Mark Twain once said, "Figures don't lie, liar's figure."  They also post on NRO, National Review Online.

Rich Lowry, who never lets facts interfere with ideology, recently posted:  "Frontrunner Numbers . . . I think this new Fox poll is interesting. . . . John McCain . . . has a very strange status for a front-runner (and I do think he's the frontrunner).  He's in second place by double digits and only leads by five points a guy everyone thinks probably can't win.  It's Giuliani 34%, McCain 22%, Gingrich 15% . . . 02/02 04:08 PM"

You see, in Lowry-world, McCain is the frontrunner, even though he trails Giuliani by 12%, because Lowry thinks he's the frontrunner.  Lowry refuses to see that McCain's "very strange status for a front-runner" is due to the fact that McCain is not the frontrunner, McCain is in second place.

I read NRO just to see what the other side is thinking, and I awoke today to this post from John Podhoretz:

"Not a Parody   [John Podhoretz]  Maya Angelou publishes a eulogy in verse to Molly Ivins in today's Washington Post. Every line provokes tears. Though not from grief.  02/02 07:52 AM"

What do you think provoked the tears of laughter and joy in Podhoretz' eyes?  The tribute by one of America's leading poets?  or, the cruel, early and painful death of one of our leading political columnists?

In the wake of the Jamil Hussein cockup, I should have known better than to take a story pushed forward by the insaneosphere at face value.  But for some reason, a link from the Insta-Cracker to this story had me thinking for a moment - just a moment.

A source close to Pajamas Media has learned that Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has apparently succumbed to the cancer that hospitalized him last month, as exclusively reported by Pajamas Media, at age 67. He has been Iran’s most powerful figure since replacing Ayatollah Khomeini in the role of Supreme Leader in 1989.

The Supreme Leader of Iran dying would be a big story, one you would expect to get major coverage around the globe.  Yet only Pajamas Media was reporting this last night.  Could they have received the scoop of the century?

No.

Now that most people are willing to see Iraq as a failure and Rumsfeld is gone, maybe some columnists will follow? Sadly John Podhoretz is still living in denial, but at least he is funny. Funny like a granny on ice.

You don't believe me? Ok, try this:

THE most common cliché about the war in Iraq is now this: We didn't have a plan, and now everything is in chaos; we didn't have a plan, and now we can't win.

This is entirely wrong.

NYPost

After the flip he will tell us why we are all wrong (or at least the lefties)

Passing out contraception without any deeper context or conversation is degrading and disrespectful -- to men and women. Tell me I'm crazy.

As Andrew writes, it's not so much that Lopez believes this nonsense, it's that she can't fathom how anyone would not believe that condoms are evil.

She's crazy. We're not talking about condoms for kids here. We're talking about condoms for adults. We know she's nuts because she insisted only a couple of weeks' back that Rick Santorum - as an empirical prediction - would win in Pennsylvania. She is delusional, but she is also a fanatic. Notice how she cannot even understand how anyone could really disagree with her about the "evil" of contraception. In her cocoon, this may be true. The theocon right absolutely believes that contraception is just as immoral as gay sex. If they could ban it, discourage it, prevent its availability, they would. And with the appointment of Eric Keroack at HHS, we have new evidence they are.

K-Lo's Santorum obsession was quite the show. Whenever the pressure of the impending elections got to heavy for me, I'd head on over to the Corner to read Lopez' latest predictions of Santorum's huge victory, all the way to the bitter end. At first, I thought it was adorable. She was so obsessed to the point of delusion that it was kind of endearing. Kind of like pugs being so ugly that they're cute.

And while I was eager to see her delusions shattered on election night, something happened that I never would've thought possible -- Lopez got crazier. There was the suggestions that he be named the next secretary of defense, then U.N. ambassador. Her Santorum posts got so weird and incessant that her colleagues at the Corner started shifting uncomfortably.

John Podhertz, clearly sensing Lopez' mad descent into lunacy, first tried to knock some sense into her:

Kathryn, I know you're Upset, But Face It [John Podhoretz]
Santorum lost by 18 points. Casey won nearly 60 percent of the vote. Casey ran exactly the right race to win a landslide.

When that didn't work, he tried to head her off.

Moratorium Deal [John Podhoretz]
I promise not to mention anything having to do with science fiction for a month, Kathryn, if you will forbear on the matter of a certain defeated Senator...

Terms of a deal on Romney to be offered later...

After which Lopez snapped.

RE: MORATORIUM DEAL [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
He lost. Our loss. The week is over. Was a closing.

But no you haven't heard the last of him, please God. And you'll be hearing a lot more of Romney, and certainly not just from me. Also an excellent thing.

Good night -- henceforth without my incessant posts about good people saying important things.

That was weird. And it prompted this really pathetic Podhoretz response:

Hey, K-Lo, Don't Go Away Mad! [John Podhoretz]
Now you know how Trekkies felt when they canceled the show after the third season

So while she's probably still muttering about Santorum's loss as she tries to rock herself to sleep, her Romney obsession is starting to heat up. That should be quite entertaining as well.

If the press is so desirous of press conferences and so angry that Bush doesn't do enough of them, why do reporters just ask the same questions over and over again?

It's often not the things people say that tell you most about their mindsets, but the way they say them.

Previously I posted how it seems to be conservatives who are always telling you, "What you need to remember is", "What's important for Americans to know is", etc. Here's another one. I've noticed a trend that Democrats refer to Republicans as Republicans, while Republicans refer to Democrats as "the Democrats". Conservatives are called conservatives. Liberals are "the liberals". I ask you, does one seem less inclusive than the other? Whenever I hear Sean Hannity say "the Democrats", a little twinge of fear creeps in. I wonder just how ancillary these people consider us.

For example, until reading John Podhoretz's column today, I had no idea just how strategically clever and frightening we progressives can be to right wing conservatives just by joining in the many calls for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to resign. I thought we were just haplessly striking out at obvious stupidity.

But, now I've discovered that we are part of a highly coordinated left wing conspiracy to bring down the Bush Administration and set the entire neocon philosophy back by decades. Don't you feel better already? But, wait it get's better. You have no idea how strategically advanced and clever we progressives have become.    

I remember when we first go together.  It was good times and camp National Review.  It was that long after 9/11 and our general Bush still wore his glow.  We were all going to war, we were all going to Iraq.  America had its glow again.  Sure 9/11 was tough for the three thousand or so that didn't make.  That's what happens in war.  Sometimes you don't make it.  We all have to accept that - at least for other people.

Many people have pointed out the disturbing similarities between present day America's social and political climate and Germany's evolution from Weimar stoicism to blind Nazi excess.  Comparisons always tend toward the invidious; but that does not render them illusionary.  We do more than just resemble pre-WWII Germany; we now mirror its every communal shift and political nuance; making the tragic end result almost a given.  Nothing reflects this with more come-to-meeting revivalism and jack-boot stupefaction than how hostage Jill Carroll has been treated by the so-called conservative press since her near miraculous release.  The right-wing pundits hate her - wish her dead, would shove her in an oven at Auschwitz and not turn a hair - hate her.  Here are a few of the choice comments I uncovered.

Stand Strong diaried earlier on the Freeper's expected attacks on Jill Carroll. (The consensus: the typical wingnuttery about how she's a terrorist sympathizer and how the whole thing was probably faked anyway.)

Now, the "legitimate" right wing press (sic) is piling on. National Review's John Podhoretz seems to think that Ms. Carroll is suffering from Stockholm Syndrome (if not an outright TerrSymp^TM):

It's wonderful that she's free, but after watching someone who was a hostage for three months say on television she was well-treated because she wasn't beaten or killed -- while being dressed in the garb of a modest Muslim woman rather than the non-Muslim woman she actually is -- I expect there will be some Stockholm Syndrome talk in the coming days.