H/T: Drudge

• Thanksgiving Caption Contest
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Wading into a contentious debate being waged within the Republican Party of Iowa, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour told a crowd of GOP activists and elected officials Thursday night that the only way back into the majority is to resist demands for ideological purity.

Party building is about addition and multiplication, not subtraction and division, Barbour said at a party fundraiser in Des Moines. The GOP must be inclusive, he argued, and that idea extends to even the most divisive political issues. To make his point, Barbour pointed out that he helped pass several anti-abortion bills as governor, eventually garnering his state the reputation as “the safest place in the nation for an unborn child.” But he said there are good Republicans who don’t agree with him on the issue.

“There are tens of millions of pro-choice Republicans that are just as good Republicans as I am, and we need to support them,” he said, adding: “That’s what party building is about, and don’t think that is giving up your principles.”

(….)

“There are a lot more things that unite us than do divide us,” Barbour said. “Or as President Reagan used to say, remember that a fellow that agrees with you 80 percent of the time is your friend. He’s not some 20-percent traitor.”

Denunciation from Limbaugh, Hannity, O’Reilly, and Levin coming in 3, 2, 1…………

H/T: The Pajama Pundit

• Republicans Against Property Rights
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PARIS (Reuters Life!) – French tourists are the worst in the world, coming across as bad at foreign languages, tight-fisted and arrogant, according to a survey of 4,500 hotel owners across the world.

They finish in last place in the survey carried out for internet travel agency Expedia by polling company TNS Infratest, which said French holidaymakers don’t speak local languages and are seen as impolite.

“It’s mainly the fact that they speak little or no English when they’re abroad, and they don’t speak much of the local language,” Expedia Marketing Director Timothee de Roux told radio station France Info.

“The French don’t go abroad very much. We’re lucky enough to have a country which is magnificent in terms of its landscape and culture,” he said, adding that 90 per cent of French people did their traveling at home.

“So when they’re on holiday they can be a bit stressed, they’re not used to things, and this can lead them to be demanding in a way which could be seen as a certain arrogance.”

French tourists are also accused of generally spending less than other nationalities when abroad

Rude, arrogant, and cheap.

Yea, that’s France.

• Disliking The French….It’s Chic In Paris
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• Barack Obama, Multi-Lingualism, And Idiocy In The Blogosphere

(CNN) – Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush told an interviewer that he could not say whether or not President Barack Obama is a socialist, and that the president would not have been elected if he had been honest with Americans about his agenda.

Bush would not answer the question of whether he agreed with the assessment of some congressional Republicans that the president is a socialist. “I don’t know. Define socialism for me,” he told Esquire magazine. “It’s a word… I believe he’s a collectivist. He believes that through collective action, through government, you can solve more problems.” He added that he believed the word “socialism” was a pejorative, and “didn’t help” the GOP make its case.

The brother of former President George W. Bush and son of former President George H.W. Bush dismissed the idea that his party’s policies were unpopular with most Americans. “I don’t think there’s any seismic shift. The Democrats have won on tactics,” he said. “Barack Obama would not have gotten elected if he’d let us in on his secret plan prior to the election,” he said, pointing to the president’s economic agenda and energy proposals.

On a positive note, Bush does seem to be in opposition to the anti-intellectualism epitomized by the Palin/Wurzelbacher wing of the GOP:

Told that Joe the Plumber had briefed congressional Republicans on Gaza, Bush launched into a defense of intellectualism. “I think it’s okay to have a deeper understanding of things. I think it’s okay to talk in three-syllable words. The world we’re living in is incredibly complex,” he told the magazine. “And simplifying things to the point where you’re misunderstanding where we are as a nation isn’t going to help people overcome their fears or give them hope that they can achieve great things. I don’t get inspired by shameless populism.””

Of course that doesn’t mean he won’t pander to shameless populism when it’s politically necessary:

Bush called conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh “a hugely important force for the conservative movement,” but added that he was “more interested in elected officials, how they behave.”

“I feel happy for Rush to get all this attention. He’s one part of a mosaic of people and thought in the conservative movement,” he said. “I don’t think you can discount his importance. At the same time, he’s not an elected official, so I think he has a different responsibility.”

Yes, as I’ve said before, he’s a businessman whose job is to make obscene profits. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s a reason why he shouldn’t be taken seriously as a political kingmaker, and why politicians shouldn’t feel obligated to supplicate themselves to him.

That said, Bush goes on to deny that he has Presidential ambitions, either in 2012 or beyond, but one can’t help but think that it’s on his mind. Notwithstanding the dynastic objections I’ve noted in the past, and the fact that W’s disastrous Administration probably means that anyone named “Bush” won’t be running for President for quite some time, I’ve always wondered if America may have elected the wrong Bush brother in 2000.

• The Bush Dynasty
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• Bob Barr To McCain: Be Careful Who You Call A Socialist
• Jeb Bush In 2012 ?
• Did America Elect The Wrong Bush Brother ?

H/T: The Crossed Pond

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Last night, Senator Jim DeMint compared present-day America to pre-World War II Germany:

Part of what we’re trying to do in “Saving Freedom” is just show that where we are, we’re about where Germany was before World War II where they became a social democracy.

And DeMint’s not alone, as Tommy Christopher notes, he’s backed up by SNL alumnus Victoria Jackson:

Hitler did this. He killed the weak, the sick, the old, and babies and races/religions he didn’t like. Hitler also controlled the media. (Where’s the public debate between scientists on “Climate Change/Global Warming?”) Hitler had the VW bug invented as the state car. What will O’s nationalized car be? So… kill off the weak. That’s the plan. Tax the workers to death. Erase the middle class. Sounds like the evil governments we studied in high school long ago. The evil governments were : kings, oligarchies, facist, socialist, and communist. Now it’s called the Obama Administration. Sounds like candy or a rock band.

Let’s leave aside for a second the question of just how it is that one of the least talented people to ever appear on Saturday Night Live has suddenly turned into a political analyst, I doubt there is a rational explanation for that.

The reductio ad Hitlerum seems to a required part of American politics these days. George Bush did it in the run up to the Iraq War, and then again last year when talking about the Middle East. Bill Clinton used analogies to the Third Reich to justify American intervention in Serbia. And then there’s Al Gore.

And what, exactly, has this constant envoking of the memory of a dictator and the man who, in the judgment of history, made most of the worst aspects of World War II possible, accomplished ? Nothing really, because it pretty much makes debate and disagreement impossible.

And that, I think, is why political leaders do it. Invoke Hitler and anyone who opposes you is automatically an appeaser of evil. It’s an easy way to shut down political debate even when legitimate questions need to be asked.

Which is why politicians resort to it so often.

Tommy Christopher puts it best:

Don’t these folks see how simultaneously comical and trivializing these comparisons are? It’s like saying that mosquitoes are a Holocaust on your arms and legs.

(…)

I never thought I’d hear myself say this, but maybe these folks are watching too much Star Trek.

Heh.

• It’s Time To Stop With The Hitler Analogies
• Al Gore And The Reductio ad Hitlerum
• What If They Applied BCS Rules To The Entire World ?
• Michelle Malkin Better Get On The Case
• A Very Vulcan Philosophy

WASHINGTON — The director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Leon E. Panetta, has told the House Intelligence Committee in closed-door testimony that the C.I.A. concealed “significant actions” from Congress from 2001 until late last month, seven Democratic committee members said.

In a June 26 letter to Mr. Panetta discussing his testimony, Democrats said that the agency had “misled members” of Congress for eight years about the classified matters, which the letter did not disclose. “This is similar to other deceptions of which we are aware from other recent periods,” said the letter, made public late Wednesday by Representative Rush D. Holt, Democrat of New Jersey, one of the signers.

In an interview, Mr. Holt declined to reveal the nature of the C.I.A.’s alleged deceptions,. But he said, “We wouldn’t be doing this over a trivial matter.”

The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Silvestre Reyes, Democrat of Texas, referred to Mr. Panetta’s disclosure in a letter to the committee’s ranking Republican, Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, Congressional Quarterly reported on Wednesday. Mr. Reyes wrote that the committee “has been misled, has not been provided full and complete notifications, and (in at least one occasion) was affirmatively lied to.”

Nobody seems to even be hinting about what the subject matter of the deception could be, which leads one to wonder….

Could it be assassinations ? Hit Squads ? Who Shot J.R. ? The identity of Doctor Who ? Who Put The Bop In The Bop Shoo Bop Shoo Bop ?

Inquiring minds want to know.

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Well, it appears that, despite all that talk about “hope” and “change,” the charge of treason apparently applies regardless of who sits in the Oval Office:

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), who has had an eventful couple of weeks to say the least, believes House Republican opposition to climate change legislation and the stimulus indicates they’re cheering against the good ol’ US of A.

“It appears that the Republican Party leadership in the Congress has made a decision that they want to deny President Obama success, which means, in my mind, they are rooting against the country, as well,” the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman told WAMU radio host Diane Rehm on Tuesday morning, promoting his new book, “The Waxman Report.”

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

• Regrets, He’s Had A Few
• Judd Gregg Appointed To Cabinet Post He Voted To Eliminate
• MSNBC Drops Imus: Now…..Waiting For The Other Shoe Drop
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• Clemens Testimony Referred To Justice Department

As Mederdith Viera finally clarified, I can report that Betty White is in fact alive and well.

As is Abe Vigoda.

• Is The Jefferson Memorial Sinking ?
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BOSTON (AP) - Massachusetts, the first state to legalize gay marriage, sued the U.S. government Wednesday over a federal law that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

The federal Defense of Marriage Act interferes with the right of Massachusetts to define and regulate marriage as it sees fit, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley said. The 1996 law denies federal recognition of gay marriage and gives states the right to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Boston, argues the act “constitutes an overreaching and discriminatory federal law.”

Specifically, the lawsuit challenges the section of the law that creates a federal definition of marriage as limited to a union between one man and one woman.

Before the law was passed, Coakley said, the federal government recognized that defining marital status was the “exclusive prerogative of the states.” Now, because of the U.S. law’s definition of marriage, same-sex couples are denied access to benefits given to heterosexual married couples, including federal income tax credits, employment benefits, retirement benefits, health insurance coverage and Social Security payments.

“In enacting DOMA, Congress overstepped its authority, undermined states’ efforts to recognize marriages between same-sex couples, and codified an animus towards gay and lesbian people,” the lawsuit states

Given that there is no provision in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution that gives Congress the authority to define marriage, Massachusetts would seem to have a pretty strong legal argument. What’s unclear, though, is whether the state has standing to challenge the law, and whether the Court’s would be willing to make what seems like the only obviously correct decision here.

• A Compromise On Gay Marriage
• D.C. City Council Votes To Recognize Gay Marriages
• California Supreme Court Affirms Gay Marriage
• Marriage Rights Update
• A Federal Marriage Amendment ? Just Say No