The villain in "A Time to Run," Sen. Barbara Boxer's first novel, is a conservative writer for The San Francisco Chronicle. A salvo at moi? Hardly. His name is Greg Hunter, and Boxer's alter ego, Ellen Fischer, also a Democratic senator from California, has a personal history with the scribe, including one special night when they were both students at UC Berkeley.
Alas, Hunter never got over Fischer's rejection of him in favor of his best friend, Josh Fischer, who winds up marrying Ellen. Years later, Hunter still carried a torch. He would ask himself, "Why did she choose Josh and not me?"
Did the perceptive Fischer see a flaw in Hunter that made him undeserving of her love? Or did her rejection move him from his enlightened youthful liberalism to the dark right side of politics and into the service of evil GOP Sen. Carl Satcher?
When chick lit turns into chick lib lit, the answer is: Whatever makes the liberal look pure and mistreated. Hence a story, co-written with Mary-Rose Hayes, of how the beloved Boxer/Fischer enters politics after Hunter digs up dirt on Josh Fischer, who was running against Satcher. Josh Fischer, in a rush to drive home in the tule fog to confess about a long-ago infidelity, dies in a car accident. The Democratic Party unites -- so you know the book is fiction -- to persuade a reluctant Fischer to run in her late husband's place.
You also know that the tale is fictional because Boxer/Fischer decides to run for office out of anger that the columnist and GOP politician "dug up the worst dirt and invented the worst lies to force" her husband out of the race.
In real life, Boxer first won her Senate seat in 1992 after a Democratic Party official confronted Republican rival Bruce Herschensohn at a campaign rally and asked him, "Is it typical for the voters of California to elect someone who frequently goes to strip joints in Hollywood?" Herschensohn -- who might not have won but was closing in on Boxer's lead -- lost.
Now you might think that after that dubious start, Boxer would hesitate to paint her alter ego as a squeaky-clean victim of political dirty tricks. Wrong. The fictional Chronicle conservative tells her, "Politics is not for the likes of you. It's dirty."
Apparently, Washington is the great sanitizer. And apparently, no one close to Boxer was able to warn her off of putting her name on books that smack of every liberal conceit.
You can forget the Bush-era lectures about how the right only sees the world in terms of black and white. In Boxerdom, all the villains are Republicans and all the Democrats are virtuous.
Her second book, "Blind Trust," also co-written with Hayes, is even more self-laudatory. Her new husband, Ben Lind, is a former "liberal Republican" congressman, who fell in love with his "cunning little vixen" after "she had changed his mind" on her legislation to confiscate guns from child abusers. When he proposed, Lind told her, "Listen, ever since I saw you across that room fighting for your children's bill with every nerve in your body, I've loved you and wanted you and I can't stand the thought of losing you."
Fischer heartily berates the Republican administration, which, she charges, has "trampled on individual liberties and jeopardized the Bill of Rights" in trying to prevent another large-scale terrorist attack. She dismisses them as "the fear detail."
So what does her husband do when he learns that someone has hacked into their blind trust? He had someone comb through the political affiliations, travel history, phone calls and "uncharacteristic behavior" of the many people who might have access to the Lind/Fischer finances. Now, he's not the government; he's just a rich lawyer. But it's amazing how Fischer is convinced it is wrong to use invasive surveillance techniques when Republicans want to prevent American deaths -- but it's OK if her career is on the line.
In the real world, Boxer is known as a far-left Democrat who has had her share of YouTube moments. Remember the one when she told a brigadier general to call her senator instead of ma'am? Her environmental committee has been hemorrhaging key staff and she has failed to produce an energy bill that can pass the Senate.
In the novels, Fischer is a solon in Washington's more deliberative body. Or as the Senate Democratic leader tells Fischer, she would be the right Democrat to fight the mean Republicans' nomination as Homeland Security secretary, because, "You're an inspirational leader who can think on her feet, and you've always had support from the party and so many of the American people -- which, of course, has been justly earned. You've proven yourself to be honest, tough and energetic, with the courage of your convictions."
And: "You've personally raised the integrity bar. People are asking themselves, if they can't trust you, then who can they trust?"
In the first book, Fischer's chief of staff reminds the petite senator of her role as "the conscience of the liberals."
Does Boxer think people really talk like that? If so, she has spent too much time on her pedestal in Washington.
During a 4th of July parade in Larkspur CA, then "Congresswoman" Boxer was the Grand Marshal. As she passed the Silver Peso Bar a group of Bikers yelled: Hey Barbara! Show us your tits!
#7
It makes me want to repack the suitcases and head back out the door, maybe for a quick jaunt to a tax-free Caribbean hideaway of the sort being so deservedly enjoyed by Con. Rangel in the accompanying photo of the life serene.
Daniel Pipes writes about Turkey at a crossroads in its history as a country. Will it remain secular, or slide toward Islamist?
The arrest and indictment of top military figures in Turkey last week precipitated potentially the most severe crisis since Atatürk founded the republic in 1923. The weeks ahead will probably indicate whether the country continues its slide toward Islamism or reverts to its traditional secularism. The denouement has major implications for Muslims everywhere.
Turkey's military has long been both the state's most trusted institution and the guarantor of Atatürk's legacy, especially his laicism. Devotion to the founder is not some dry abstraction but a very real and central part of a Turkish officer's life; as journalist Mehmet Ali Birand has documented, cadet-officers hardly go an hour without hearing Atatürk's name invoked.
On four occasions between 1960 and 1997, the military intervened to repair a political process gone awry. On the last of these occasions, it forced the Islamist government of Necmettin Erbakan out of power. Chastened by this experience, some of Erbakan's staff re-organized themselves as the more cautious Justice and Development Party (AKP). In Turkey's decisive election of 2002, they surged ahead of discredited and fragmented centrist parties with a plurality of 34 percent of the popular vote.
Parliamentary rules then transformed that plurality into a 66 percent supermajority of assembly seats and a rare case of single-party rule. Not only did the AKP skillfully take advantage of its opportunity to lay the foundations of an Islamic order but no other party or leader emerged to challenge it. As a result, the AKP increased its portion of the vote in the 2007 elections to a resounding 47 percent, with control over 62 percent of parliamentary seats.
Repeated AKP electoral successes encouraged it to drop its earlier caution and to hasten moving the country toward its dream of an Islamic Republic of Turkey. The party placed partisans in the presidency and the judiciary while seizing increased control of the educational, business, media, and other leading institutions. It even challenged the secularists' hold over what Turks call the "deep state" -- the non-elected institutions of the intelligence agencies, security services, and the judiciary. Only the military, ultimate arbiter of the country's direction, remained beyond AKP control.
Several factors then prompted the AKP to confront the military: European Union accession demands for civilian control over the military; a 2008 court case that came close to shutting down the AKP; and the growing assertiveness of its Islamist ally, the Fethullah Gülen Movement. An erosion in AKP popularity (from 47 percent in 2007 to 29 percent now) added a sense of urgency to this confrontation, for it points to the end of one-party AKP rule in the next elections.
The AKP devised an elaborate conspiracy theory in 2007, dubbed Ergenekon, to arrest about two hundred AKP critics, including military officers, under accusation of plotting to overthrow the elected government. The military responded passively, so the AKP raised the stakes on Jan. 22 by concocting a second conspiracy theory, this one termed Balyoz ("Sledgehammer") and exclusively directed against the military.
The military denied any illegal activities and the chief of general staff, İlker Başbuğ, warned that "Our patience has a limit." Nonetheless, the government proceeded, starting on Feb. 22, to arrest 67 active and retired military officers, including former heads of the air force and navy. So far, 35 officers have been indicted.
Thus has the AKP thrown down the gauntlet, leaving the military leadership basically with two unattractive options: (1) continue selectively to acquiesce to the AKP and hope that fair elections by 2011 will terminate and reverse this process; or (2) stage a coup d'état, risking voter backlash and increased Islamist electoral strength.
At stake is whether the Ergenekon/Balyoz offensives will succeed in transforming the military from an Atatürkist to a Gülenist institution; or whether the AKP's blatant deceit and over-reaching will spur secularists to find their voice and their confidence. Ultimately the issue concerns whether Shari'a (Islamic law) rules Turkey or the country returns to secularism.
Turkey's Islamic importance suggests that the outcome of this crisis has consequences for Muslims everywhere. AKP domination of the military means Islamists control the umma's most powerful secular institution, proving that, for the moment, they are unstoppable. But if the military retains its independence, Atatürk's vision will remain alive in Turkey and offer Muslims worldwide an alternative to the Islamist juggernaut. Our list of allies grows thin.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
03/02/2010 09:20 ||
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#1
Such a slap in the face to Deadheads. So the tool who is the centerpiece of this article followed the Dead for a couple of years. Big deal. He is lowlife scum. Fortunately, the FBI are on him like a tick and if he so much as steps one toe out of line they are going to be on him.
#2
And the Brooklyn jihadist, known as Younus Abdullah Muhammad, ought to know. Now 30 years old, he said he was born "a Caucasian American kid" whose parents in Pennsylvania were "part of the counterculture movement."
I'm shocked -just shocked- that a background like his could lead to jihad!
Al
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
03/02/2010 19:15 Comments ||
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#3
As a Deadhead - he's not one
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/02/2010 19:22 Comments ||
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#4
It's Newsweak - check it out at your dentist in a couple years
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/02/2010 19:23 Comments ||
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#6
there was a MSM stereotype of Deadheads that weren't true (surprise!). They played basic old-style American tunes (where else would you see Willie Dixon's "Wang Dang Doodle" played in a stadium setting?) and the tunes and musicianship were a lot bigger thing than the drugs miniculture everyone focuses on
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/02/2010 20:24 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
The villain in "A Time to Run," Sen. Barbara Boxer's first novel, is a conservative writer for The San Francisco Chronicle. A salvo at moi? Hardly. His name is Greg Hunter, and Boxer's alter ego, Ellen Fischer, also a Democratic senator from California, has a personal history with the scribe, including one special night when they were both students at UC Berkeley. 
