Wednesday digest

- Quote of the day: "Folks, if bashing rich people, the oil industry, and the drug companies were an effective political strategy, jets would be landing at Michael Dukakis National Airport in Washington." See here. Perhaps if Al Franken recognized that, his radio network wouldn't be making the XFL look like a success right now.

- John Hawkins of Right Wing News has made the conservative case against both John McCain and now Rudy Giuliani. For obvious reasons, McCain is going to have an uphill battle in the primaries, while Giuliani seems to be polling well in deep-red states like South Carolina, but once word gets out about his social liberalism, I'm not sure that will hold up. As for the other contenders, I don't see Mitt Romney as presidential material, and I doubt that a Massachussetts Mormon is really going to be a contender. George Allen was touted by some as the heir to Ronald Reagan but he's a senator (no senator has won the presidency for over 40 years) and has stepped in it as of late. Finally, that leaves Newt, who's running hard on ideas but brings a considerable amount of baggage to the table. If Rudy can get past the primaries, I think he's got a good shot at beating whoever the Dems nominate because there is a huge untapped market, and that's hawkish libertarians (especially if clowns like this keep running the show on the other side of the aisle).

- In recent days, a much-maligned Washington player gave a speech in which he asks the following questions, which I think are tremendously important:

With the growing lethality and availability of weapons, can we truly afford to believe that somehow vicious extremists can be appeased?

Can we really continue to think that free countries can negotiate a separate peace with terrorists?

Can we truly afford the luxury of pretending that the threats today are simply "law enforcement" problems, rather than fundamentally different threats, requiring fundamentally different approaches?

And can we truly afford to return to the destructive view that America -- not the enemy -- is the real source of the world's trouble?

A lot of people, if they knew who was asking them, would have just dismissed those vital questions before even reading them, so I've decided to tell you who they came from after printing them rather than before.

Answer here.

- Here's a great idea: a monument to the victims of Communism.

- Finally, O'Reilly tells it like it is.