Three questions and a prediction

dr. elsewhere here

Blogger has been persistently and pretty consistently a huge pain. Lost two posts to the ether. Just, lost.

Grrr.

So I'll try to combine them, best I can.

Question #1: I've asked it before but I'll ask it again; how is it that Karl Rove is conducting campaign business from his office in the White House? Isn't that illegal? Wait, that's not a question. It IS illegal. Remember the big stink about Al Gore's phone calls to that LA Buddhist temple? Should we just give up on expecting equity ever and resign ourselves to expecting hypocrisy?
(To read the rest, click "Permalink" below)


Question #2: Why is no one making anything of the connection between Joe Liebermann and Lynne Cheney? In 1995, they formed the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, which proclaims to privately support America's colleges and universities. Right after 9/11, however, this organization essentially issued a blacklist, ironically while asserting freedom of speech from one side of its mouth, naming professors who dared to consider questions about the reasons terrorists might exist from the other side of its mouth.

Question #3: Why is no one making what seems to me the obvious comparison between Wolf Blitzer's interview of Lynne Cheney over the weekend and Chris Wallace's interview of Bill Clinton? Evidently it's perfectly game for Wallace to blindside Clinton with loaded questions based on false assumptions that put him on the defensive - which Clinton quickly turned into an offensive, the right then predictably twisting his anger into an some kind of insanity plea. However, Wolf confronts Lynne with a few choice truths, while she spins up a classic Kansas twister, and Fox News (home to Chris Wallace, of course) acts as if this is the most fatal affront, gasp, that Wolf could not answer her poisoned question, do you want the US to win the war in Iraq? What the hell is that? Along the lines of supporting the troops. Good grief; it's pretty incumbant upon them to define what winning would look like before we even bother to answer.

Prediction: After Wolf spoke truth to Lynne's power, I don't give the poor guy a month before his career is, um, sacrificed. Dick Cheney is known for being no less vindictive than Bush, and no doubt Lynne has honed those skills to a fine point. And Lynne was also extremely critical of Lou Dobbs' Broken America series, making a number of startlingly false assertions to try and prove her point. Wolf and Lou Dobbs are now marked men, mark my words. Unlike Dan Rather before them, though, it appears these two guys have built up a genuine following in middle America; I don't think a similar hit job will work quite as well in this climate.

Sorta makes you long for Hugh Grant, but in Love Actually, in that scene where his Prime Minister stands up to Billy Bob Thornton's US President and refuses to be the lapdog to Thornton's bullydog. Life as a romantic comedy would be such a relief.