Libertyblog

First Ford Funeral

Saturday evening’s memorial was a modest, dignified tribute to a modest, dignified man. Dick Cheney, who worked for Ford, had this to say:

He was not just a cheerful and pleasant man -- although these virtues are rare enough at the commanding heights. He was not just a nice guy, the next-door neighbor whose luck landed him in the White House. It was this man, Gerald R. Ford, who led our republic safely through a crisis that could have turned to catastrophe. We will never know what further unravelings, what greater malevolence might have come in that time of furies turned loose and hearts turned cold. But we do know this: America was spared the worst. And this was the doing of an American President. For all the grief that never came, for all the wounds that were never inflicted, the people of the United States will forever stand in debt to the good man and faithful servant we mourn tonight.

Speaker Hastert had some nice things to say as well, but his physical appearance in a grotesquely fitting suit was a distraction. Even more distracting were his glasses, which needed to be pushed back up his nose at one minute intervals. Somehow this action became incorporated into our drinking game and was the source of incipient inebriation. (The game: Take a drink when Michigan football is mentioned, raise an eyebrow but take no drink when the Betty Ford Center is mentioned, finish your drink for the words "long national nightmare.")

Senator Ted Stevens was an embarrassment. When he brought up Ford’s support for the Alaska maritime industry, he revealed his understanding of government as an exercise in petty parochialism. This was a stark contrast to the selflessness of President Ford being honored.

Let’s Ask Peanut Boy and Bubba About This

What kind of men are Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton? You’ll recall smiles when they met with Yasser Arafat:

Here’s what Carter and Clinton knew then about Arafat, but you didn’t:

A newly declassified report from 1973 shows that Yasser Arafat personally commanded the terrorist attack that resulted in the murders of [American]Ambassador Cleo Noel and his deputy George Moore, as well as a Belgian diplomat. Moreover, the two murders appear to have been the entire point of Arafat’s attack.

Dubya would have hanged Arafat in the Rose Garden.

Like Christmas All Over Again

Who knew we’d have to wait until December 30 for the Photo of the Year?

Wormer, He’s a Dead Man! Marmalard, Dead! Saddam Hussein …

Dead! A glimmer of seriousness amid the nonsense.

Will his Baathist buds be upset? Who cares? The sort of people who take up arms because of this are exactly the people we need to kill next.

We promised justice for Hussein and we delivered. This may do more for US credibility than all the Iraq Study Group reports Jim Baker could imagine. What was it Osama bin Laden said about the "strong horse"?

It’s official.

I’ve Been Taken Into Iraqi Custody

No, not really. But a limited, unscientific sampling of moonbat opinion suggests that the execution of Saddam Hussein, which proves the liberation of Iraq was not the total fiasco some would suggest, has struck a nerve. How dare we kill someone who’s killed 300,000 people? It might provoke retaliation! Screw the lefties, string the sumbitch up.

Soon to Be Dead?

Saddam Hussein, Mike Nifong’s career, every strain of flu. I’ll settle for the first two. (Via Drudge.)

A Couple of Seasonal Photos

John Kerry eating breakfast with all the people in the military who could stand to:

And, to make my holiday season complete, Asian chicks in Santa hats:

Gerald Ford, Political Zombie

The Washington Post uses a dead President to beat up the serving one. Gerald Ford disagreed with the decision to liberate Iraq. Bill Bennett takes exception:

Since "decency" seems to be the watchword of the day and the consensus modifier for Jerry Ford (a view with which I generally concur), may I nevertheless be permitted to ask this: just how decent, how courageous, is what Jerry Ford did with Bob Woodward? He slams Bush & Cheney to Woodward in 2004, but asks Woodward not to print the interview until he’s dead. If he felt so strongly about his words having a derogatory affect, how about telling Woodward not to run the interview until after Bush & Cheney are out of office? The effect of what Ford did is to protect himself, ensuring he can’t be asked by others about his critiques, ensuring that there can be no dialogue. The way Ford does it with Woodward, he doesn’t have to defend himself...he simply drops it into Bob Woodward’s tape recorder and let’s the bomb go off when fully out of range, himself. This is not courage, this is not decent. The manly or more decent options are these: 1. Say it to Bush’s or Cheney’s face and allow them and us to engage the point while you’re around, or 2. Far more decently, say nothing critical of Bush [that] will be on the record until his presidency is over. There’s a 3. Don’t say anything critical of George Bush to Bob Woodward at all.

Perhaps a more important point: Gerald Ford favored the disaster of detente over confronting the Soviet Union. Why the hell should we care what he thought?

Speaking of Hair

A roundup of Congress’s tonsorial missteps. (Via Lucianne.)

Keeping My Priorities Straight

Will I blog about the Breck Girl announcing his candidacy for president? Certainly not until after this:

Brian Bruggeman caused a stink at the Lincoln County Jail earlier this month and will now have to answer for it in court. Another inmate, Jesse Dorris, alleges that Bruggeman’s flatulence, passed in close proximity to Dorris, sparked a Dec. 14 fight between the two at the jail.

Now Bruggeman, 38, faces a Jan. 11 preliminary hearing on the state’s complaint of assault by a confined person. It’s a felony punishable by up to five years in prison.

What exactly is the dividing line between felony and misdemeanor flatulence? Will the jail’s cook be charged as an accessory? Did Bruggeman fart in Dorris’s general direction?

This has Supreme Court written all over it.

And now Edwards:

Former North Carolina senator and vice presidential candidate John Edwards on Thursday announced his bid for the presidency in the 2008 election, calling on Americans who want change to support his candidacy.

[...]

Edwards jumped into the presidential race Wednesday a day earlier than he had planned, prodded by an Internet glitch to launch a candidacy focused on health care, poverty and other domestic issues. The North Carolina Democrat’s campaign accidentally went live with his election Web site a day before an announcement Thursday .

The slip-up gave an unintended double-meaning to his campaign slogan on John Edwards ’08 Web site: "Tomorrow begins today."

What a maroon.