Also, He'll Never Send A Million Dollars To The ACLU Unless They "Lighten Up"

Bill O'Reilly has laid down the marker. Under no circumstances will he ever, ever, visit Spain.



O'REILLY: Finally, unless this action is condemned by the Spanish Prime Minister Zapatero, then I am not going to that country.

In a related development, Spain asked to get that in writing. I don't know if this extends to Billo's poolboy Jesse Walters, who could have a field day on a 6-night tour of the Costa del Sur ambushing random Spanish girls.

Meanwhile, Dennis Miller chi-chis that the Spanish "folded like a balsa wood chair after a Cat 5" after the Madrid train bombing. But they haven't had a terrorist attack on their soil since, and because that's the only marker on which we're supposed to judge President Bush, clearly Zapatero is a strong, powerful leader. Wait, their arguments have no internal logic? Stop.

(By the way, I'd love to see Miller playing the Waziristan Chuckle Hut and backpedaling furiously, "Hey, you cats are solid, America has been asking for it like a terminal cancer patient by a Kevorkian machine! Can I keep my testicles?")

This Constitutes Biting Rhetoric On The Right

What a cogent argument - that Harry Reid is irrelevant because of the way he looks and sounds.

Coming from the guy who looks the same as his 1988 Young Comedians Special headshot only without the rolled up Miami Vice sportjacket sleeves, and whose voice is literally the most mocked in the history of comedy, the epitome of faux-hipster "hey chi-chi" cynicism, a voice that attempts to make a big point by, you know, SOUNDING like it, without saying anything of substance at all.

Also, you've got a guy talking about the Senate Majority Leader irrelevant who just signed on to host a game show on GSN, which about four people in this country could find with a universal remote and a flashlight. Believe me, I've worked at GSN, Charles Nelson Reilly is still relevant on that channel and he died last month.

Holding Out For A Hero

While Rudy Giuliani may have won the all-important Dennis Miller primary (I thought Hollywood was supposed to stay out of politics), the rank and file in the Republican Party is worried as hell.

After years of political dominance, Republican voters now view their party as divided and say they are not satisfied with the choice of candidates seeking the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

In a survey that brought to life the party’s anxieties about keeping the White House, Republicans said they were concerned that their party had drifted from the principles of Ronald Reagan, its most popular figure of the past 50 years.

Forty percent of Republicans said they expected Democrats to take control of the White House next year, compared with 46 percent who said they believed a Republican would win. Just 12 percent of Democrats said they thought the opposing party would win the White House [...]

While nearly 6 in 10 Democratic voters in the poll said they were satisfied with the candidates now in the race for their party’s nomination, nearly 6 in 10 Republicans said they wanted more choices. Yet the poll found that a substantial number of Republicans did not know enough about their leading contenders — Senator John McCain of Arizona; Rudolph W. Giuliani, former mayor of New York; and Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachusetts — to offer an opinion of them.

“I think the Republican candidate has not appeared yet,” said Richard Gerrish, 69, a Republican from Greenacres, Fla. “The ones we have now will run out of steam. Someone will come along later that will do better.”

The Republicans are in a tough spot. Most of them don't think Rudy McRomney are sufficiently crazy enough for their tastes (how dare Mitt say he wouldn't have saved Terri Schiavo!), but they intuitively know that the real crazies in the race have no shot at winning a general election. They want a stealth candidate who's really crazy but doesn't let it show too much. In essence, they want George Bush circa 1999-2000 again. That's why they're holding out for a hero. Fred Thompson? Chuck Hagel? Newt Gingrich? Robert Kagan? Some computer generated compassionate conservative XQV-3000 model?

Meanwhile, 500 people show up in Oakland on a Sunday just to plan a rally for Barack Obama. And John Edwards gets out in front of every major story, this time being the first candidate to call on Abu "I Didn't Know" Gonzales to resign. He's also kicking ass in Iowa by meeting people and keeping his organization rock-solid. Richardson and Dodd have fine résumés. Even Hillary wouldn't be SO bad... well, OK, maybe scratch that.

Over here, we're fine with our candidates. The Republicans are looking for an oracle. I like where we stand.