DID YOU PLUG THE HOLE WITH A BLUE DRESS YET, DADDY?

By Ann Coulter
http://www.anncoulter.com/
June 2, 2010

Oil is spewing from beneath a British Petroleum oil rig into the Gulf of Mexico at a rate of about 1 million gallons a day. There's no end in sight -- although White House officials have made it clear their goal is to stop the leak before the midterm elections in November.

Obama now spends at least half of every day answering pointed, increasingly aggressive questions about the oil spill, most of them from his daughter Malia.

The president finally went down to take a look at the oil disaster last week –- which is weird because I didn't even know there were golf courses near the Gulf. To show his concern, Obama is thinking about returning some of the nearly $1 million the oil industry donated to his campaign.

Ha, ha -- just kidding. He's not returning any oil money. But the situation has gotten so urgent that Obama did take time off from his golf game to praise the Phoenix Suns for protesting Arizona’s new immigration law.

He really did endorse the Phoenix Suns, which -- like most of his endorsements -- has resulted in their being eliminated by the Los Angeles Lakers over the weekend. (Did I dream this, or was it just yesterday that President Obama was congratulating Al and Tipper Gore on their long and happy marriage?)

The media have been crowing that Republicans will lose the Hispanic vote forever if they support enforcing laws against illegal immigration, such as the Arizona law. To great fanfare, a poll was released last week showing that 67 percent of Hispanics oppose the Arizona law.

The headline on that poll should have been: "One-Third of Hispanics Support Arizona Immigration Law Despite Frantic Media Campaign to Convince Them It’s a Racist Plot Against Hispanics."

Incidentally, 67 percent of Hispanics also vote Democrat. The exact same percentage of Hispanics who oppose the Arizona law voted for Obama over John McCain -- who was championing amnesty for illegals.

Suck up to Hispanics with insane amnesty proposals; get one out of three Hispanic voters. Do the right thing and defend the country's borders; get one out of three Hispanic voters. ... Promise to make every Tuesday "Ladies' Night"; get one out of three Hispanic voters. Offer them a choice between "Extra Crispy" and "Original Recipe"; get one out of three Hispanic voters.

Indeed, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll released on Tuesday, only 52 percent of Hispanics oppose the law, while 37 percent support it. In other words, more Hispanics support the Arizona law (37 percent) than voted for John McCain (31 percent) -– which is the strongest argument for amnesty I've heard in my entire life.

Overall, 66 percent of voters support enforcing the border before discussing amnesty. A plurality -- 48 percent to 35 percent -- would like their own states to pass a law just like Arizona's, despite the strong likelihood that the mainstream media will accuse them of being Nazi police states.

The New York Times' Linda Greenhouse recently compared the Arizona law to Hitler's policies toward the Jews. You remember how Jews were constantly sneaking across the border into Nazi Germany?

Finally, in keeping with the White House tradition of only releasing really good news on the Friday afternoon before the Memorial Day weekend, last Friday the White House announced that no one in the administration offered Rep. Joe Sestak a job to drop out of the Senate primary against Arlen Specter, despite Sestak's claims to the contrary.

After a 10-week investigation, the Obama White House concluded that Bill Clinton, acting on his own, offered Sestak a nonpaying, advisory job with the administration.

It sounds like something Bill would tell Hillary after sneaking back into the house in the wee hours of the morning. "Honest, honey, I wasn't out with a tawdry cocktail waitress. I was offering some guy I barely know a job at the Obama White House."

So yeah, I know it sounds fishy, but if Bill Clinton says this is how it happened, that's good enough for me. Why, Clinton hasn't lied under oath in front of a federal grand jury for more than a decade.

Incidentally, why do so many Bill Clinton stories end with the words "nothing improper happened"? As I recall, the definition of "proper" gets pretty elastic when you're talking about Bill Clinton.

It's too bad Sestak turned down the offer, because if he had said yes, Obama could claim to have created at least one job, albeit unpaid.

I have mixed feelings about Obama trying to get Sestak out of the way in order to help Arlen Specter. As far as I'm concerned, the only good thing Obama has done so far is to endorse Specter, thus ensuring his defeat.

Maybe Obama should endorse oil spills.

COPYRIGHT 2010 ANN COULTER

John Kerry's Big Business Buyoff

By William Yeatman & Jeremy Lott on 6.3.10 @ 6:08AM
The American Spectator
http://spectator.org/

When Senator John Kerry lent his name to a climate bill last fall, he probably didn't expect it to sink so fast. Opponents successfully branded "cap-and-trade" as a "cap-and-tax," and Kerry's co-sponsor, Barbara Boxer, proved singularly inept at pushing the bill though the Environment and Public Works Committee that she chairs. The bill never even made it to a full Senate vote.

So Kerry retrenched. He dropped Boxer as a partner, remessaged cap-and-trade as an economic opportunity, and went looking for bipartisan -- or at least less doctrinaire -- cover. You'll find no arguments from us about the wisdom of dropping Barbara Boxer, but the rebranding effort is fraudulent. Kerry recently unveiled another climate bill, the American Power Act, and the doublespeak this time is truly impressive. Instead of a "cap-and-trade," the bill has a "global warming pollution reduction scheme"; out with the "gas tax," in with a "linked fee" for transportation fuels. Yet the words don't obscure the plain fact that the act would raise the price of energy.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass., left, meets with T. Boone Pickens to discuss the Kerry-sponsored climate bill, which Pickens supports, Wednesday, May 19, 2010, in Kerry's office on Capitol Hill in Washington.
(AP Photo/Harry Hamburg)

To help sell the act, Kerry has lined up several industrial strength energy suppliers and users. Their support forms the basis of Kerry's claim that the American Power Act is good for the economy. But why do big businesses support a bill that will increase the costs of doing business in this country? Kerry and his new Barbara Boxer, Senator Joseph Lieberman, would have you believe that these companies are motivated by the need for "regulatory certainty." The truth is simpler and cruder than that. These businesses stand to make a killing if the bill passes. Consider:

* General Electric helped write portions of the bill to tilt the market in its favor. If Congress puts a price on carbon, coal will lose market share to nuclear power and natural gas. GE is a global leader in these two industries. This is par for the course for GE. In 2007, it spent millions lobbying for an energy bill that bans incandescent light bulbs. The company just happens to be a world leader in the production of compact fluorescent bulbs.

* Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and other Wall Street firms long have lobbied for climate legislation because they would reap huge fees in brokering the trade of energy-rationing coupons (a.k.a. carbon credits) under a cap-and-trade scheme. By 2020, the global carbon market could be worth $3 trillion, according to London-based New Energy Finance.

* Exelon, America's most valuable utility, is such a staunch supporter of climate legislation that it split from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce over the Chamber's opposition to cap-and-trade. Exelon relies on nuclear power, and the American Power Act fulfills every aspect of the nuclear industry's wish-list. The Huffington Post unearthed an internal Exelon memo estimating that climate legislation would add $700 to $750 million to the company's annual revenues for every $10 per metric ton increase in the price of CO2 allowances.

* British Petroleum and Conoco Phillips opposed cap-and-trade legislation enacted by the House of Representatives because they thought it was insufficiently generous. In the Senate, they got a better deal. Senator Kerry said that he's "been working very closely" with BP and C-P, and the lobbying has paid dividends. The refining industry receives twice as many free carbon credits under Kerry's cap-and-trade scheme as the one established by the House. C-P CEO Jim Mulva even bragged in a statement that his company "is pleased with the attention that has been given our key issues."

* Chemical manufacturer Dupont, for business reasons, phased out the use of HFC-23, a chemical gas that happens to be thousands of times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. The American Power Act allocates 1 percent of the carbon credits from 2013-2015 to companies that performed "early action" policies to mitigate climate change. The company could reap hundreds of millions of dollars, just for doing business as usual.

This is just a sampling of a larger group of businesses whose woolly rhetoric is designed to mask their own-self interest -- at the expense of the American economy as a whole. Big business spokesmen for cap-and-trade claim they are trying to save the planet and achieve regulatory certainty. But the only certainty they're after is guaranteed profits. It's comforting, in a way, to know that their eyes are always firmly fixed on the bottom line.

William Yeatman is an energy policy analyst at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Jeremy Lott is an editor for Real Clear Politics and author of "The Warm Bucket Brigade: The Story of the American Vice Presidency" (Thomas Nelson). He blogs at JeremyLott.net.

Romanoff Cracks: Secret White House Jobsgate E-Mail Revealed

By Jeffrey Lord on 6.3.10 @ 6:09AM
The American Spectator
http://spectator.org/

And…bang!

Can you say James McCord?

In a revelation that will send shock waves through the American political landscape, the Denver Post last night revealed that Colorado Senate candidate Andrew Romanoff has now reluctantly admitted he discussed "three possible jobs with the deputy chief of staff of the Obama administration -- all contingent upon a decision by Romanoff not to challenge U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet."

The White House Deputy Chief of Staff is Jim Messina, a Denver-born Obama aide who served as the chief of staff of the Obama presidential campaign. Messina serves under Rahm Emanuel, the former Illinois Congressman and current White House Chief of Staff.

The Post also published an e-mail from Messina to Romanoff dated September 11, 2009 at 3:24 pm. The e-mail discusses the jobs of Deputy Assistant Administrator for Latin America and Caribbean, and Director, Office of Democracy and Governance. Both of those positions are under the United States Agency for International Development. The third position mentioned was Director of the U.S. Trade and Development Agency.

FILE - In this May 22, 2010, file photo Democratic Senate candidate Andrew Romanoff addresses the Democratic Party assembly in Broomfield, Colo. White House administration officials dangled the possibility of a job for Romanoff in 2009 in hopes he would forego a challenge to Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet.
(AP Photo/Ed Andrieski)

The Romanoff admission -- which comes after months of silence, denials and evasions by the White House beginning in February -- comes on the heels of a letter to the White House from Congressman Darrell Issa and two congressional colleagues demanding access to e-mails and phone logs relevant to the Sestak Jobsgate affair -- the allegation first made by Pennsylvania Democratic Congressman Joe Sestak that the White House offered him a job if he would abandon his own Senate challenge to incumbent Democrat Arlen Specter.

On Friday, the White House issued a report by White House Counsel Robert Bauer, saying that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel had approached former President Bill Clinton to contact Sestak. The report, which contradicts Sestak, says that "efforts" in the plural were "made in June and July of 2009 to determine whether Congressman Sestak would be interested in service on a Presidential or other Senior Executive Branch Advisory Board, which would avoid a divisive Senate primary, allow him to retain his seat in the House, and provide him with an opportunity for additional service to the public in a high-level advisory capacity for which he was highly qualified. The advisory positions discussed with Congressman Sestak, while important to the work of the Administration, would have been uncompensated."

The positions discussed in the Messina-Romanoff e-mail are all compensated positions.

Sestak says something else -- that former President Clinton made one phone call to him, the offer was only briefly discussed and he, Sestak, rejected the offer.

The report was sufficiently self-contradictory that Issa and colleagues Lamar Smith of Texas and James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin felt compelled to send their letter to White House Counsel Bauer requesting -- by June 9 -- the following:

1. All records and documents created by or produced to the Office of the White House Counsel in the course of the investigation.

2. All records and documents created or produced to the Office of the White House Press Secretary in the course of the investigation of the Sestak matter.

3. All notes or transcripts of interviews conducted by lawyers in the Office of the White House Counsel with witnesses in the Sestak matter, including but not limited to the White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, President Bill Clinton, Rep. Joe Sestak and Richard Sestak.

4. All notes or transcripts of interviews conducted by staff in the Office of the White House Press Secretary with witnesses in the Sestak matter, including but not limited to White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, President Bill Clinton, Rep. Joe Sestak and Richard Sestak.

5. All records, documents, interview notes or transcripts referred to either explicitly or implicitly or otherwise relied on to draft the May 28, 2010 Sestak Memorandum.

6. All documents, e-mails and phone records related to conversations White House staff had with or about Rep. Joe Sestak and any members of Rep. Sestak's campaign.

The revelation of the once-secret Messina-Romanoff correspondence will only heighten the pressure on the White House to comply with the Issa letter.

The break in the Sestak Jobsgate Affair is reminiscent of a similar revelation by Watergate burglar and ex-CIA agent James McCord. After he was caught with four accomplices breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate Hotel complex on June 17, 1972, it quickly developed that the five men had a connection to the Nixon Committee to Re-elect the President. Yet there was no proof that higher-ups in the Nixon White House knew anything about the break-in or any subsequent efforts to cover up a connection. Convicted of conspiracy, burglary and wiretapping, McCord then wrote a letter to Judge John J. Sirica saying that the reason for his non-cooperation during his trial was that he had been pressured by the White House to keep quiet.

McCord's famous letter, which instantly helped break open the Watergate investigation, would eventually force President Nixon's resignation and send his closest and most powerful aides, including White House chief of staff H.R. Haldeman, to prison.

The McCord letter said:

TO: JUDGE SIRICA March 19, 1973

Certain questions have been posed to me from your honor through the probation officer, dealing with details of the case, motivations, intent and mitigating circumstances.

In endeavoring to respond to these questions, I am whipsawed in a variety of legalities.

First, I may be called before a Senate Committee investigating this matter. Secondly, I may be involved in a civil suit, and thirdly there may be a new trial at some future date. Fourthly, the probation officer may be called before the Senate Committee to present testimony regarding what may otherwise be a privileged communication between defendant and Judge, as I understand it; if I answered certain questions to the probation officer, it is possible such answers could become a matter of record in the Senate and there-fore available for use in the other proceedings just described. My answers would, it would seem to me, to violate my fifth amendment rights, and possibly my 6th amendment right to counsel and possibly other rights.

On the other hand, to fail to answer your questions may appear to be non-cooperation, and I can therefore expect a much more severe sentence.

There are further considerations which are not to be lightly taken. Several members of my family have expressed fear for my life if I disclose knowledge of the facts in this matter, either publicly or to any government representative. Whereas I do not share their concerns to the same degree, nevertheless, I do believe that retaliatory measures will be taken against me, my family, and my friends should I disclose such facts. Such retaliation could destroy careers, income, and reputations of persons who are innocent of any guilt whatever.

Be that as it may, in the interests of justice, and in the interests of restoring faith in the criminal justice system, which faith has been severely damaged in this case, I will state the following to you at this time which I hope may be of help to you in meting out justice in this case:

1. There was political pressure applied to the defendants to plead guilty and remain silent.

2. Perjury occurred during the trial in matters highly material to the very structure, orientation, and impact of the government's case, and to the motivation and intent of the defendants.

3. Others involved in the Watergate operation were not identified during the trial, when they could have been by those testifying.

4. The Watergate operation was not a CIA operation. The Cubans may have been misled by others into believing that it was a CIA operation. I know for a fact that it was not.

5. Some statements were unfortunately made by a witness which left the Court with the impression that he was stating untruths, or withholding facts of his knowledge, when in fact only honest errors of memory were involved.

6. My motivations were different than those of the others involved, but were not limited to, or simply those offered in my defense during the trial. This is no fault of my attorneys, but of the circumstances under which we had to prepare my defense.

Following sentence, I would appreciate the opportunity to talk with you privately in chambers. Since I cannot feel confident in talking with an FBI agent, in testifying before a Grand Jury whose U.S. Attorneys work for the Department of Justice, or in talking with other government representatives, such a discussion with you would be of assistance to me.

I have not discussed the above with my attorneys as a matter of protection for them.

I give this statement freely and voluntarily, fully realizing that I may be prosecuted for giving a false statement to a Judicial Official, if the statements herein are knowingly untrue. The statements are true and correct to the best of my knowledge and belief.

[signed] James W. McCord, Jr.

The letter, as with the Romanoff revelation of a secret White House e-mail, was a bombshell.

Aside from revealing the secret-role of the White House, it also made plain McCord's lack of trust in "talking with an FBI agent" -- because the Justice department was run by the Nixon-appointed Attorney General Richard Kleindienst -- the Eric Holder of his day. Holder, eager to investigate potential wrongdoing by BP in the Gulf oil spill disaster, has shown a noticeable reluctance to investigate the White House for suspected criminal wrongdoing.

FILE - In this Feb. 18, 2010, file photo, President Barack Obama is greeted by Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., as he arrives at Buckley Air Force Base in Aurora, Colo. White House administration officials dangled the possibility of a job for former Colorado House Speaker Andrew Romanoff last year in hopes he would forego a challenge to Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet.
(AP Photo/Jack Dempsey)

The Romanoff side of the Sestak Jobsgate Affair has gotten relatively little coverage until recently. It has been hammered almost daily in Denver by KHOW radio talker Peter Boyles and, at the national level, Sean Hannity and Mark Levin. Hannity has also investigated the issue on his popular television show, discussing the Romanoff angle frequently.

Here in this space, calls -- unreturned -- were placed in the last several days directly to Mr. Romanoff, who refused to return them. Denver Post columnist Mike Littwin was told by a Romanoff aide as recently as the weekend that Romanoff, in Littwin's words, "won't answer why he won't answer."

The reason for Romanoff's Code of Omerta is now abundantly clear.

On the other end of his e-mail was the White House Deputy Chief of Staff -- Rahm Emanuel's trusted number two -- and who knew beyond that?

Like the intimidated James McCord of Watergate, Andrew Romanoff of the Sestak Jobsgate Affair couldn't bring himself to speak up.

Then he did.

Now, somebody in this Obama White House is in big trouble.

Big trouble.

And the old Watergate question is about to re-surface:

What did the President know -- and when did he know it?


Jeffrey Lord is a former Reagan White House political director and author. He writes from Pennsylvania at jlpa1@aol.com.

In sports history, nothing can rival it

By Bob Ryan, Boston Globe Columnist
http://www.boston.com/sports/
June 2, 2010

The Celtics and Lakers already have met more times to decide a major American sports championship than any two clubs have in any of our four major team sports, and now they are about to play for a 12th time. How could anyone not be at least a little bit engulfed in this history?

Where would Celtics history be without Selvy’s (Missed) Shot, Cooz’s Last Game, the Balloon Game, Henderson Steals The Ball, The Great Takedown, the Heat Game, the Great ’08 Comeback, and, of course, 131-92?

Celtics general manager Red Auerbach hugs Bill Russell and John Havlicek after their championship win over the Los Angeles Lakers in 1968. The longtime coach of the Celtics, Auerbach had hired Russell to replace him, with gratifying results. (AP)

Where would Lakers history be without Elgin scoring 61, West scoring 40 again and again and again, Kareem’s ’85 Redemption, and the “Junior, Junior Sky Hook’’? Sure, the Los Angeles list is a bit shorter. The Lakers are 2-9 against the Celtics in Finals. Of course the list is shorter.

When this rivalry began, the Lakers were still in the Land of 10,000 Lakes. (Why they never changed the nickname when they headed westward in 1960 has never satisfactorily been explained.) The year was 1959, and the Minneapolis Lakers had no chance whatsoever against Bill Russell, Bob Cousy, Tom Heinsohn, Bill Sharman, Frank Ramsey, Jim Loscutoff, and the Jones Boys, all of whom, save Loscy, are in the Hall of Fame (and Loscy has his name/No. 18 retired). All the Lakers had to offer was a sensational rookie named Elgin Baylor, and, as great as he was, that wasn’t enough to challenge the Celtics, who pulled off the first four-game sweep in NBA Finals history.

That mismatch aside, the rivalry we will celebrate for the 11th time encompasses three distinct eras, and it tells us a lot about how the NBA has grown and how spoiled we have all become. I mean, you don’t like a 9 p.m. EDT starting time? Back in the ’60s, if the game from LA was on TV at all, it would start at 8 o’clock PDT, which means 11 here. Don’t like it? Don’t watch.

Of course, not to watch was to miss seeing the greatest team-sport player in North American history. For the ’60s belonged to Bill Russell, who was undefeated against the Lakers and 9-1 overall in championships sought and won. The Lakers had Baylor, who merely invented modern offensive basketball with his astonishing array of pumps, double-pumps, and up-and-under moves that forever changed the concept of what shooting a basketball could entail. They also had Jerry West, the Logo, who played with a ferocity, dignity, and, of course, an extraordinary skill that earned him universal respect. Good Lord, even Johnny Most could not bring himself to utter a negative word about the man he called “Gentleman Jerry.’’

With the help of such accomplices as Rudy LaRusso (dubbed “Roughhouse Rudy’’ by Most, obviously unimpressed with Rudy’s Dartmouth pedigree), Dick Barnett, Frank Selvy, Hot Rod Hundley, Tom Hawkins, Leroy Ellis, Gail Goodrich, etc., Messrs. Baylor and West reached the Finals six times between 1962 and 1969, and six times they were turned back by the Celtics. The confrontations in 1962, 1966, and 1969 all went seven. The Lakers were in all three Game 7s, losing by 3 (OT), 2, and 2.

Seven lousy little points over 149 minutes. And there was no doubt in anyone’s mind what the ultimate difference in these two teams was. He wore No. 6.

Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain

“You had to change your complete game because of Russell,’’ lamented Fred Schaus, the losing coach in 1962, 1963, 1965, and 1966.

The truly legendary Chick Hearn broadcast all those games. “If Russell had been the Lakers center,’’ Hearn sighed, “they would have won the ballgames the Celtics did.’’

The one-sided ’60s

The Lakers coulda/shoulda/woulda won in 1962, and who knows how that would have affected their psyche for the remainder of the decade? Baylor scored a then-record 61 points (still the non-OT standard) in Game 5, sending Boston back to LA, trailing, 3-2. But the Celtics won Game 6. In Game 7, the Lakers had the last shot in regulation with the score tied, but Selvy missed a left-side jumper estimated at 8 to 12 feet (no video exists), and Russell grabbed the rebound, one of his 40 for the evening, to go with a personal playoff career high of 30 points; 30 and 40 gives young fellers such as Dwight Howard something to shoot for, wouldn’t you say? Anyway, the Celtics prevailed, 110-107, to win title No. 5 in their run of 11 in 13 years.

A year later, the Celtics would win in six as Cousy limped back onto the court with a sprained ankle to steady the troops in his final game. Two years after that, the Celtics smashed the Lakers in five, which was understandable since Baylor had a knee injury that would hamper him the rest of his career, and West likewise had a bad leg. Of course, Gentleman Jerry also averaged 40.

A gallant Laker team came from 3-1 down in 1966 to tie the series, but Game 7 was in Boston and there was no way Russell was going to lose what was going to be Red Auerbach’s last game. Neither team made it to the final series in 1967, but the league took a vote and decided to hold the Finals anyway. A year later, Boston defeated the Lakers for a fifth time in the decade, with John Havlicek scoring 40 points in the Game 6 clincher.

The next one really hurt.

LA had loaded up in the offseason, bringing in the inimitable Wilt Chamberlain to augment West and what was left of Baylor. The Majestic Three averaged a combined 70 points per game during the regular season, and they made the Lakers a clear favorite to win their first LA title, especially since their nemesis on the East Coast had barely qualified for the playoffs, finishing fourth in the East.

But guess who was waiting for them in the Finals? Yeah, that dastardly No. 6, plus his aged associates.

John Havlicek defends Jerry West.

West asserted himself with 53 in Game 1, but LA won by only 2. It was indeed 2-0, LA, after the first two in the newly opened Fabulous Forum, and no team ever had won an NBA series after losing the first two games. The key was Game 4. LA led by a point, but the Celtics had the last shot. Havlicek and Larry Siegfried suggested an old Ohio State play that would involve setting a triple pick for 35-year-old Sam Jones, their best clutch shooter. He stumbled as he took Havlicek’s pass, but managed to get off a shot that bounced on the rim a few times as a certain purple-clad 7-footer watched with interest.

“He was just waiting there like a vulture to gather the ball in when it fell of the rim,’’ said Havlicek of Wilt. “But it fell in.’’

It all came down to a Game 7 in LA. Lakers owner Jack Kent Cooke, a flamboyant fellow, had his building ready for the expected celebration. Havlicek somehow obtained a copy of the in-house itinerary, and he read it off to his teammates: the USC band, the balloons that would be released from the roof, the champagne, etc.

With Don Nelson making a fortuitous shot to put the Celtics ahead by a needed 3 with just over a minute to play, the Celtics won yet another title by a 108-106 score. West was distraught.

“Most years we played them, they were better than we were,’’ he said. “But in ’69, they were not better. Period.

“I don’t care how many times we played it, they were not better. We were better. Period. And we didn’t win. That was the toughest one.’’

Jerry West had scored 53, 41, 34, 40, 26, 39 and, finally, 42 (to go with 13 rebounds and 12 assists), and still had come up empty. No wonder he was so morose.

Turning point in the ’80s

Much had changed by the time the rivalry entered its second phase 15 years later. In the ’60s, it was all about the basketball, specifically, the Laker frustration in being unable to defeat Bill Russell. But by 1984, the Lakers had become entrenched as a major part of the Southern California culture and had become identified as an auxiliary arm of the town’s major industry, which was entertainment. The Celtics, meanwhile, entered the 1984 Finals against the Lakers as cultural ambassadors for the tried-and-true approach to the sport.

The Laker Girls pioneered the idea of mixing a little abstract sex and glamour into the NBA. The Celtics wouldn’t have a dance team for another 23 years. The Lakers had a guy named Dancing Barry who sashayed down the aisle each night in the fourth quarter. The Celtics were years away from a harmless mascot called “Lucky.’’ The Lakers warmed up to Randy Newman’s “I Love LA.’’ The Celtics stuck to an organist.

The Lakers had Magic.

The Celtics had Bird.

The Celtics had K.C. Jones, whose flamboyance was limited to singing a few songs at piano bars.

The Lakers had Pat Riley, who wore Armani suits, slicked his hair back, and introduced jargon such as “focus’’ and “skirmishes’’ and “hidden agendas.’’

And everyone hated everyone. Oh, it was great.

It was all different now. Boston fans regarded Laker fans as come-late, leave-early dilettantes who wouldn’t know a pick-and-roll from a pick and shovel. Laker fans thought Boston fans were get-a-life geeks who cared too much about what was only, after all, a game. Laker fans wanted to be oohed and aahed en route to victory. Magic was their man. Celtics fans wanted to see someone hit the cutter in stride. No frills. Larry was their guy.

“Back in the old days,’’ agrees the Los Angeles Times’s Mark Heisler, then, as now, a first-rate observer of the NBA scene, “it was sport for sport’s sake. It wasn’t a test of your culture.’’

But that was the backdrop of the 1984 Finals, which easily could have been an LA sweep had a) Gerald Henderson not stolen a foolish James Worthy pass and scored to send Game 2 into OT (eventually won on a Scott Wedman jumper) and b) Kevin McHale, acting completely out of character, had not viciously brought down Kurt Rambis on a sneakaway in Game 4. This display of aggression emboldened the Celtics and somehow unnerved the Lakers.


Kevin McHale takes down Kurt Rambis in Game 4 of the 1984 Finals.

From the minute that series ended with a Boston Game 7 victory, Pat Riley began plotting revenge. He was a charter Celtics-hater from way back, anyway, and now he had become obsessed with those monsters in green and white.

“On the subject of the Boston Celtics, Riley was virulent,’’ says Heisler. Well, OK, then.

But there was still need for a final epiphany, and it came with what became known as the “Memorial Day Massacre,’’ a 148-114 Boston victory in Game 1 of the 1985 Finals. It took place on a Monday, and on Tuesday and Wednesday, Riley was merciless, making his team watch the tape over and over while questioning their testosterone level.

Taking all this the hardest was Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who had been ineffective in Game 1. He came out for Game 2 energized and determined, and when the LA win was over, he had scored 30 points and grabbed 17 rebounds, which matched his high total of the previous 10 years! Ten days later, he led his team to a Game 6 victory that gave the Lakers their first-ever series win over the Celtics and earned him the Finals MVP award.

“They are not the Fakers any more,’’ proclaimed M.L. Carr. “They are the Lakers. They are real, and have to be believed. They are the champs.’’

“This removes the most odious sentence in the English language,’’ said Lakers owner Jerry Buss. “It can never be said that the Lakers have never beaten the Celtics.’’

But the ramifications went further.

“All Laker history dates from those two days between Games 1 and 2,’’ maintains Heisler. “What took place then not only won them the title in 1985, but also set up the next two in ’87 and ’88.’’

The 1985 Finals started with a more-of-the-same feel as the Celtics whipped the Lakers 148-114 in what became known as the Memorial Day Massacre. But the Lakers bounced back to win Game 2 in Boston, took two of three in Los Angeles (losing Game 4 on Dennis Johnson's buzzer-beating jumper) and finished off the Celtics on their home floor in Game 6 behind Finals MVP Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's 29 points. Finally, the Lakers had beaten the Celtics in the Finals after eight consecutive series losses.

The highlight of 1987 was Game 4. Leading, 2-1, the Lakers were outplayed by the Celtics for 46-plus minutes, trailing by 16 with just under 17 minutes to play, by 8 with 3:29 to go, by 6 with 1:50 left, and, finally, by 1 in the waning seconds. That’s when Magic Johnson made a left-to-right perambulation across the lane before launching a 13-foot hook over both Kevin McHale and Robert Parish for the game-winning basket.

“A junior, junior skyhook,’’ Magic called it. He could just as easily have called it a dagger in the heart of the Celtics, who would lose the series in six.

One more time

That closed the books on these two until 2008. This time, the high-powered Lakers, led by a virtuoso named Kobe Bryant, took on the traditional-model Celtics.

The Celtics had home-court advantage and went up, 2-0. Again, Game 4 was crucial. LA was up by 24 in the third before the Celtics made one of the greatest comebacks in their history. The Celtics won that game and pretty much established that they would not be beaten. But no one foresaw the shocking events of Game 6, when the Lakers capitulated after getting down by 20 at the half, losing by a 131-92 score that may very well serve as a motivational tool when the two resume play tomorrow night.

The dynamics haven’t changed since the Bird-Magic Era. The Lakers have the glam coach, 10-time champion Phil Jackson. The Celtics have an underrated mentor in Glenn “Doc’’ Rivers, who seeks no undue attention, makes no inflammatory comments, and shrewdly deflects all praise toward his players.

The fan contrast hasn’t changed a bit. If anything, it’s only gotten bigger. Boston fans still think LA fans are frauds (with the exception of the extremely loyal and eternally cool Jack Nicholson) and Laker fans still don’t understand why Boston fans care so much.

There is nothing in the NBA like it. Truthfully, there is nothing in sports like it. Red Sox and Yankees fans are essentially the same people. That is not the case here. We’re talking Pluto vs. Venus.

Orlando vs. Phoenix might very well have been a nice basketball series. But the league can have that anytime. It’s a lot more fun when it’s the Celtics and the Lakers. Welcome to Chapter 12.

Bob Ryan is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at ryan@globe.com.

No Happy Ending for the Greatest Mariner

The 2010 numbers weren't great, and the retirement announcement abrupt. But Ken Griffey Jr. will always be baseball in this town.

By Steve Kelley
The Seattle Times
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/sports/
June 2, 2010

There are few happy endings in sports. Few of those Ted Williams moments where the hero hits a home run, crosses home plate, tips his cap and leaves the game.

John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors didn't play one final five-setter at Wimbledon before quietly leaving tennis together. Arnold Palmer didn't sink one last, undulating 20-footer to win another Masters.

Michael Jordan didn't quit after he jab-stepped Bryon Russell and beat the Utah Jazz at the buzzer. Hank Aaron didn't hit the home run off Al Downing that broke Babe Ruth's record, then immediately announce his retirement.

SEATTLE - APRIL 12: Right fielder Ichiro Suzuki and Ken Griffey Jr. of the Seattle Mariners talk during batting practice prior to the Mariners' home opener against the Oakland Athletics at Safeco Field on April 12, 2010 in Seattle, Washington. (Photo by Otto Greule Jr/Getty Images)

Most of the great players linger. They stay around because they can't shake the magic of the games. They search, like Ponce de Leon, for the Fountain of Youth even as their bodies start to betray them, and the quick twitch muscles slow down.

And just as they hate to leave, we — even when their skills have diminished — hate to see them go.

Late Wednesday afternoon, the Mariners' media-relations staff hastily called reporters down from the press box to announce that Ken Griffey Jr. was retiring.

The news was as sad as it was inevitable. It was announced in an obviously ghostwritten, four-paragraph statement that sounded about as much like something Junior would say as the Gettysburg Address.

In typical Griffey fashion, he wasn't around for his own retirement. Even in the best of times, Griffey avoided the spotlight.

He disliked talking about himself.

He thrived in the big moments, but he always downplayed them in the postgame clubhouse.

When his retirement was announced to the crowd some 10 minutes before the first pitch, when a medley of his greatest Mariners moments was shown on the center-field scoreboard to the accompaniment of Aerosmith, he wasn't there to see the fans stand.

He didn't see the tears in their eyes, couldn't hear them cheer him and thank him for everything he did for the game in this town.

Griffey is baseball in Seattle. He was the town's first baseball superstar. He hit home runs in eight consecutive games. He scored the game-winning run in the Mariners' first-ever postseason series win.

On the infield, behind second base, the Safeco Field grounds crew sculpted his number 24 in the dirt. My guess is there will be tributes to Junior all summer. I hope he attends a few of them.

He made the game relevant in Seattle. I'm convinced that without him the Mariners would have been gone a long time ago. Because of him we had a major-league baseball game in town Wednesday night.

He will be the first Seattle Mariners player to go to Cooperstown; the first bust wearing a Mariners cap.

Griffey gave us the kind of moments that bond a city's sports fans. He represented Seattle in 10 All-Star Games. He had 10 hits and five runs batted in in those games.

Griffey was baseball at its best. He brought the expectation of greatness with him to the plate, every at-bat, every game he ever played.

SEATTLE - AUGUST 16: (FILE PHOTO) Ken Griffey Jr. bats during the MLB game against the New York Yankees on August 16, 2009 at Safeco Field in Seattle, Washington. The team announced the retirement of Ken Griffey Jr. prior to the game against the Minnesota Twins at Safeco Field on June 2, 2010 in Seattle, Washington. (Photo by Otto Greule Jr/Getty Images)

No matter what the score, fans at the Kingdome always stayed for his last appearance. They wanted to be there just in case he hit one into the third deck.

Even last season, which should have been his last, Griffey gave us moments. He singled in his first home at-bat since 1999. He hit a game-tying, two-run home run against Arizona. Even though he hit just .214, he still had 19 home runs.

After the final game of the season, the players paraded him around the field on their shoulders and his smile lit up Seattle for the last time.

He came back this season, and I wish he hadn't. The magic was gone from his bat, and in the last month, it seemed the joy had gone out of his game.

Even two weeks ago, when he had a game-winning, pinch-hit single against Toronto, the celebration was subdued.

But long after this season is forgotten, Griffey will be remembered for the other 12 years he lit up the city.

He didn't get the happy ending he deserved, but he brought a joy to the ballpark and to the entire Northwest that will be remembered as long as baseball is played in Seattle.

Simply Put, Ken Griffey Jr. Showed Us How Baseball Should Be Played

By Tom Verducci
Inside Baseball
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/
June 2, 2010

History doesn't do the small stuff. Very quickly, it will not matter that Ken Griffey retired with more reported in-game naps than home runs in his final season and that the Seattle Mariners gave him a gentle push toward retirement. A true legend has left the game, for Griffey forever will stand as two templates of major league baseball: the prodigy and the all-around virtuoso, a DiMaggio of his time. Hundreds of others will be measured against him, and virtually every one of them will go lacking.

Years from now many people will sit on their porches, and when some hot shot rookie comes up or some center fielder glides into the spotlight, they will say with a wry smile, "Yeah, but I saw Griffey play."

The details of his leaving will be discarded as insignificant against the breadth and volume of his career. Griffey, after all, left baseball exactly 75 years to the day that Babe Ruth did -- the numbers three and five hitters on the all-time home run list linked by a delicious piece of happenstance. Ruth, too, left without a glorious sendoff. The Boston Braves actually asked for his release after much friction between Ruth and his manager and the front office, including their denial of his request to attend a Normandie celebration in New York. The details of the endgame are but specks of trivial dust.

The prime of Griffey is what lasts, and in his era there was absolutely nobody like him. With Griffey, unlike Willie, Mickey and the Duke, there will be no songs written as homages for great center fielders as contemporaries. From 1989 through 2000, Griffey hit 438 home runs -- the next closest center fielder in that time was Ellis Burks with 247. In those 12 years Griffey also hit .296, stole 173 bases and won 10 consecutive Gold Gloves, providing the definitive statement of what a baseball player should be, what the old timers used to say was straight out of the Spalding Guidebook.

The images are as indelible as that long-striding elegant stroke of DiMaggio. Griffey gave us the statuesque pose after clubbing a home run, as if stopping in his tracks to admire the beauty of the ball in flight. The cap worn backward. The pell-mell leaps and jumps across turf, tracks and walls in pursuit of any fly ball, no matter the danger it may bring. And maybe above all else, with neither bat nor glove in hand, the textbook cutting of the bases on his 270-foot dash to home plate with the winning run of the 1995 Division Series to defeat the New York Yankees and save baseball in Seattle. That someone with such power could run so swiftly was a wonder to behold.

No one could measure up to the young Griffey. Sadly, that included the aging Griffey. The second half of Griffey's career largely was a scrubland of injuries and not-what-he-used-to-bes. Griffey had his last 100 RBI season at age 30. He hit .296 in his career through that season, but .260 after that in almost 1,000 games. He hit 438 homers through age 30 -- early on, he was supposed to be the heir to Hank Aaron's record 755 homers -- but hit only 192 after.

And of course, the one constant, from the blissful 19-year-old kid who wouldn't know if that day's opposing starter was left-handed or right-handed, to the 40-year-old, heavy-legged bench player who ran out of time with the Mariners, was that every year the World Series was played without him. Griffey had three cracks at the postseason, two with Seattle and once upon hitching a late-season ride with the Chicago White Sox. And yet though he played with such greats as Edgar Martinez, Randy Johnson and Alex Rodriguez, he never made it to the Fall Classic in 22 tries.

History, too, will raise Griffey a little higher because so many of his contemporaries were lowered by their decision to use performance-enhancing drugs. That decision, too, set him apart. Unfortunately, Griffey also was one of many transcendent stars who gave no dissenting voice to The Steroid Era, one of many in the coalition of the willing. It rankled him, those close to him used to say, that one-dimensional players would pass him in the public consciousness as major stars, only because of the boost of the juice. But never was he comfortable with answering questions on the topic, as were players such as Frank Thomas, John Smoltz, Tom Glavine and Curt Schilling. He didn't want in on the debate.

In the end, what mattered was Griffey gave us as sublime a picture of how baseball should be played as anybody in his lifetime: well, hard and, as we want to believe, clean. And in that manner, in that window of history, he stands alone.

Photos: Getty Images

Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga's near-perfect night marred by Jim Joyce's gaffe

DETROIT 3, CLEVELAND 0

BY MICHAEL ROSENBERG
DETROIT FREE PRESS SPORTS COLUMNIST
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/frontpage
Posted: June 3, 2010

The man paced near his locker. He spit in a nearby sink. Words flew out of his mouth like darts, each one sharper than the last. He was angry, beyond angry, the kind of anger that needs to find its target and beat the holy heck out of it until the anger gives way to exhaustion. This should have been one of the greatest moments of his life, and it turned into one of the worst, and you can know it was an honest mistake and nobody died and life goes on, but how can you really think that when the mistake was entirely your fault?

Detroit Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga covers first base as Cleveland Indians Jason Donald hits the bag and first base umpire Jim Joyce looks on in the ninth inning of a baseball game in Detroit on Wednesday, June 2, 2010. Joyce called Donald safe and Galarraga lost his bid for a perfect game with two outs in the ninth inning on the disputed call at first base. Detroit won 3-0. (AP)

No, Jim Joyce said, "I did not get the call correct. I kicked the (expletive) out of it." No, he would not blame his angle. ("I had a great angle on it."). Or say it was close. ("I just missed the damn call.") It was a simple play, 3-1 on your scorecard: ground ball to first baseman Miguel Cabrera, throw to pitcher Armando Galarraga, Cleveland shortstop Jason Donald out of first.

But Joyce paused, then made the safe sign.

And the 27th out of Galarraga's perfect game Wednesday night inexplicably became a hit.

No perfect game. No no-hitter. No explanation, really, for why a good umpire would make such a horrible call at the worst possible time.

I told Galarraga that Joyce said he felt terrible, that he cost Galarraga a perfect game and that he was really beating himself up over it.

Galarraga did not hesitate.

"Tell him no problem," Galarraga said. "I can go tell him."

He smiled. "I should probably talk to him. It will be better." And he did.

In the Tigers' clubhouse, the winning players looked as if they had lost. The only smiles were smiles of disbelief.

Concepts of time and space were jumbled -- the Tigers sat on the couch and watched Jim Leyland's postgame news conference, which had just wrapped up down the hall, on a delay. They watched the replay over and over, as if it could change, and finally Galarraga smiled, turned and said, "Unbelievable."

Detroit Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga throws against the Cleveland Indians in the first inning of a baseball game in Detroit Wednesday, June 2, 2010. (AP)

There is nothing in sports quite like a no-hitter. It sprouts from the ground with no warning, captivates anybody watching -- and reaches full bloom or disappears -- snap! -- in an instant.

Sometimes, a great pitcher is so dominant early on that you start to think something special might be happening. This was not one of those days. First of all, Galarraga is a good pitcher, but he had a 5.64 earned-run average last year. Walter Johnson he is not.

And second ... well, he wasn't overwhelmingly great against Cleveland. He was methodically great. Heck, his catcher, Alex Avila, did not realize what was happening until the seventh inning.

At the end of the seventh, after 21 straight outs, the crowd gave Galarraga a standing ovation. From there, the tension and noise seemed to double with each at-bat, until the top of the ninth, when Mark Grudzielanek drilled a shot toward the left-centerfield wall. It was a rope. The crowd moaned.

Centerfielder Austin Jackson said afterward, "Honestly, off the bat, I didn't think that I had a chance. It was one of those where you're like, 'I'm diving for this ball no matter what.' "

He caught it on the run, one of the most amazing catches in baseball this year. Galarraga was two outs away. He retired Mike Redmond for Out No. 26. Then came the worst moment of Jim Joyce's life.

"I was fully aware of what was going on since the fifth inning," Joyce said.

Was he nervous?

"I was very aware of what was going on," he said. "Very aware."

And Armando Galarraga said, "We're human. ... Nobody's perfect." But in his heart, he knew, and will always know: He was.

Contact MICHAEL ROSENBERG: 313-222-6052 or mrosenberg@freepress.com.

Re-Run

By Cal Thomas
http://www.townhall.com
June 2, 2010

Does it strike anyone else as beyond coincidence that within hours of Israel's commando raid on a flotilla of ships bound for Gaza -- ships supposedly containing "humanitarian supplies," and left-wing "peace activists" -- that demonstrations broke out in Europe and outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington? And how about the U.N. Security Council, which often acts in slow motion, except when it has the opportunity to criticize Israel. It sprang into action on Memorial Day to listen to haters of the Jewish state denounce Israel as if it already knew who was to blame for the nine civilian deaths and the many wounded. The Council has now called for an "impartial" and "transparent" investigation.

Haven't we seen this equivalent of a TV summer re-run before? According to the familiar script, anything that the Palestinian side, Hamas, Iran and numerous other haters of Jews and Christians do is justified because of the Israeli "occupation" of "Palestinian land." When Israeli soldiers defend themselves from violent attacks by these "peace activists," they are always acting "disproportionately" and thus deserving of denunciation, censure and ostracism from the "world community." One wishes the haters of Israel would direct some of that zeal to the real enemies of freedom and religious pluralism: radical Islam.

The 1994 Gaza-Jericho agreement served as the basis for Israel's withdrawal from Gaza. In it, Israel was given authority to act precisely as it did on Monday. The relevant sentence states: "As part of Israel's responsibilities for safety and security within the three Maritime Activity Zones, Israel Navy vessels may sail throughout these zones, as necessary and without limitations, and may take any measures necessary against vessels suspected of being used for terrorist activities, or for smuggling arms, ammunition, drugs, goods, or for any other illegal activity..."

If one is known by the company one keeps, then it is useful to consider who was behind this flotilla to Gaza. According to Israeli intelligence, the chief sponsor of the mission was an organization known as IHH, a Turkish humanitarian relief fund with a radical Islamic, anti-Western orientation. Like many other groups, including some that have infiltrated Western countries, IHH does just enough legitimate charitable work to serve as a front for its true agenda. In this it resembles the American Mafia.

Israeli intelligence says IHH initiated a number of "humanitarian aid" convoys to anti-U.S. Islamic terrorists in Iraq's Fallujah Triangle. It cites information from the Danish Institute for International Studies that asserts IHH is connected to al-Qaida and global Islamic terrorism. IHH offices in Istanbul were raided by Turkish security services and IHH activists were arrested. Explosives, weapons, manuals and documents pertaining to Afghanistan were found.

According to a French intelligence report, Bulent Yildirim, the president of IHH, recruited "Jihad warriors" and transferred money, firearms and explosives to al-Qaida and other Islamic terrorists in various countries.

There's plenty more tying IHH to the Gaza flotilla and to its efforts in support of radicals and terrorist organizations, but you get the picture.

Israel's minister of defense, Ehud Barak, told a news conference a few hours after the flotilla incident, "On one of the six ships, the protestors initiated violence. We express remorse for the injured activists, however, the full responsibility rests on the organizers of the flotilla and those participants who acted violently."

President Obama said it is important to learn "all the facts and circumstances" behind the incident before reaching conclusions. The facts and circumstances are already known. It is a fact that those trying to break Israel's blockade of Gaza hate and wish to destroy Israel. And any circumstance will be created or used to achieve that objective.

Again, we've seen this scenario before and surely will see it again, and again, and again, unless and until the world wakes up to the clash of civilizations too many want to ignore, hoping it will go away. It won't until one civilization crushes the other.

Robert Gibbs raises the Sestak stonewall

By Byron York
Chief Political Correspondent
The Washington Examiner
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/
06/02/10 4:22 AM EDT

The White House’s self-exonerating report on the Joe Sestak affair has given spokesman Robert Gibbs a new way not to answer questions. Now, when asked about the offer of a federal position to Sestak in return for Sestak’s agreement not to challenge Sen. Arlen Specter in the Pennsylvania Democratic primary, Gibbs simply refers reporters to the White House report. When reporters respond that the questions are not answered by the report, Gibbs freely acknowledges that — and then refers them to the report again. And so on.

Tuesday’s White House briefing was Gibbs’ first since the report, prepared by White House counsel Robert Bauer, was released on Friday. One big question about the report concerns Bauer’s statement that, “Efforts were made in June and July of 2009 to determine whether Congressman Sestak would be interested in service on a presidential or other Senior Executive Branch Advisory Board…” The plural “efforts” and the specific mention of June and July suggest that the White House plan involved more than one approach to Sestak. Yet Sestak says he received just one call, from former President Bill Clinton, the White House intermediary in the effort.

This apparent contradiction raises obvious questions. And so a reporter said to Gibbs Tuesday, “The counsel’s memo on Friday said that efforts were made in June and July of 2009. Were there multiple efforts and were all those made by President Clinton?”

“Whatever is in the memo is accurate,” Gibbs said.

“Okay, but, I mean, with regards to June and July, I mean, were all those President Clinton, or — ”

“I think the relationship on how that happened, yes, is explained in the memo,” Gibbs said.

But that wasn’t explained in the memo at all. The reporter continued: “Joe Sestak said he had one conversation with President Clinton.”

“Let me check,” said Gibbs.

Gibbs has promised to “check” on details on many occasions during the Sestak affair; it’s unlikely that reporters expect an answer. At that point, the reporter moved on to a particularly intriguing part of the story. After the White House report came out, it became clear that the unpaid position Clinton apparently offered Sestak, a seat on the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, was a position for which Sestak was ineligible, because the Board’s rules expressly forbid employees of the U.S. government from serving and Sestak is a member of Congress. So another question came up.

“The Intelligence Advisory Board, which most reports said this offer was for, that would be a position a member of the House could not serve on,” a reporter said.

“That’s how I understand the way the PIAB is written,” Gibbs said.

“But the memo, it said that this would be a position to serve in the House and serve on a presidential advisory board.”

“Correct,” Gibbs said.

“Well, how could he sit on the board?”

“He couldn’t,” Gibbs said.

“So that wasn’t the offer, then?”

“I’d refer you to — ”

“What position, what board, was it then? Do you know?”

“I’d refer you to the memo.”

“But the memo didn’t specify.”

“Right,” Gibbs said. “Thank you.”

And that was the end of that. The Bauer memo didn’t answer the questions, but when reporters asked the questions, Gibbs referred them to the Bauer memo. Doing so also just happened to deflect any blame from Gibbs himself. But Gibbs does bear some responsibility for all this. He is a member of the president’s inner circle, and he played a role in the White House handling of the Sestak revelations. But when asked about that, he responded with what could charitably called a non sequitur.

“I’m just wondering, if it’s not a big deal, as you guys are saying,” a reporter asked Gibbs, “then why did we wait for three months to answer that question?”

“I’d have to ask counsel for a better answer on that,” Gibbs said. “I don’t know the answer.”

“Don’t you have something to do with that as the chief spokesman for the White House?” the reporter continued. “You were asked on a number of occasions and don’t you think that that kind of created — ”

“If I bear some responsibility for that, I can understand that,” Gibbs said.

What did that mean? If Gibbs bears some responsibility — and he certainly does — then he can understand that? But wasn’t the question why the White House waited for months to address the Sestak issue? It’s all well and good that Gibbs can understand the question. It would be even better if he would answer it.

The 'peaceful' Jihad in America

By ANDREW C. McCARTHY
New York Post
http://www.nypost.com/
June 1, 2010

Most Americans don't realize that jihad is about much more than terrorism.

Even the terrorists don't blow up buildings for the sake of blowing up buildings. There is method in their madness.

Jihad is not mindless mass-murder, nor is it a syrupy "internal struggle to become a better person." No, jihad is the mission to establish and spread sharia.

The installation of Allah's law, believed by Muslims to be a divine injunction, is the necessary precondition to the creation of Islamic societies. While it can, and often is, waged forcibly, Islamists don't resort to violence (or, at least, to more violence) where surrenders, appeasements and capitulations are available.

And al Qaeda is merely an offshoot of the central Islamist group, the Muslim Brotherhood, or Hizb al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin. Founded in 1928, the Ikhwan's motto to this day remains, "Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Koran is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope."

In 1991, Mohamed Akram, a US-based chieftain of the Brotherhood, penned a memo for the eyes of the central leadership in Egypt. Later seized by the FBI, this self-described "Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America" outlined the game-plan for what the organization regards as its "civilizational" war against the West:

"The Ikhwan must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions."

Nor was there anything new about this "grand jihad." During a post-9/11 raid, Swiss authorities found a similar smoking gun -- a methodical plan for the long-term "cultural invasion" of the West -- written by Brotherhood theorists in 1982.

As a matter of fact, this sabotage strategy has been in place for nearly half a century. Its bottom-up elements stress Islamist domination of Muslim education, mosques and community centers. From these bases of operation in every city, the Brotherhood's method is not terrorize but to slipstream behind Islamist terrorists, assuming the posture of "moderates."

The goal is to seep sharia -- Islam's totalitarian legal code that governs not just the spiritual realm but all aspects of life -- into our politics, law, financial system, educational institutions, labor negotiations, familial relations, and all facets of our domestic and foreign policy, from health care to engagement with Iran.

Yes, 31 years after the Iranian revolution, 17 years after Islamists declared war on the United States by bombing the World Trade Center and nine years after the 9/11 atrocities, the American people are still in the dark about the daunting challenge we face. Under jihadist siege for decades, we still don't even get what jihad is and why it isn't just about "violent extremists" -- the politically correct term now used by government officials in their desperation to bleach the Islam out of Islamist terror.

Two years ago, I wrote about this ethos of conscious avoidance in "Willful Blindness." But that was a memoir about trying to confront international terrorism as a federal prosecutor in the 1990s. The forces arrayed against us are much more extensive and insidious than al Qaeda, and they are not just pressing the limitations of our criminal-justice system.

The game-plan being executed against us targets American constitutional democracy itself, taking aim at its core principles of individual liberty.

Lavishly backed by Saudi billions thanks to a decades-old partnership with the kingdom, the Brotherhood is now raising, in our midst, its third generation of operatives and sympathizers. Its tentacles include such high-profile organizations as the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Islamic Society of North America and the Muslim American Society (the Brotherhood's semi-official American branch).

Our opinion elites are only too happy to take at face value the claims of these groups to be "moderate." Indeed, our government, media and academies are reluctant to discuss Islam honestly, let alone Islamist ideology.

And effectively allied with the jihadists is the hard left across the West. For all their differences (e.g., on abortion and the rights of women and homosexuals) Islam and the Left are in essential harmony when it comes to their vision of authoritarian government and their perception of the immediate obstacle to their designs: American constitutional democracy.

What the global Islamist project is doing, and how, are the subjects of my new book, "The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America," published last week. It is the story of the ideology that not only fuels anti-American terror but stokes a sedulous jihadist campaign to Islamicize our society -- not without firing a shot, but by capitalizing on the shots that have already been fired.

A grand jihad is hell-bent on sabotaging America. We ignore it at our peril.

Andrew C. McCarthy is a senior fellow at the National Review Institute.

In a Welfare State, How Much Is ‘Enough’?

That’s a question Democrats don’t tend to ask.

By Jonah Goldberg
http://www.nationalreview.com/
June 2, 2010 12:00 A.M.

The flames from Greece’s debt-crisis protests have cast new light on the perils of our own overspending and overborrowing. You know the litany. California is imploding. Public-sector unions there, and across the country, are swallowing budgets. In California alone, pension costs have gone up 2,000 percent in a decade. At the national level, Obamacare has done little to fix — and much to hurt — America’s long-term entitlement mess. Already, America’s structural deficit has tripled since 2007. Economist Price Fishback has just published a paper finding that America spends more on social welfare than socialist Sweden (though we spend it differently).

According to USA Today, “paychecks from private business shrank to their smallest share of personal income in U.S. history during the first quarter of this year,” while government benefits rose to a record high. In fact, government employment is becoming a method of redistributing wealth. In 2009, the federal payroll grew and the number of federal jobs paying over $100,000 a year doubled.

The average federal worker earns over 70 percent more than the average private-sector worker, writes Arthur Brooks in his new book, The Battle: “To find this acceptable, you must agree that the average federal worker is much more productive or deserving than the average person in the private sector.”

Show of hands: Who thinks that’s true?

Yet the Democrats want more. More what? More everything. Even as the economy is starting to grow and many experts think we should trim debt and spending, Democrats want yet another stimulus bill, to extend jobless benefits. (They call them “jobs bills” now.) It turns out that all of that talk of a “temporary” stimulus was just that: temporary talk.

Indeed, the mess we have today is merely the natural result of a century-long battle over the size of government. When it comes to the welfare state, liberals want more, conservatives want less. It seems that nobody ever talks about “enough.”

Except that’s not entirely true. Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) offered an alternative vision of government in his famous “Roadmap.” It was, in the words of New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, a blueprint for a “conservative welfare state.” The idea was that the truly needy would be taken care of because they are truly needy, but middle-class entitlements would be scaled back for two simple reasons: 1) We cannot afford them, and 2) excessive government meddling in areas such as health care increases costs and wastes money.

Ryan’s blueprint was denounced by liberals as too stingy and largely ignored by much of the Republican leadership, who were happy to just say no to Obama’s plans without offering voters anything serious to say yes to.

William Voegeli, a scholar of impeccable conservative credentials, has joined Ryan’s battle in his book Never Enough, a searing indictment of what he calls the Hundred Years’ War between the party of more and the party of less. Voegeli argues that American voters (including most Republicans) will never fully eradicate the welfare state, because they don’t want to. Therefore, conservatives should make peace with the idea that the federal government should help the truly needy, while rejecting both the sorts of middle- and upper-class entitlements that are bankrupting the country and the kind of government “dole” that breeds bad habits among the poor and able-bodied.

Purist libertarians who see in this argument merely a surrender to liberalism should at least acknowledge that liberals would denounce any suggestion of means testing America’s safety net as cruel cutbacks and a violation of FDR’s “vision,” and that many voters would agree with them. Moreover, the current strategy hasn’t worked. We’ve had a century of nearly uninterrupted growth in the welfare state, even under Ronald Reagan. That alone recommends a new strategy.

Consider Social Security. Liberals are absolutely committed to the idea that everybody should be in the same creaky retirement system. They insist that middle- and upper-class voters must be bribed to support the poor. Warren Buffett gets a Social Security check to ensure everyone does. In fairness, some liberals also claim that a universal entitlement binds us together as a nation. The former claim is cynical, the latter poetic nonsense.

Governments do not generate wealth; they can merely distribute it. The challenge for both liberals and conservatives is simply to define how much distribution is “enough.” What would an acceptable safety net look like? Who should be taken care of by taxpayers and for how long? Paul Ryan offered an answer to that question, and liberals scoffed because they reject the question. There’s no such thing as enough, as far as they’re concerned. That’s what the Greeks thought.

— Jonah Goldberg is editor-at-large of National Review Online and a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. © 2010 Tribune Media Services, Inc.

I DON'T WANT TO GO TO ISRAEL

Mark Steyn on the World
http://www.marksteyn.com/
Tuesday, 01 June 2010

From the June 7, 2010 issue of National Review
http://www.nationalreview.com/

This Happy Warrior column was written before yesterday's news about the Gaza flotilla. I'm on the Continent at the moment, and, not having seen a full-court anti-Israel feeding frenzy in a couple of years, was startled by the naked hostility of the coverage. I think the headline of this Jonathan Kay column sums it up. In the European media, the loathing of the Jewish state is palpable - and alarming in its implications. Anyway, here's what I had to say in National Review:

“It is after considerable contemplation,” began the pop star Elvis Costello, sounding remarkably like Queen Victoria, “that I have lately arrived at the decision that I must withdraw from the two performances scheduled in Israel on the 30th of June and the 1st of July.”

Any particular reason?

“There are occasions when merely having your name added to a concert schedule may be interpreted as a political act that resonates more than anything that might be sung.”

Ah.

And as Mr Costello concluded: “I cannot imagine receiving another invitation to perform in Israel.”

So that’s that. Elvis has left the building, permanently.

In a Nov. 6, 2008 file photo singer Elvis Costello is photographed in New York. Costello is canceling two summer 2010 concerts in Israel because of its treatment of the Palestinians.
(AP Photo/Jim Cooper/file)

I felt rather saddened by the news. It’s some years since I’ve seen the old rocker, but I enjoyed the conversation immensely: We discoursed on Sinatra concept albums, Vic Damone, the late BBC radio host Benny Green… Elvis Costello’s eclecticism-for-the-sake-of-eclecticism can get a little wearying (and didn’t do his wife Diana Krall many favors on her post-wedding album), but, on much of the stuff I dig, he knew whereof he spoke. Physically, he reminded me a bit of my old friend Lionel Bart, the East End Jew who wrote Oliver! But I guess he’s not. And it’s always sobering when someone you assume you’ve got a lot in common with turns out, in the most basic sense, to see the world entirely differently.

That somewhat banal thought used to occur to me whenever I’d be in a “moderate” Muslim state chatting up some westernized Arab hottie and, just at the point at which I’d be thinking we were getting along gangbusters, she’d say something utterly nutty, invariably involving Jews. These days, the thought is as likely to occur at London dinner parties. There’s no “incursion” or “disproportionate response” by Israel that prompted Elvis’ divestment from the Zionist Entity: These days, it’s just business (or lack of it) as usual. I wouldn’t say I exactly avoid the topic in English or French drawing rooms, and if it does come up I robustly defend Israel and eviscerate Palestinian “nationalism”. But no minds are changed – and these days the talk is less of the “occupied territories” and more of how the very creation of the Jewish state was a dreadful mistake. Once upon a time, a pro-Palestinian European would reluctantly concede the point if you brought up the Arabs’ refusal to recognize Israel’s “right to exist”. No more. Now Israel’s “right to exist” has as few takers among Europe’s “intellectual” class as it does on the Hamas executive board.

On the 60th anniversary of the Jewish state’s founding, a large number of British “Jews” - I use the term loosely (many of them would barely have qualified under the expansive definitions of Nuremberg) but their claim to the faith was felt to give them a special authority – wrote to The Guardian to say that they could not “celebrate the birthday of a state founded on terrorism, massacres and the dispossession of another people”. The most eminent signatory, aside from Harold Pinter, was Stephen Fry, best known to Americans as valet to Hugh Laurie in TV’s “Jeeves & Wooster” but a man of many other talents. Many a Saturday morning, years ago, I sat opposite him on a larky BBC show called “Loose Ends”. When I was flailing badly on a topical comedy quiz, he expertly rescued me with a deft penis joke.

But, among the British and European artistic community, the fetishization of the Palestinians and the consequent obsession with Israeli iniquity is indestructible - even as millions are murdered in the Congo, and hundreds of thousands in Darfur, and (less genocidally) as the High Administrative Court in Cairo contemplates stripping Egyptian men of their citizens for the crime of marrying Israeli women. At one level, the rampant zionhass is a mere reflection of demographic reality – what’s left of European Jewry is a community in steep decline; Muslims, on the other hand, are the Continent’s fastest growing population. But demographic reality is easier to accept dressed as a moral cause, and so the heirs to those western artists who two generations ago enthusiastically embraced the new Jewish state now boycott it and support its dismantling. I’m told that in Dutch grade schools The Diary Of Anne Frank can no longer be performed because certain, ahem, immigrant communities root for the Nazis. But I don’t think you could produce The Diary Of Anne Frank in the West End, either. Nor Fiddler On The Roof. No takers. Doesn’t fit the narrative.

In “Palestine”, only one side lives under continuous threat of extermination – now upgraded, in the face of western passivity, into nuclear extermination. The means change but not the desired end. And the ease with which the principal expression of contemporary Jewish identity has been delegitimized in the salons of the west is both pathetic, and awfully familiar. When I read the announcement by Elvis Costello, an old line from his fellow songwriter Alan Jay Lerner (whom I mentioned here a few weeks ago) sprang to mind. As Hitler's favorite composer, Franz Lehar was untouchable, but his Jewish colleagues weren’t so lucky. His librettist, Franz Lohner-Beda, died in a concentration camp in 1942, the same year Lehar conducted a production of their operetta The Land Of Smiles. To the end, Lohner-Beda expected his old friend to intercede, but he never did. “To this day,” said Alan Lerner, “when I am transported by the music of Franz Lehar, my glass of champagne is rimmed with aloes” – a fine operetta image.

I was never exactly “transported” by the music of Elvis Costello. But my glass of champagne is rimmed with aloes.

Flotillas and Falsehoods

Don’t members of the press ever resent being so used?

By Mona Charen
http://www.nationalreview.com
June 1, 2010 12:00 A.M.

The effort to destroy the Jewish state has many fronts. One front is in Iran, where the maniacal regime that has repeatedly promised to “wipe Israel off the map” marches inexorably toward a nuclear bomb. Another is in Gaza, from which Hamas has lobbed 10,000 missiles into Israeli cities. Yet another front, the most insidious, is comprised of the propaganda arm of the Palestinian movement. And this front thrives for only one reason — the complicity of the world press and the so-called “international community.”


Israeli forces approach ship headed for Gaza

It was the propaganda arm that staged the “Freedom Flotilla.” But there have been many previous productions: The propaganda arm was responsible for the photo-shopped images of damage to Lebanon during the 2006 war, the staged “death” of twelve-year-old Muhammad al-Durrah, the “massacre” at Jenin, and the “war crimes” in Gaza.

In each and every case, the “news” of Israeli atrocities was broadcast far and wide by organizations such as Reuters, AP, CNN, and AFP. The United Nations has offered its imprimatur to every libel. The truth seemed always to have a case of laryngitis.

Today, in the wake of the confrontation between Israeli soldiers and the provocateurs aboard the Gaza flotilla, the remarkably incurious world press is providing exactly the sort of headlines on which the organizers knew they could count. “Flotilla Attack Is Israel’s Kent State” screamed the Huffington Post. Agence France Presse carried a banner quoting the Turkish foreign minister to the effect that “Israel has lost all legitimacy.” Every news outlet I checked docilely described the flotilla as “humanitarian.”

Don’t members of the press ever resent being so used?

Fact: Israel imposed a blockade of Gaza to prevent weapons from reaching the radical Islamic regime there that continues to make war on Israeli civilians. Egypt too has blockaded the strip, hoping to choke off weapons to Hamas, which it views as a threat.

Fact: Humanitarian relief is delivered to Gaza from Israel on a daily basis. During the first three months of this year, 94,500 tons of supplies were transferred to Gaza from Israel, including 48,000 tons of food products; 40,000 tons of wheat; 2,760 tons of rice; 1,987 tons of clothes and footwear; and 553 tons of milk powder and baby food for the strip’s 1.5 million inhabitants. Representatives of international aid groups and the United Nations move freely to and from the Gaza Strip.

Fact: Upon learning of the intentions of the Gaza flotilla, the Israeli government asked the organizers to deliver their humanitarian aid first to an Israeli port where it would be inspected (for weapons) before being forwarded to Gaza. The organizers refused. “There are two possible happy endings,” a Muslim activist on board explained, “either we will reach Gaza or we will achieve martyrdom.”

Fact: The flotilla ignored multiple instructions from Israeli navy ships to change course and follow them to the Israeli port of Ashdod.

Fact: On board one of the ships, according to al-Jazeera, the “humanitarian” Palestinians sang “Khaybar, Khaybar, oh Jews, the army of Muhammad will return” — a reference to the 628 massacre of Jews in Arabia at the hands of Muhammad.

Fact: The flotilla’s participants included the IHH, a “humanitarian relief fund” based in Turkey that has close ties to Hamas and to global jihadi groups in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Chechnya, and elsewhere, and which has also organized relief to anti-U.S. Islamic radicals in Fallujah, Iraq. A French intelligence report suggests that IHH has provided documents to terrorists, permitting them to pose as relief workers. Among the other cheerleaders — former British MP and Saddam Hussein pal George Galloway, all-purpose America and Israel hater Noam Chomsky, and John Ging, head of UNRWA, the U.N.’s agency for Palestinian support.

Fact: When the family of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier who was kidnapped during a cross-border raid by Hamas in 2006, offered to support the flotilla if, in exchange, they would agree to ask Hamas to permit international agencies to visit their son, they were rebuffed.

Fact: When Israeli commandos rappelled down ropes to the deck of the Mavi Marmara, they were assaulted and beaten with metal poles and baseball bats by the Palestinians on board. (It’s available on theisraelproject.org).

Some commentators sympathetic to Israel complain that the Israelis were late getting their explanation of events to the press. That’s probably true, but almost irrelevant. There is a jerking of knees around the world whenever and wherever Israel is forced to defend itself. This eagerness to repeat the Palestinian version of events, to assume the very worst about Israel, and to ignore the history of blatant and outrageous lies by Israel’s enemies — amounts to joining them.

— Mona Charen is a nationally syndicated columnist. © 2010 Creators Syndicate, Inc.

Today's Tune: The Call - Let The Day Begin

(Click on title to play video)