Presidents love golf.

Dwight Eisenhower was addicted to Augusta National.  Richard Nixon said of golf, “I enjoyed the game,” even while admitting that breaking 80 “was like climbing Mount Everest.”  Bill Clinton once told Thomas Friedman: “I’ve got all kinds of bizarre putters.”  Hey, now!

President Bush, too, is an avid golfer.  But what distinguishes this Golfer-in-Chief from his Oval Offices predecessors?  A unique and continuing fascination with golf carts.

President Bush loves to talk about golf carts. But he doesn’t seem to like them.  In fact, arguably, he hates them.  Bush’s disdain for golf carts is based on the simplest of reasons: their looks.  For the President, golf carts are ugly, possibly even evil.

Check out this sampling from different Presidential speeches:

• “It’s conceivable that relatively quickly there are going to be automobiles where you can drive your first 40 miles on a battery, and the thing you’re in doesn’t look like a golf cart.”
• “We’re going to be driving our cars using all kinds of different fuels other than gasoline, and using batteries that will be able to be recharged in vehicles that don’t have to look like golf carts.”
• “One of these days, you’re going to have batteries in your automobile that will enable you to drive the first 40 miles without gasoline, and your car doesn’t have to look like a golf cart.”
• “I believe that you’ll be driving to work over the next couple of years in an automobile that’s powered by electricity and it won’t have to look like a golf cart.”
• “I believe within a reasonable period of time you’ll be able to plug your battery in your car … so that you can run your first 40 miles on electricity, and you’ll be happy to hear that the car is not going to look like a golf cart.”

Happy to hear, indeed.  With Bush in the bully pulpit, soon the whole nation will agree that golf carts are disgusting creatures.  Yes, that is good news.

Never accuse the President of ignoring basic message delivery skills by straying from a singular point — although one time he halved the number of miles it would take to look like the icky golf cart: “You’re going to be able to drive the first 20 miles on electricity, and your car is not going to have to look like a golf cart.”

Sometimes there are variations to the golf-carts-are-ugly theme.  Typically it’s when he wants to make the opposite point — that pick up trucks are normal.  Presumably, by comparison, they’re drop-dead gorgeous.

This rhetorical pivot is apparent when Southerners are in the audience:

• Bush to Alabama: “I think it’s not going to be long before you’re going to be able to drive an automobile with new battery technologies that you can just plug in to your garage. And your automobile won’t look like a golf cart. It will be a normal size pickup truck.”
• Bush to North Carolina:  “It’s coming. And by the way, the car doesn’t have to look like a golf cart.  It could be a pickup truck.”
• Bush to Missouri:  “What you’re proving here is a car that — or a truck — doesn’t have to look like a golf cart, if you’re running on electricity. It can be a normal size vehicle that people like to drive. Texans like to use pickup trucks, as you well know.”

(One might wonder whether Texans might want to drive a golf cart that’s outfitted with mud flaps, but that’s an unnecessary cheap shot.  Everyone knows mud flaps don’t improve mileage.)

To be sure, President Bush isn’t the only leader to impugn the lowly golf cart.  Dick Cheney took the formulation out for a spin once.  It came out like this: “We’re talking here about real cars, not just little ones that look like golf carts.”

Feel the burn, the sneer, the gruff.  You can almost hear the voice of Dan Aykroyd doing Bob Dole: “Bob Dole didn’t grow up with a 150-foot yacht, I didn’t have the convertible for graduation, the sterling silver cocktail shaker, or the machine that tears the tennis balls at you.”  And he certainly didn’t have the battery-powered golf cart.

No, President Bush is the golf-cart-hating poet.  Like this: “The Japanese are spending a lot of money on battery technologies, and it’s very conceivable one day we’ll be having hybrid plug-in battery-driven vehicles with a regular-sized automobile. You can do it with a golf cart now, but on a lot of our freeways, it would be dangerous.”

In other words, don’t even think about taking a golf cart on a freeway – that’s dangerous and ugly.

Speaking of that side of the world, let’s quote President Bush from his recent swing through Australia: “I believe battery technology is going to be coming on so that people in Sydney can drive the first 40 miles in their cars on battery without your car looking like a golf cart.”

Certainly Aussies heard that and went: “Huh?”  After all, in Australia, they’ve got something far uglier than golf carts.  Something called kangaroos.  And there’s no way you’ll ever get 40 miles per hour in one of those hideous babies.

Loyal Extreme Mortman reader THIMMESCH sends this “Original Concept” in response to this news surrounding Hillary Clinton’s health care plan: “… aides say she has jettisoned the complexity and uncertainty of the last effort in favor of a plan that stresses simplicity…”

Old: Chart explaining the 1994 Hillary care plan …

New:  Chart showing today’s simpler initiative:

The three years the Washington Nationals have spent playing baseball at RFK Stadium have been fairly unremarkable.  With the team journeying to a new stadium next year, it’s fair to say that the only excitement on the field has been the huge-headed presidential puppet races that occur every fourth inning.  And every fourth inning, Teddy Roosevelt loses.

The curse happened again Sunday.  The Extreme family was there.   Teddy and George Washington were big neck and big neck racing toward home pate.  George won.  Teddy foiled again.   In various games over the year we’ve seen Abe Lincoln win, Thomas Jefferson win, and again and again George win.  But never Teddy.

Which is a such a shame.  Teddy deserves a win.  He’s the nicest big puppet of the foursome.  He’s family-friendly, always bends down to hug kids, and is so sweet-hearted that our four-year-old Extreme daughter has developed quite a crush on him (along with the Geico Gekko).  Meantime, George and Tom always have sour looks on their faces.  And Abe goes out of his way to scare kids by pretending to attack them.  How sweet.

The wrong guy loses every time.

So here’s a proposal.  The Nationals play their final home game this Sunday.  Let’s implore the puppet masters to let Teddy win.  What a great way to leave RFK — with Teddy’s first-ever victory.  Shoot off the fireworks.  Delight the crowd.  And send thousands of fans into delirium.  Let Teddy win one, for the best lasting memory possible of Nationals baseball at RFK.

Turns out, the Nationals have already desginated Sunday as “Jewish Community Day.”  Not sure exactly what that means (perhaps the first 30,000 fans get to complain about the food)  or what we Jews have done to deserve such honor, but presumably it’s got to do with the day after Yom Kippur — when we ask God for forgiveness for our sins (foremost among the Nationals sins, for example was firing manager Frank Robinson.)   Let’s break the fast, and break the two-year Teddy losing streak, with a triumphant Teddy victory.

Bully!

I don’t care what you think about the Norman Hsu story — If you hate taxes, you gotta love this from today’s Washington Post:

To raise $850,000 for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign in just eight months, Norman Hsu tapped an eclectic group of donors that included wealthy investors in his apparel ventures, hotel shopkeepers, a 96-year-old in a Florida retirement home and an auto-body worker who mistakenly thought he would get a tax break for his political generosity.

Nay Oo, another Clinton donor for whom Hsu claimed credit, was listed in the candidate’s fundraising reports with an address in Daly City, Calif. The home’s owner, Ellen Yee, said Oo used to rent a room in the house but hadn’t lived there for years. A man who returned a call to Oo’s phone and identified himself as Oo said he works in an auto-body shop and does not know Hsu. He said he donated $250 to Clinton at the request of a landlord. “I thought it was going to be a tax write-off,” he said.

Maybe the IRS should put out a new tax form: the Schedule Hsu.

From the Senate’s Petraeus hearing:

BARACK OBAMA: So I just think it is important for us to get all that clear and on the record because that provides the context in which we are going to have to be making a series of decisions.

That, of course, now leaves me very little time to ask questions and that’s unfortunate.

JOE BIDEN: That’s true, Senator.

Today’s Washington Post chronicles Rep. Jim Moran’s (D-VA) latest pilgrimage to the anti-Semitic side of town:

In an interview with Tikkun, a California-based Jewish magazine, Moran said the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is “the most powerful lobby and has pushed this war from the beginning. I don’t think they represent the mainstream of American Jewish thinking at all, but because they are so well organized, and their members are extraordinarily powerful — most of them are quite wealthy — they have been able to exert power.”

And:

AIPAC “members are willing to be very generous with their personal wealth. But it’s a two-edged sword. If you cross AIPAC, AIPAC is unforgiving and will destroy you politically. Their means of communications, their ties to certain newspapers and magazines, and to individuals in the media are substantial and intimidating.”

Ronald Halber, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington, responds thusly to Moran’s track record: “There are only so many mistakes he can make before it’s fair to call him an anti-Semite.”

And Colbert King writes: “The canard that a powerful Jewish lobby controls the media is a well-known anti-Semitic staple.”

How should Democrats deal with this guy?  Here’s a proposal: Ask Mark Warner.  He’s running for Senate.  If he wins, he’ll surely bump into an AIPAC lobbyist.  Ask Warner, who’s represented in Congress by Moran, if he agrees with Moran’s characterization of the wealthy and media-controlling Jews who control AIPAC.  His answer should shed some light into both politicians’ core beliefs.

Today is Tony Snow’s last day as White House press secretary.

There’s no way you can remember Snow’s service to this country without revisiting his edgy exchanges with Helen Thomas.

Here then are the Top Ten Tony Snow/Helen Thomas moments from his White House press briefings:

10.

MR. SNOW: I’ll call on you next, Helen. Go ahead.
Q Does the White House and the President share that same gut feeling?
MR. SNOW: I don’t want to try to get into gastrointestinal descriptions.

9.

Q Why did we send a B-52 carrying nuclear weapons from South Dakota to Louisiana, jeopardizing America?
MR. SNOW: My goodness, I don’t have an answer for that.

8.

MR. SNOW: Helen, and then to Mark.
Q The President emphasized September and he emphasized General Petraeus’ report — all week you moved away from September. Is it a real important date for us to decide things?
MR. SNOW: I think what the President is saying is –
Q Does he know that we have civilian rule in this country?
MR. SNOW: Yes. Do you?
Q I do.

7.

Q We are a conqueror. We should be asking the people, do they really want us there.
MR. SNOW: Helen.
Q Yes, sir.
MR. SNOW: Do you believe — well, no, you will scold me for asking a question, so I will not. I will phrase my question in the form of an answer.
Q You know, best defense is offense, is that your whole approach?
MR. SNOW: No, my –
Q I’m asking you a very –
MR. SNOW: No, my approach is to — well, you’re asking a simple question that actually has some fairly complex precedents in the terms of the advisability or possibility of a national –
Q You keep saying that they want us there –
MR. SNOW: Helen, Helen, Helen.
Q Put it to a test.
MR. SNOW: Helen, no war is popular. No war is popular.
Q That’s not the answer.
MR. SNOW: If you had done — no, it is — no, that is an absolutely accurate answer.
Q Nobody wants –
MR. SNOW: If you had asked in 1864 — I’ll go back to the Civil War — the referendum would have failed and Abraham Lincoln would have failed.
Q How do you know that?
MR. SNOW: Go back and read, just a little history will tell you.

6.

Q Has the President factored in any of how many people will die?
MR. SNOW: Helen, you ask that question every day, and I don’t know how I can –
Q It’s a very valid question.
MR. SNOW: And it’s a question he thinks about every day.
Q And does he care about it? Does it matter how many die?
MR. SNOW: Yes, it does. Absolutely.
Q Well, you have a benchmark now — this fall has been so lethal.
MR. SNOW: And the people who have been killing will kill even more if we walk away. I would turn you to The New York Times op-ed page today, where a Marine Major talks about –
Q Written by a Marine.
MR. SNOW: I’m sorry, does that make it suspect that he’s on the ground trying to save lives?
Q No, that doesn’t. But, I mean, he has to take the military attitude.
MR. SNOW: Well, you might want to read it, because the military — the military attitude is, warriors don’t like to be engaged in war if you can have peace, and generals don’t like to send people into battle unless they have to. The people who are instigating the violence in Iraq are ones who are determined to kill.

5.

Q We’re the invader. Do you realize that?
MR. SNOW: Helen, we’ve engaged in this conversation a few times. The Iraqi people have made it clear that they think that America’s involvement in unseating Saddam Hussein was historic and liberating. The real tragedy is that there are people who are willing to kill by the thousands to prevent Iraq from becoming free. And I would –Q How can they feel free when they’re under occupation?
MR. SNOW: I would warn against — I would warn against drawing moral equivalents between people who take IEDs and blow up civilians and Americans who are laying their lives on the line so that there can be a democracy in Iraq. As for our occupation, the United States would like to be able to leave as quickly as possible. The Iraqis would, too. But the Iraqis say, don’t leave until the job is done. We agree. It is important to win in Iraq as defined by a free democracy that sustains, governs, and defends itself.

4.

Q What’s the U.S. role in all this?
MR. SNOW: Well, the U.S. role is one of working with Israel and, when possible, with the Palestinians to try to generate a peace — the same it’s always been, Helen –
Q Then why is it bankrupting the Palestinians?
MR. SNOW: The Palestinians are not being bankrupted, Helen. What’s happening, as you know, is that there is — Hamas is a terrorist organization. We do not give money to terrorist organizations. What has happened is that this government has tried in a number of ways to make humanitarian aid available to the Palestinian people. We draw a distinction between Hamas, which is –
Q And they were democratically elected.
MR. SNOW: They were democratically elected and they’re still a terrorist organization.
Q By your designation.
MR. SNOW: Yes. Thank you very much, Helen. They are, in fact, by the designation of this government, this administration, and prior administrations. So let me continue my answer.
Q Go ahead.
MR. SNOW: Thank you.
Q You’re welcome.
MR. SNOW: By the way, that’s a nice apple.

3.

Q Well, how many people are dying every day?
MR. SNOW: It depends on what the — does it not depend on — well, let me put it this way, Helen, when people are dying because of car bombs it illustrates the difficulty of the situation and the nature of the people we are fighting.

2.

Q Do you not understand the difference between private companies and governments, sir?
MR. SNOW: I understand. I do understand. But what I’m saying here is, what the public — I’ll tell you what, you ask the American public, do you want — do you think you have a right to know the specific means and methods by which –
Q That’s not –
MR. SNOW: Helen, will you stop heckling and let me conduct a press conference.
Q — argument.
MR. SNOW: Well, no, I’m making an argument, and you’re pestering the teacher.

1.

Q The United States is not that helpless. It could have stopped the bombardment of Lebanon. We have that much control with the Israelis.
MR. SNOW: I don’t think so, Helen.Helen Thomas from NPR
Q We have gone for collective punishment against all of Lebanon and Palestine.
MR. SNOW: What’s interesting, Helen –
Q And this is what’s happening, and that’s the perception of the United States.
MR. SNOW: Well, thank you for the Hezbollah view.

Virginia has traditionally been the trendsetter for political blogging.  Primarily because in Virginia, just like the blogosphere, politics never sleeps.

Virginia bloggers have the added distinction of oftentimes breaking political news that mainstream media reporters, most notably from the Washington Post, have to follow-up on.

Today breaks new ground in that phenomenon.  Today it’s a Washington Post editorial that cites the Virginia blogosphere.  Not just cites, but is premised on — in the opening paragraph:

Former governor Mark R. Warner of Virginia steps into the 2008 race for the U.S. Senate facing a daunting adversary: overconfidence, at least on the part of his supporters. That much was clear yesterday from scanning parts of the blogosphere that, in the immediate aftermath of his video announcement, were teeming with his partisans proclaiming the race a slam-dunk and an automatic pickup for Democrats in the Senate. Memo to the Republicans: Don’t bother fielding a candidate.

We’ll know soon enough whether the Post editorial is correct on its assessment of the huge Senate race we’re embarking on.  Until then we know they’re correct in looking to blogs to shape the story.  Virginia bloggers: celebrate your influence!

The Washington Post makes it clear:

MoveOn.org provided Republicans a life raft when it ran a full-page newspaper advertisement Monday taunting Petraeus as “General Betray Us.”

Life raft indeed.

As we wait for the first big-name Democrat to denounce the MoveOn ad, it’s worth remembering for a moment the hot summer of 2004 and the pitched battle over ads.

MoveOn ran an ad questioning President Bush’s Vietnam-era service in the Air National Guard.  In August 2004 John Kerry denounced it.  Kerry: “The ad is inappropriate. This should be a campaign of issues, not insults.”
Three years later and the military-related insults haven’t stopped.  Who would have thought John Kerry would remain the sole marquee Democrat with the courage to denounce MoveOn?

First, our last trivia question:

Robust debate ensued. But the winning question was first posed by James Young: “What was Fred Dalton Thompson’s first movie, in which he played himself?”

Now, the next Extreme Trivia answer: The current occupant of buildings that were built in the 1950’s as a Nike missile-tracking site.