Bloodthirsty Liberal

Oh man, how lucky am I?

I forgot to post this earlier, and still got to it before Aunt Agatha. Sorry, Aggie, but you snooze, you lose:

PRESIDENT OBAMA was too busy to attend the celebrations in Germany this week marking the fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago. But he did appear by video, delivering a few brief and bloodless remarks about how the wall was “a painful barrier between family and friends’’ that symbolized “a system that denied people the freedoms that should be the right of every human being.’’ He referred to “tyranny,’’ but never identified the tyrants - he never uttered the words “Soviet Union’’ or “communism,’’ for example. He said nothing about the men and women who died trying to cross the wall. Nor did he mention Harry Truman or Ronald Reagan - or even Mikhail Gorbachev.

“Few would have foreseen,’’ declared the president, “that a united Germany would be led by a woman from [the former East German state of] Brandenburg or that their American ally would be led by a man of African descent. But human destiny is what human beings make of it.’’

As presidential rhetoric goes, this was hardly a match for “Ich bin ein Berliner,’’ still less another “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.’’ But as a specimen of presidential narcissism, it is hard to beat. Obama couldn’t be troubled to visit Berlin to commemorate a momentous milestone in the history of human liberty. But he was glad to explain to those who were there why reflections on that milestone should inspire appreciation for the self-made “destiny’’ of his own rise to power.

I don’t know if it’s valid, but I have a theory about left-wing, whack-job parts of the country producing a few (very few) of the best conservative columnists and broadcasters. This was the Boston Glob’s Jeff Jacoby, the lone conservative voice at the paper—but such a voice. We have a couple of local radio hosts—Michael Graham and Howie Carr come to mind—who are also this good. Maybe it’s because they have no other political outlet (public office?—hah!). Maybe it’s because they have nothing to lose.

But if you think calling Barack Hussein Obama narcissistic and egotistical in the people’s republic of Massachusetts is going to endear him to the pony-tailed, four-eyed, Birkenstocked, bearded, Prius-drivers in Cambridge (and that’s just the women), you got another think coming.

Remember when Al Franken was funny? No? Well, neither do I, but he used to try. Way, way back when on SNL he declared the “me decade” of the 1970s had passed, and it was time to observe the “Al Franken decade” of the 1980s. It was sort of amusing, once. Less so every time he did it again and again.

Anyway, I think that’s what Obama is doing: using Al Franken’s material. The first time it was farce; this time it’s tragedy.

Funny, innit, that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Al Franken are confirmed in their respective recounts on the same day.

In both cases, no alleged irregularities were actually discovered to void the elections.

So President Bush has indeed successfully brought American style democracy to the Middle East. Now, if we can only get a little of it back.

The state that brought you Governor Jesse “The Body” Ventura and movie star Garrison “Don’t Call Me Gary” Keillor may not get the chance to present Senator Al “Stuart Smalley” Franken to the nation:

You would think people would learn. The recount in the contest between Norm Coleman and Al Franken for a seat in the U.S. Senate isn’t just embarrassing. It is unconstitutional.

This is Florida 2000 all over again, but with colder weather. Like that fiasco, Minnesota’s muck of a process violates the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution. Indeed, the controlling Supreme Court decision is none other than Bush v. Gore.

…

Minnesota is Bush v. Gore reloaded. The details differ, but not in terms of arbitrariness, lack of uniform standards, inconsistency in how local recounts were conducted and counted, and strange state court decisions.

Consider the inconsistencies: One county “found” 100 new votes for Mr. Franken, due to an asserted clerical error. Decision? Add them. Ramsey County (St. Paul) ended up with 177 more votes than were recorded election day. Decision? Count them. Hennepin County (Minneapolis, where I voted — once, to my knowledge) came up with 133 fewer votes than were recorded by the machines. Decision? Go with the machines’ tally. All told, the recount in 25 precincts ended up producing more votes than voters who signed in that day.

…

Thus, citizens’ right to vote — the right to vote! — was made subject to political parties’ gaming strategies. Insiders agree that Mr. Franken’s team played a far more savvy game than Mr. Coleman’s. The margin of Mr. Franken’s current lead is partly the product of a successful what’s-mine-is-mine-what’s-yours-is-vetoed strategy, and of the Coleman team’s failure to counter it.

…

And what if there is no reliable way to determine in a recount who won, consistent with Bush v. Gore’s requirements?

The Constitution’s answer is a do-over. The 17th Amendment provides: “When vacancies happen in the representation of any State in the Senate, the executive authority of such State shall issue writs of election to fill such vacancies: Provided, That the legislature of any State may empower the executive thereof to make temporary appointments until the people fill the vacancies by election as the legislature may direct.”

…

For now, the only thing certain is that the present “certified” result — which is that Mr. Franken won by 225 votes out of more than 2.9 million cast — is an obvious, embarrassing violation of the Constitution.

Hard to argue, but remember the time we live in. Obama’s nominees for Attorney General and Treasury Secretary would be disqualified in any other time (as would his chief of staff). Certainly a Democratic Congress would never confirm them if they were Republicans.

I wouldn’t bet against Senator Al if I were you. His call for the Al Franken Decade may finally have come to pass, thirty years later.

Aw, shoot, it doesn’t sound like Caroline K. Mitschlag is gonna get the gig:

Caroline Kennedy’s lack of elected office experience “does not help her” in her quest to represent New York in the U. S. Senate, Gov. David A. Paterson told The Buffalo News on Thursday.

“The notion that I have to take Caroline is not coming from me,” Paterson said in an interview in his Capitol office. He said “gossip” has become a “greater force right now than my decision” and suggested the media have become too consumed with just one big-named candidate.

“What I would say is that, to the media it’s Caroline and the others. To me, there are 10 to 15 good candidates,” said the governor, who will appoint the successor to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton after she is confirmed later this month as U. S. secretary of state.

To be fair to Mrs. Blitzkrieg, the, uh, “election” of Al Franken has lowered the bar considerably on who has the experience to be a US senator. If there is a God in Heaven, Franken will suffer millennia of Agriculture subcommittee meetings on irrigation and crop rotation.