grant you, Rush has little in the way of tact or finesse, but separate the message from the messenger for one moment and observe that the fundamental basis of his argument is sound and correct.  No one wants to talk about that though, only that Rush is a big mean asshole for making fun of Fox. 

At least Mark Foley is happy about the Limbaugh flap. 

Commercials I don’t need to see anymore.

Any Vonage commercial.

The Sprint commercial with the cowboys smacking each other.

America is secure because the Russians asked Dick Lugar to personally blow up their nukes.  ( )

I’ll be adding to this, feel free to contribute your own. 

Whoops, Part II

Mark Foley on America’s Most Wanted

Rush:  Dems set up Foley

Normally I agree with most of what Rush has to say, but this time he just needs to shut up and let the Republicans take their medicine. 

I’m just thinking out loud here. What if somebody got to the page and said, you know, we want you to set Foley up. We need to do a little titillating thing here. Keep it and save it and so forth. How would you get a kid to do that? Yeah, who knows? You threaten him or pay him. There’s any number of ways given the kind of people that we’re dealing with and talking about here.

Now, folks, I don’t want to be misunderstood here. I’m not trying to mount any kind of a defense. That’s a bad word. I’m not trying to get into a defense of what Mark Foley did. Please don’t misunderstand. I’m just telling you that the—the—the orgy and the orgasm that has been taking place in the media since Friday and with the Democrats is—it’s all coordinated, and it’s all—it’s all oriented toward the election. There’s no concern about the kid—no concern about the children.

Well, of course they’re going to exploit it, Rush.  It’s an election year, you’re not seriously trying to allege that Republicans didn’t exploit Clinton’s woman problems, are you?  You don’t honestly believe Republicans just wanted justice for Kathleen Willey, do you?  OF COURSE they’re going to exploit the issue, they’d be moronic not to. A member of the Republican leadership, the party of personal responsibility and chastity and the preservation of traditional marriage getting caught up in a morals and ethics scandal revolving around an underaged member of the same sex?  The fact that Republican leadership has known about it as long as it has and has chosen to ignore it is manna from Heaven as far as Howard Dean and the Dems are concerned.  I thought there was reason to believe the Republicans might actually pull it out in November until this years’ October Surprise. 

Of course it’s all coordinated, of course it’s all electioneering.  But don’t try to make believe Republicans are above that particular fray, that’s insulting and dishonest. 

Ted Turner:  First Class Idiot

It annoys me that the MSM gives this creep air time to present his whacked out ideas. 

On CNBC last week,

CNN founder Ted Turner argued that “you don’t win people over by bombing them, you win them over by being friends with them,” and soon recommended giving Muslim extremists what they want as a solution to terrorism.

Well, sure.  Just do what the Islamofascists want us to do!  Why didn’t we think of that?  BECAUSE IT’S BLOODY INSANE, THAT’S WHY.  Unless you want to convert to Islam, grow a long beard and make your wife walk around in a burka, in which case I suppose it makes perfect sense.  Me, I’ll pass.  I don’t want to be their friends.  They want to kill me, and that has something of wet blanket effect on my friendly feelings toward them. 

Ted goes on to note that he ended the Cold War, Al Gore is a great leader, Cuba is a “wonderful place,” that if the U.S. can have 28,000 nukes Iran ought to be able to have ten, and that men should not be allowed to hold political office for 100 years in order to make the world a peaceful place.  I’m not sure how accepting his friends the Muslims would be of that last idea, but whatever. 

Ted is either trolling all of us or he’s one of the world’s leading moonbats.  Personally, my money is on the latter. 

Attention David Gregory:  YOU aren’t the news.

Why do White House reporters all seem to think they’re way more important than the people they’re covering?  If this had been the first time NBC’s David Gregory flipped out at a briefing it would still be one time too many but could perhaps be excused as a bad day.  But it wasn’t.

Anyway, yesterday’s incident went a little something like this:

Snow got into a tussle with Gregory after the NBC journalist told him, in a lengthy remark, that the public may wonder why the president’s statement and report today on the war on terror did not admit more failings on the administration’s part. Snow observed that he had nicely summarized “the Democratic point of view,” and Gregory took exception to this.

This exchange followed.
*

Q Actually, Tony, I don’t think that’s fair, if you look at the facts. If you look at the facts.

MR. SNOW: Well, I do, because—no, because, for instance --

Q No, no, no. No, I don’t think you should be able to just wipe that, kind of dismiss the question --

MR. SNOW: Well, let me --

Q It’s not a Democratic argument, Tony.

MR. SNOW: Let me answer the question, David.

Q But hold on, let’s not let you get away with saying that’s a Democratic argument.

MR. SNOW: Okay, let me—let’s not let you get away with being rude. Let me just answer the question, and you can come back at me.

Q Excuse me. Don’t point your finger at me. I’m not being rude.

MR. SNOW: Yes, you are.

Q Don’t try to dismiss me as making a Democratic argument, Tony, when I’m speaking fact.

MR. SNOW: Well, okay—well, no --

Q You can do that to the Democrats; don’t do it to me.

MR. SNOW: No, I’m doing it to you because the second part was factually tendentious, okay? Now, when you were talking about the fact that it failed to adapt, that’s just flat wrong. And you will be—there has been—there have been repeated attempts to try to adapt to military realities, to diplomatic realities, to development of new weapons and tools on the part of al Qaeda, including the very creative use of the Internet. So the idea that somehow we’re staying the course is just wrong. It is absolutely wrong.

Yeah, you are the Oracle of Truth, Gregory.  God forbid anyone should have a different view of things than you.  I love it when libs claim with a straight face that the media is in the Administation’s pocket.  Idiots like David Gregory, who again and again and again try to become the news themselves (or at the very least insinuate themselves into the story) rather than simply reporting the truth, make it obvious that nothing could be farther from the truth. 

Please God

Please let Ernesto be a hurricane, please please please please please.  It’s cool, gas prices are declining and there haven’t been any hurricanes yet this year, we can’t blame George Bush for anything!  Please let Ernesto destroy South Carolina, please please please! 

Sincerely,
CNN

Today’s Shark Jumping

Survivor. 

Arianna Huffington: Who’s happier about JonBenet than Bush

I decided that I wasn’t going to post anything about the JonBenet case, but that shrew Arianna Huffington made me change my mind.  At the same time there’s a lot of hot air being blown about regarding Ann Coulter and the way she conducts herself, watch Huffington get a pass on this little gem:

Another story last week that did not involve a “Six-Year-Old Beauty Queen” was the news that in July the death toll in Iraq was the deadliest since the start of the war—over 3400 people, or about 110 a day. I don’t know if any of these 3400, or of the tens of thousands who have been killed since the beginning of the war, were prepubescent beauty queens, but with numbers like that, it wouldn’t be out of the question. Maybe MSNBC can be “first” on that one, too.

In the meantime, the only people happier than the cable “news anchors” must be Bush, Rove, Cheney and Rumsfeld. When you’ve basically screwed up the world, and you’re headed into a heated anti-incumbent election, it must be a gift from heaven to have a story that, essentially, shuts down the delivery of news.

Ann Coulter has certainly never said anything any more outrageous than that, but you’d better believe you won’t hear any bleating from the Prospect or from the left generally about it.  The left loves to question Ann Coulter’s credentials, but what exactly are Arianna Huffington’s credentials again?  Apart from being Michael Huffington’s beard, that is? 

Look, lefties:  I’m not asking you to love Ann Coulter.  The least you could do is be honest about it though. 

Atta boy, Harry!

He’s his father’s son!  (No, not Charles, silly.  )

“She was very shocked but didn’t seem to mind in the slightest. I don’t suppose it’s every day an heir to the throne feels you up.”

No, I suppose not. 

“Reuters” terminates Adnan Hajj

Reuters has strict standards of accuracy that bar the manipulation of images in ways that mislead the viewer.

“The photographer has denied deliberately attempting to manipulate the image, saying that he was trying to remove dust marks and that he made mistakes due to the bad lighting conditions he was working under,” said Moira Whittle, the head of public relations for Reuters.

Normally they mislead people through the written word. 

Who does “Reuters” think they’re kidding?

You might think after the Rathergate fiasco the MSM would learn that it’s poor form to just make up your own news and then report it as fact, but “Reuters” does not appear to have figured it out yet, given the incredible incompetence of this particular Photoshop job.  BTW, the “Reuters” photographer, Adnan Hajj (say, you don’t suppose a guy named Hajj has an agenda, do you?) is the same guy who photographed “Green Helmet” posing with the body of a little girl for photo ops all over Beirut for over two hours. 

If “Reuters” doesn’t fire this guy immediately (not that it particularly matters since the NYT would just hire him) they should have their press credentials revoked by the US Government because they don’t qualify. 

As usual, props to LGF for being right on top of even more lies from the MSM. 

Elton John: “I’m sick of American bands’ style.”

“(Style has) been a thing the British have always been very good at, with Bowie, myself, T.Rex, the Who, Queen. ... We all embraced that side of it,” John, 59, tells Fashion Rocks magazine, on newsstands Aug. 8.

“And I think it’s good that some American bands are beginning to do that, but it’s still very rare for bands to make a real effort. So when you get groups like The Killers and Scissor Sisters who come along, it’s thrilling. I’m so over the tattoos and the T-shirts and rings through the noses. It’s not pretty, it’s not pleasant, it’s not exciting. Please stop it now.”

Thank God American bands have high-style English examples to draw from.