LEAVWORLD: GRAFFITI POLITTI

Not flinching an inch, Ann Coulter responded to her critics in her latest column, titled "That Was No Lady -- That Was My Husband." Ms. Coulter is not everyone's "cup of tea," to say the least. However, in this "kerfluffle," she is not in the wrong. She correctly points out that Elizabeth Edwards' "call-in" when she was promoting her book on Hardball was an obvious "sandbag" job. Even if it wasn't "planned," (as if!) Chris Matthews didn't have to let her stay on, uninterrupted, for so long. Here's an excerpt from Coulter: I can only speak to the first 45 minutes of Elizabeth Edwards' harangue, but it mostly consisted of utterly dishonest renditions of things I had said on my "Good Morning America" interview this week and a column I wrote four years ago. (You can't rush Edwards' "rapid response team"!) She claimed I had launched unprovoked attacks on the Edwards' dead son...

I was going to write about the latest Ann Coulter "kerfluffle" with Edwards, but I caught the Democratic debate on PBS, and wrote some contemporaneous thoughts. I'm bundling them into a post, so forgive the disjointed nature of the commentary. I want to get back to analyzing Ms. Coulter's latest column. The debate was held at Howard University, a historically Black college. Tavis Smiley was the moderator, and he did a good job of it. The format was three questioners, with one minute responses from each candidate, with Tavis having discretion to alter the format. When introducing the candidates, several people in the crowd shouted "Obama!" Several of the candidates cited Obama as an example of the "progress made" by Blacks in the US, during the debate. Candidates who used the word "Black": Biden and Mike Gravel, who actually said "Black African Americans." It should be a minor thing, but there are many who dislike the word "...

Well, whaddaya know? Bloomberg has quit the Republican party. What does this mean? It means that he wants to run for president, with somewhat more credibility than Ross Perot had in '92. The question is "who will he hurt more," the Repuplican or Democrat candidate? The answer is that he will hurt the Democrat more, unless the Republican candidate is Rudy Giuliani. Rudy is the only candidate who is truly vulnerable to Bloomberg's "moderate" Republican image, which was a sham from the start, to be honest. Rudy's support with moderates rests on his stance on abortion and gay rights, and Bloomberg is his equal on these issues to most "moderates," of either party. Plus, Bloomberg doesn't have to win, to defeat Rudy. He just has to siphon off enough votes as an "independent" to give Hillary, or any Dem that doesn't self-destruct a victory. Where Perot peeled off votes from GHW Bush's conservative base, or a part of it, Bloomy co...

This post of mine was recently featured on Gather Essentials: Movies , so I thought I'd crosspost it here. The second chapter of Marvel Comics' Fantastic Four franchise introduces movie audiences to the Silver Surfer, an iconic hero from the "silver age" of comics (1955-1970, according to Pat, at the great Silver Age Comics blog ). The ads for the movie often seem to promote the Surfer more than the Fantastic Four (or "FF," for the rest of this review), with good reason. The story is a grand retelling of his first appearance, and his origin. With relatively few lines, but lots of action, the Surfer stole the show. I'm biased, but I thought his acting was among the best in the movie. The character was "played," with heavy CGI, by Doug Jones, with the voice done by Lawrence Fishburne. The effect was stunning, and his scenes were much more dramatic than the "slapstick" mood of many of the FF's. I smell a spinoff in the making. Of co...

Should there be a great tax revolution in the US? The cost of full compliance with tax laws is often greater than the penalty for violating it in some way. I'm talking about finding a way to tax the "off the books" economy, which involves not only illegal immigrants, but an equal, or greater number of legal citizens. There is also the issue of farm subsidies, and other corporate welfare. Don't get me started about the theft of Social Security tax revenue, putting it into the general fund, because that gets into the spending side! Taxpayers who live in high-tax states like NY should be on the front lines of this battle, because we have some of the most regressive taxes in the nation, such as the cigarette tax. Imagine how hard it is for a poor person to afford seven dollars a day for cigs, when they want them more than food? The worst part is that the government makes more off of a pack of cigs than the tobacco company, but still has the balls to sue them for "hea...

This is a response to those who call the U.S. "imperialist." After WW II, the U.S. had troops stationed around the world. Thousands of them remain to this day in the defeated Axis powers; Germany, Italy, and Japan. Do we have any "imperial" power over any of these nations? There is a history of the U.S. leaving a country, when formally asked to. All of the aforementioned nations are democratic, but Amir Taheri cites some different examples: ...In fact, the Americans have never tried to stay in any country against its wishes. In 1966, French President Charles de Gaulle decided to take his country out of the military part of NATO and asked the Americans to close their bases in France. President Lyndon Johnson immediately complied, ending more than two decades of U.S military presence on French soil. In 1969, Col. Moammar Khadafy, who had just seized power in Tripoli, asked the United States to close its vast Wheels base, a key part of NATO's strategy in the Medit...