"As I previously mentioned on the show last year, there would be times I would be taking off from the show to deal with a medical issue."

"This is why I’ve been out recently and will be out this week as well. But I will be back taking your calls as soon as I can."

Wrote Alan Colmes on January 30th.

This morning:

Fox News contributor @AlanColmes has passed away at the age of 66. pic.twitter.com/14LQUYqJ1I

— Fox News (@FoxNews) February 23, 2017

"Colmes is like Pee Wee Herman saying 'If you love it why don't you marry it?' Except Colmes is cruder."

"And yet it was Pee Wee Herman who got arrested for masturbating in a theater. It's so unfair!"

"Everyday Graces: Child's Book Of Good Manners," by Karen Santorum, Foreword by Joe Paterno.

What?!



I was going to read Santorum's "Letters to Gabriel," which deals with the same subject — the death of a baby — that Alan Colmes crudely mocked the other day. But not only is there no Kindle version, it's only available as a $130 hardcover book or a $192 audiobook. By the way, it has a Foreword by Mother Teresa.

Looking on to other works by Karen Santorum, I saw that "Good Manners" book, which sells for a reasonable $16.50, but unfortunately is not available for Kindle. I love the idea of teaching children manners. (Maybe if Rick Santorum wins the presidency, Karen — as First Lady — would make teaching manners her special issue. Michelle Obama gets away with insinuating that our kids are fat, so it would be fine, I'm thinking, for Karen Santorum to insinuate that are kids are rude. Or would that be rude?)

But what's with Joe Paterno writing the foreword? I know, Pennsylvania. It just seems so bizarre now.

"This is not a joke" = the subject line of email from Barack Obama's campaign manager...

... received just after the email from Rick Santorum, blogged in the previous post. Where Santorum addressed me "Patriot," Obama's guy (Jim Messina) addresses me "Friend." (How much does that say about the difference between conservatives and liberals?) Excerpts:

The extremist Tea Party agenda won a clear victory [in Iowa]. No matter who the Republicans nominate, we'll be running against someone who has embraced that agenda in order to win -- vowing to let Wall Street write its own rules, end Medicare as we know it, roll back gay rights, leave the troops in Iraq indefinitely, restrict a woman's right to choose, and gut Social Security to pay for more tax cuts for millionaires and corporations....

Vowing all these things? The Democrats' campaign — or perhaps only its scheme to extract money from those who might yield money — is to scare us about how terribly right-wing the Republican candidate is.

[T]he path ahead for Romney -- or whichever of the Republican candidates is going to emerge from this process -- is sadly and starkly very clear: to run even further to the extreme right, and make even more dangerous promises that threaten not only the progress we've made but the fundamental fabric of American society.

Extreme! Extreme! Dangerous!!!

Watching the circus on TV, it's tempting to think it's almost funny -- but this is not a joke.

Funny? Who writes this stuff? I'm picturing clowns — they're familiar with the circus — who really have a lot of ironic distance and have the instinct to laugh at Republicans. Think of Alan Colmes, who thought he could be funny mocking Rick Santorum for "playing" with his dead baby. I imagine that Colmes mostly talks with smart, cheeky guys whose natural habitat is distanced observation and edgy humor, and he just didn't realize that ordinary people are more closely interwoven with what some ironist trying to get serious might call the fundamental fabric of American society.

These distanced observers, who see the world in terms of humor and tell ordinary people to get serious... how do they push us to seriousness? Not with rational arguments and accurate information, but by making extreme overstatements about extremism and urging us to feel afraid. And yet they call me "Friend."

Friend... before you came, Barack Obama, I was all alone...



The full text of the email...

What if Alan Colmes — calling Santorum crazy for "playing" with his dead baby — secretly intended to boost Santorum?

This is a conspiracy theory. I'm not saying I believe it. I'm just going to spin it out for your consideration. Everybody's talking about what Alan Colmes said about Rick Santorum, and... ah! Looking for a link, I see that Allahpundit has already articulated the conspiracy theory:

You’d think liberals would want to pull their punches against Santorum until he’s built up enough momentum nationally to complicate life for Romney, yet here’s Colmesy throwing an uppercut straight to the groin.

Uppercut to the groin? How short is Colmes?

Pure instinctual ideological bloodlust? Or … is this actually a sly bit of jujitsu in which AC, through a calculated display of jerkiness, forces the viewer to sympathize with Santorum, thus giving him another little boost before tomorrow night? It’s good cop/bad cop co-starring Rich Lowry. Fiendishly clever!

More here from Allahpundit, demonstrating how effectively Santorum and his wife Karen — the neonatal nurse! — have been able to parlay the Colmes attack into some incredibly positive media that goes straight to the hearts of the Christian conservatives of Iowa.

But Allahpundit, at that first link, says "No, I kid. Obviously, it’s bloodlust." Is the conspiracy theory obviously too far-fetched? I think boosting Santorum really is some a devious hardcore liberal would want. Promote somebody who can slow down Romney and keep the Republicans fighting each other. You might think it hurt Colmes too much to appear so callous, but did it? He's got us saying his name and associating it with lively talking-heads TV.

Did Colmes secretly intend to help Santorum?
	Yes. It probably was a devious plot to hurt the Republicans.
	No. It's too evil and too weird a combination of smart and stupid to be believed.
pollcode.com free polls

"It’s a sad commentary that it even has to be stated what faith the president observes, as if it should matter whether he follows Christianity, or any religion at all."

"What if he were a Muslim? What if he were an atheist? Why should that matter? And let’s not forget that some of the same critics who insist that Obama is a Muslim criticized him for going to a Christian church where prayed for 20 years, got married, and baptized his children.”

Tobin Harshaw quotes Alan Colmes, and let me respond in list form:

1. Who are the critics who insist that Obama is a Muslim? The poll just said 20% of Americans believe Obama is a Muslim. That doesn't mean they "insist" that he is or that they are "critics." Isn't it funny when commentator puzzling over how Americans can believe such things displays his own propensity to leap to conclusions beyond what the evidence supports?

2.  It would matter if Obama is really a Muslim or an atheist, because it would mean that he'd lied about religion — for political advantage. If you want to find out more generally whether Americans are willing to accept non-Christian candidates, show me how they respond to a candidate who doesn't purport to be a Christian. The candidate's fear of discrimination — if that's what happened — isn't fairly used to tar Americans as intolerant.

3. There's nothing inconsistent with thinking Obama is a Muslim and criticizing him for going to a Christian church for 20 years. The criticism about the church had to do with the preaching of Jeremiah Wright, which offended and outraged a lot of people during the 2008 campaign. Obama himself chose to denounce him and separate himself from Wright's church (Trinity).

4. Does Obama's past association with Trinity Church prove that he was (and is) a Christian? My source is "Dreams from My Father," chapter 14. While working as a community organizer, Obama was told that it would "help [his] mission if [he] had a church home" and that Jeremiah Wright "might be worth talking to" because "his message seemed to appeal to young people like [him]." Obama wrote that "not all of what these people [who went to Trinity] sought was strictly religious... it wasn't just Jesus they were coming home to." He was told that "if you joined the church you could help us start a community program," and he didn't want to "confess that [he] could no longer distinguish between faith and mere folly." He was, he writes, "a reluctant skeptic." Thereafter, he attends a church service and hears Wright give a sermon titled "The Audacity of Hope" (which would, of course, be the title of Obama's second book). He describes how moved he was by the service, but what moves him is the others around him as they respond to a sermon about black culture and history. He never says he felt the presence of God or accepted Jesus as his savior or anything that suggests he let go of his skepticism. Obama's own book makes him look like an agnostic (or an atheist). He respects religion because he responds to the people who believe, and he seems oriented toward leveraging the religious beliefs of the people for worldly, political ends.

Biden "has been absolutely butchering Senator John McCain across the Rust Belt this week."

According to Mark Leibovich in the NYT. The evidence? You got me. I read the whole article. Didn't notice any butchering.

Yet Joltin’ Joe has also become a fascinating Off Broadway spectacle in his own right. He is a distinctive blend of pit bull and odd duck whose weak filters make him capable of blurting out pretty much anything — “gaffes,” out-of-nowhere comments (pivoting midspeech to say “Excuse my back!” to people seated behind him), goofy asides (tapping a reporter’s chest and telling him, “You need to work on your pecs.”)

Mr. Biden’s role is red-meat serious: to pulverize Mr. McCain, lend foreign policy heft to Senator Barack Obama and be his campaign’s main ambassador to two at-risk constituencies: former supporters of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and blue-collar Democrats. He speaks to working-class voters in the harsh language of their economic trials, and summons easy rage at ear-splitting volumes.

Huh? So he's supposed to "pulverize" McCain. That's his role. But what did he do? What is the this "harsh language of their economic trials"? He recounts the story of growing up poor? How does that become "harsh language"? He "summons easy rage at ear-splitting volumes." What is "easy rage"? Completely relaxed, yet mad as hell?

Leibovich is stretching for vividness, and a lot of it just doesn't make sense. Is Biden effective? I feel like he's not but Leibovich wants to say he is.

Anyway, Drudge linked for the "You need to work on your pecs" thing. That was funny.

By the way, Biden makes Rush Limbaugh positively giddy and giggly. Example here. Oh, that link fortuitously has something I wanted to quote:

...I should have pointed this out to you last night on the plane, Snerdley, but Karl Rove literally skinned Alan Colmes alive.

Literally. Yikes! At least Leibovich didn't have Biden literally butchering McCain. Politics is quite the blood sport these days.

MORE: Here.

He cheated on his wife, so we can't trust him. Is that the rule you want?

Colmes wrestles Hannity to the floor.

The 100 unsexiest men in the world.

Surely, there's someone less sexy than Gilbert Gottfried, but when you're making a list, you've got to put famous people on it. But anyway, Gottfried is funny, and don't all those surveys about what women find sexy always put humor near the top? I know... but still... There's got to be a guy who looks and sounds like Gottfried but isn't funny.

I'm not going to pick over this whole list. I'll just focus on #38, Larry David. I've had spontaneous discussions with women on the precise subject: Larry David is sexy.

And let me single out one choice to agree with: #45, Nick Nolte. I don't know exactly what it is, but I have a physical aversion to him. (Which makes me want to ask: why isn't Michael Douglas on the list?)

And what's with throwing in Osama Bin Laden -- at #8. (And why 8, specifically? Just to stick it to guys like Alan Colmes, who fared worse?) If the list is open to the likes of bin Laden, this guy springs to mind.