IS IT ANY WONDER THAT OPIUM POPPY CULTIVATION IS SO HARD-WIRED INTO AFGHANI SOCIETY AND CULTURE, in spite of repeated eradication campaigns with varying degrees of success?

Case in point: Taliban insurgents in Helmand province attacked an opium-poppy eradication exercise, only to be set upon by Afghani police, killing 25 such in the process.

And besides, it's well-known that the Taliban (who, by one Defence Department estimate, now control some 10% of Afghanistan; another 30% is controlled by the Kabul government, and local tribes control the remaining 60% of Afghan soverign territory) profited all the more from opium poppy cultivation and subsequent added-value processing.

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UNLIKELY CAMPAIGN IN THE IRAQI FRONT OF THE UR-RAHOWA AGAINST TERRORISM: Defence Secretary Robert Gates has suggested that the Khurdish peoples in northern Iraq and close-by regions of Turkey start considering peaceful means by which to deal with the socioeconomic problems and inequalities which makes the insurgency led by the Khurdistan People's Party (PKK) all the more attractive to the local populace.

Especially the poorer sort as are attracted all the more to the PKK.

After all, the Khurdish regions of northern Iraq have managed to remain rather calm and @ once prosperous in the face of the ur-RAHOWA led by the "morally superior" United States based on absurd and misleading claims all along. Not to mention having been formulated while His Fraudulency may have been in a state of mental incapacity, technically making the war declaration null and void under common law.

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WITH ALL THE SNOW ON THE GROUND IN MANY PARTS OF THE UNITED STATES THIS WINTER SO FAR, you may be asking yourself "WHAT global warming threat?!"

As a matter of fact, many parts of the country as saw the heaviest snowfall rates could be setting new records for seasonal snowfall totals. That, and the National Weather Service estimating that the 2007-08 winter could be the snowiest since the 1965-66 winter.

Once the snow starts melting, let's just hope the ensuing meltwater percolates slowly and gradually into the topsoil, especially so in areas as are in or close to drought conditions. (As for where Your Correspondent is based, current estimates from the National Weather Service suggest a likelihood of moderate flooding on the Mississippi as April segues into May as the most likely scenario for this flood season.)

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HOW DO WE KNOW HIS FRAUDULENCY'S GREAT WITHIN STILL HAS DESIGNS FOR SABOTAGING AMTRAK "from the sidelines," as it were?

Case in point:

Cracks in the concrete track base along parts of the Northeast Corridor have prompted Amtrak to issue slow orders throughout, meaning its flagship Acela Express services will not be as fast for the forseeable future as the top speed of 135 mph.

Next thing you know, expect the "inside of the inside" to call for essentially denationalising Amtrak per the British model of having passenger rail contracted out to private companies, Amtrak's role being little more than a ticketing, marketing and informational agency based on Britain's National Rail.

As for serious coordination of ticketing and pass sales, what these operators ought consider is something on the model of the Association of Train Operating Companies (ATOC) in Great Britain, which serves as not just the industry trade organisation, but also provides:

• a clearinghouse for ticket sales involving travel between the private rail operators; and
• a databank for establishing common technical standards for ticketing media (including issuance of tickets and passes) and passenger information (in turn supplied to National Rail for dissemiation to passengers in the various media).

Come to think of it, perhaps the several Presidential candidates in Indecision 2008 should be asked some serious questions about the future direction of passenger rail in the United States, let alone Amtrak as a state entity. Don't be shy....   

THE RELIGIOPOLITICAL RIGHT'S ARTICLES OF FAITH INCLUDE AN UNYIELDING AND OVERZEALOUS BELIEF IN FREE-MARKET CAPITALISM as being all the more essential to the "antient and pecuilar soverignty and soverign identity" of the United States.

Or are they?

In evidence of the latter, consider the following Right Wing Watch item:

Ken Hutcherson has had a busy winter. The football star-turned-megachurch preacher started off January by taking on one of the largest corporations in the world but ended up embroiled in a fight with his daughter's high school.

Hutcherson has made rabidly anti-gay activism his defining cause, especially as an advocate for a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. In 2004 he joined James Dobson and other Religious Right leaders for an anti-gay rally on the National Mall, asserting that he represented "God's people" and that he knew exactly what was on God's mind: "There are absolutes and I'm absolutely right on this issue. God does not want marriage to be redefined."

And in his preaching, he makes clear that his views extend beyond "protecting marriage":

Reasonable people can disagree over whether gay marriage is a good idea. But Hutcherson goes beyond reasonable, at least to judge by the report of Seattle psychologist Valerie Tarico. … On a Sunday when Tarico was present, Hutcherson was preaching on gender roles. During his sermon, Hutcherson stated, "God hates soft men" and "God hates effeminate men." Hutcherson went on to say, "If I was in a drugstore and some guy opened the door for me, I'd rip his arm off and beat him with the wet end."

In early January, Hutcherson devised a creative plan to take control over Microsoft, the software giant based, like Hutcherson's Antioch Bible Church, in Redmond, Washington. In order to stop Microsoft's support for its gay employees—through a nondiscrimination policy and partner benefits, for example—Hutcherson launched a program to convince activists to buy Microsoft shares and donate them to his new AGN Financial Network. Then, according to the plan, Hutcherson could overturn gay-friendly policies at shareholders' meetings.

While creative, the plan seems pretty futile:

It's unclear what effect, if any, the initiative could have on the stock price. It would be difficult to influence company direction--just to gain a 1 percent stake in Microsoft, about 31 million people would each have to spend $104 to buy three shares. Microsoft has about 9.36 billion outstanding shares, and its largest holder is Chairman Bill Gates, with 858 million shares, or 9 percent of the total. Capital Research and Management Co. follows with nearly 557 million shares, or 6 percent.

… When asked whether the new initiative is a ploy to make money for his church, Hutcherson said, "Absolutely."

"We're going to need the finances to go to the next companies," he said. "Anything you do successfully needs money."

Nevertheless, the "ploy" has the support of religious-right figures such as Gary Bauer, Richard Land, Paul Weyrich, Don Wildmon, and Harry Jackson.

But it seems the Hutcherson has had to set his sights a little lower, from the corporate board room to the school board meeting. While speaking at a local high school on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, the preacher was confronted with a contradiction:

Hutcherson spoke for about 30 minutes, telling the 1,500 students sitting in the school gym about growing up amid racial prejudice and how that led him to hate white people, Taylor said. But, Hutcherson told students, he eventually came to accept King's teaching of acceptance and tolerance, and it transformed him.

As the assembly drew to a close, a female language-arts teacher stood and addressed Hutcherson with a rhetorical question.

"She said something to the effect of 'How can you preach a climate of acceptance and tolerance, but that doesn't apply to gays and lesbians?' " Taylor said. The teacher didn't pose the question disrespectfully, but it was not an appropriate time to begin such a dialogue, Taylor said.

The school apologized for the breach in decorum, but Hutcherson quickly threatened action, demanding that the teachers involved be fired:

"You can see the arrogance that's going on in our public school system with the agenda of making our schools just so open and available to what the homosexual agenda is all about," he remarks. "I'm absolutely amazed at the stubbornness that we've run into in our public education system, especially with teachers who think that nothing can happen to them." …

Hutcherson says the days of Christians just making a little noise and then going away are done. He shares that he told school officials "you are going to have to pay and pay dearly for your decisions in putting my daughter through the amount of stress that you have put her through in the last three weeks."

Meanwhile, Hutcherson has launched a campaign against the school's Gay-Straight Alliance, which he calls a "sex club."

IT WAS EXACTLY ONE MONTH TO THE DAY TODAY, BOYS AND GIRLS, that the rather arrogantly self-serving "Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies" drew the following unfair comparison between Bill Clinton and "Bull" Connor (as transcribed by Media Matters for America; emphasis supplied):

And greetings, my friends, and welcome. It's Rush Limbaugh, America's real anchorman. Kicking off a full week of broadcast excellence here at the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies and the Excellence in Broadcasting network--great to have you with us.

I called it. I told you the Clintons were going to play the race card. Not only did they play the race card, people have been asking me all weekend: So what do you think of this? I said it's very simple to explain. We have gone from "Bull" Connor to "Bull" Clinton, ladies and gentlemen. That's the way to express what has happened to the Democrat [sic] Party, now totally divided along the lines of race and gender--but particularly race. From "Bull" Connor to "Bull" Clinton.

And if you wonder why I say--Mike, grab audio sound bite -- I told him to stand by for Number 1 or 13. So, what do I do? Grab Number 2. Here is Bill Clinton Saturday in Columbia, South Carolina. This is outside a polling station and the president, the former president, is speaking with reporters. An unidentified reporter says: "What does it say about Barack Obama that it takes two of you to beat him?"

BILL CLINTON [audio clip]: Jesse Jackson won in South Carolina twice, in '84 and '88, and he ran a good campaign, and Senator Obama's running a good campaign--he's run a good campaign.

LIMBAUGH: Bill Clinton has compared Barack Obama to Jesse Jackson. We've gone from "Bull" Connor to Bill or "Bull" Clinton in one little nine-second sound bite. Now, you know, you remember that Clinton also took out Jesse Jackson. The Reverend Jackson was Sister Souljah'ed out there, so this is--look it, a lot of people are saying, and they say, "Rush, you were right. This is exactly what the Clintons wanted to happen. They wanted a big racial defeat so they could go out"--and their firewall's going to be Hispanics. Mrs. Clinton is going to go out there and try to shore up Hispanics now, playing the race card again. But I don't think they expected to be in this position. I don't think they expected Toni Morrison, who claimed that Clinton was the first black president, to endorse Barack Obama, and I don't think they expected the JFK side of the Kennedy family to endorse Barack. Now, Ted Kennedy has his endorsement speech coming up in a few minutes, in about six and a half minutes.

[***]

LIMBAUGH: Two more little clips here, or excerpts, from Senator Kennedy's endorsement letter, which I feel confident will be in his speech today. He said: "I remember another leader who inspired a nation, especially our youth, to fulfill a promise of change. Those inspired young people marched, they sat at lunch counters, they protested the war in Vietnam, and they served honorably in that war, even when they opposed it." Now that's a little veiled attack at Bill Clinton, too, and his loathe of the military letter. And then comes this from Senator Kennedy: "That leader challenged them to ask what they could do for their country, and together they changed the world. So, in the words of that leader, John Kennedy: 'The world is changing. The old ways will not do. It is time for a new generation of leadership.' " It's a full frontal on the Clintons.

And then this: "Barack will be a president who refuses to be trapped in the patterns of the past. He sees the world clearly without being cynical. He fights for the causes he believes in, but refuses to demonize those who hold a different view." He has just accused, in this fundraising letter, in this endorsement letter, the Clintons of politics of personal destruction, the politics of fear, and the fact that they demonize those who hold a different view.

What this all means is that everybody in the Democrat establishment has long known exactly who and what the Clintons are, and as long as the Clintons were turning their venom on Republicans and conservatives, it was hunky-dory. It was fine. But now that Bill Clinton has become "Bull" Clinton--from "Bull" Connor to "Bull" Clinton--now that Clinton is turning, and his wife, are turning their tactics on fellow Democrats, particularly, a likable, young black guy, the Democrat establishment doesn't like what they see. We have the Kennedy wing in full -- it's a head-on assault against the Clinton wing, and it's delicious.

[***]

So, these divisions are going to continue to happen the longer this goes, and I think there will be some residual fallout for Democrats if it's Mrs. Clinton in November as a result of what's happening here with the blatant playing--I mean, look it. When I say that we've gone from "Bull" Connor to "Bull" Clinton, believe me, there are plenty in this audience, black voters, and they will spread--they know exactly what that means. And he looks like "Bull" Clinton. The only thing he doesn't have is the hose--you know, "Bull" Connor spraying the fire hose on these guys.

But Bill Clinton is doing his best to marginalize them, to say they're not important. That slam that Clinton made against Obama: "Well, I mean, he's just like Jesse Jackson." Jesse Jackson's a nobody in the Democrat Party without the Clintons. Jesse Jackson never got close to anything. What they're saying is: "Hey, now you people are getting all worked up about him. He's just another loser. He's just Jesse Jackson. He's just like Jesse Jackson. Jackson ran a good campaign. Now, what the hell do you expect to happen? A guy like Jesse Jackson comes in, Obama, with a bunch of black people in a state, what the hell you people think will happen? You think they're going to vote for a bunch of white people? Hell no!"

What he's saying is these blacks in South Carolina are a bunch of racists, and they're hanging together--don't doubt me on this. The black population in this country hears this, those that pay attention to this, and they are getting it.

[***]

LIMBAUGH: Now, I have been saying, ladies and gentlemen, that the Democratic race can be typified by the following statement: We've gone from "Bull" Connor to "Bull" Clinton. And Mr. Snerdly has suggested it might be helpful for me to tell you who "Bull" Connor was. Some of you may not know because of your age.

His real name was Eugene "Bull" Connor. He was a member of the Klan. "Bull" Connor was a member of the KKK, the Ku Klux Klan. "Bull" Connor was a staunch advocate of racial segregation, much as was Bill Clinton's mentor, Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas. As the Public Safety Commissioner of Birmingham, Alabama, in the 1960s, "Bull" Connor became a symbol of bigotry. He infamously fought against integration by using fire hoses and police attack dogs against unarmed black protest marchers and even white protest marchers who were marching with the blacks. The spectacle--now all this was broadcast on television--the spectacle served as one of the catalysts for major social and legal change in the South and helped in large measure to assure the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Connor's tactics backfired dramatically into helping to bring about the very change that he was opposing.

The bottom line was, he was a member of the Klan; he was a sheriff, a police official, a staunch advocate of racial segregation--fire hoses and police dogs on protesters.

So, when we say we've gone from "Bull" Connor to "Bull" Clinton, what I mean is that "Bull" Connor lives in spirit today in Bill Clinton by virtue of his behavior in South Carolina and his dissing of Jesse Jackson when asked to explain Obama's victory. "Well, you know, Jesse Jackson that ran down here, too, he did good in two elections. He ran a good campaign, but Obama ran a good campaign, too, but I mean, what the hell are you gonna do? You got black people down here support black people; they support losers. They support--Jesse Jackson's a loser, but I had to go in--you know I had to Sister Souljah that guy in order to get elected myself. You can't get anywhere with these people. You can't get anywhere with these people." That's what he saying. And so: "Bull" Connor to "Bull" Clinton.

For compsrison, consider what Snopes.com has to say about some propaganda circulating among the so-called "patriot" element which claimed that the Clinton Administration secretly dispatched their critics, and resorted to all manner of cover-up tricks to avoid attracting suspicion.

How do we know His Fraudulency isn't secretly plotting similar sinister designs, perhaps fuelled by his own inner paranoia, to stall the elections and prevent the maintenance of the GOP's Natural Monopoly on Power and Authority?

In any case, The Oxycontin Sow's comparisons are disgusting and uncalled for.

A FEW INTERESTING AND WORTHWHILE CHANGES OF NOTE HAVE BEEN MADE TO THIS WEBLOG IN RECENT DAYS that you might like to know about:

• The Chitika eMiniMall is now in a more convenient location for such among you wanting to do some online comparision shopping (with search facilities as well)--viz., @ the top of the page--regardless of what you're looking for.
• Note, too, where you can also recommend this blog to any friend(s) you have online that might like awful weblogs such as this ... or see a daily cartoon for to replenish your giggle glands every day.

In any case, I'd welcome all the support I can get.

Especially that known in the argot of the streets as "bling-bling"--money.

As in donations to the Virtual Tip Jar or commissions from your online purchases.

Bloggers can't like on traffic alone, you know....

THE VEST-POCKET PRINCIPALITY OF LIECHTENSTEIN HAS WHAT MAY PERHAPS BE THE STRICTEST LAWS ON BANKING SECRECY ... laws which turn out to be rather appealing to the likes of "the Four Hundred" needing "to protect [their] wealth from undue and onerous taxation" and others weird and unwholesome needing to avoid detection by the Long Arm of the Law--terrorists and swindlers in particular.

Such laws, in fact, putting Liechtenstein right there with Andorra and Monaco on the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD) blacklist of soverign states deemed Uncooperative Tax Havens.

And which are being tested by tax authorities in ten countries--Germany, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, France, Spain, Italy, Sweden and the Czech Republic--after an employee of the Liechtensteiner "brassplate" bank LGT Treuhand turned over CD-ROM's containing sensitive information on 1,400 accountholders seeing in Liechtenstein a cheap and cheerful place to protect their fortunes from tax collectors to German authorities in exchange for €5 million.

Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs, the British tax agency, confirmed that it had received similar information, but would not disclose how much was paid.

Which the Principality (and its ruler, Crown Prince Alois--who, it turns out, owns LGT in part) contends is "blood money" and is asking German authorities to stop the investigation on the grounds that such is an illegal intrusion of privacy cherished by the Principality (never mind where German tax authorities have located 163 customers on the list and collected some €27 million in past-due taxes therefrom--an average of €165,644.17/customer, by my calculations), let alone its "antient and pecuilar" soverignty.

Let's just hope where some of the American names on the "little list" turn out to include major GOP supporters from the ranks of "the Four Hundred," especially where pre-1929 Crash "old money" comes into the equation.

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IT SEEMS RATHER IRONIC THAT SOME OF THE MORE BLATANT SPECIMENS OF RACISM, WHITE SUPREMACY AND ANTI-SEMITISM would turn out to be supporting the Palestinian side of the Israeli issue, based on the rather illogical argument that "the enemy of my enemy is a friend of mine."

Notwithstanding where Palestinians would technically be considered by such unlikely supporters to be "inferior peoples" practicing a "heathen" religion (Islam) for the most part.

And all the more likely to support a Palestinian National Fund modelled on the Jewish National Fund, responsible for the economic and infrastructural development of Israel even before the State of Israel came about in 1948--until it turns out that the Palestinian National Fund was channelling donations towards terrorist movements rather than developing the Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank through projects of infrastructural development.

Speaking of Palestinian infrastructure, the Israeli blockade of Gaza has prevented shipments of chlorine, fluoride and water-treatment chemicals from reaching the water-treatment centres there in the interim, prompting a Boil Order being issued for drinking water supplies until further notice.

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IN RESPONSE TO THE MINNESOTA LEGISLATURE'S VETO OVERRIDE OF TRANSPORTATION-FUNDING LEGISLATION AS RELIES ON FUEL EXCISE INCREASES, Governor Pawlenty went into paranoia mode warning about "a major taxpayers' protest" ensuing as a result.

How do we know it won't be Governor Pawlenty "himself" leading the "spontaneous and wholehearted popular protest," thereby raising questions of possible abuse of power--not to mention further raising the likelihood of his being mentally incapable?

Besides:

How many of you Minnesota readers to this blog would be the sort to protest what may be essential and necessary (if painful) tax increases to maintain roads, bridges and transportation infrastructure generally, even if the Governor were to invoke the majesty and authority of his office in so leading? (Leave your comments in the relevant section.) 

From time to time, the "WaiWai" feature @ the Mainichi Daily News of Tokyo provides some interesting source material for this weblog as can tend to the insightful on the state of the world--considering where this weblog is a firm believer that "it's a small world, after all," as the quasi-official National Hymn of Disneyland and Walt Disney World hath it.

Never mind where the ultimate source material for "WaiWai" comes from trashy and disreputable Japanese magazines appealing largely to the Dregs of Japanese Society.

But then again, you have in "WaiWai" material the gem of possible news fodder which many are likely to scoff @ until too late.

Case in point: The following recent "WaiWai" piece warning(?!) where the forthcoming Beijing Olympics might be a major carrier for illness and disease to the point of pandemic, and for reasons which Beijing is likely to address with nothing short of slapdash measures in the days approaching the opening ceremonies (if @ all):

Fans of thriller fiction have probably read novels in which an evildoer aspires to terrorize the world by introducing a biological weapon into a packed sports stadium. The spectators then depart and board planes before any symptoms appear, resulting in a virus being spread to their fellow passengers: and ultimately setting off a massive epidemic spreading to the far corners of the globe.

Recent events have shown that such scenarios are by no means the stuff of thriller fiction. Now read this: "Overseas Chinese will be coming to Beijing from all over the world," Masahiro Miyazaki, a well-known author and commentator on international affairs, remarks in Shukan Jitsuwa (2/7). "Many of them won't be accommodated in tourist hotels, but will sleep 15 to a room in flophouses costing as little as ¥200 a night. Or else they'll be put up in the unsanitary homes of relatives. They'll serve as hosts for all kinds of noxious germs, which they might carry back to their home countries."

The worldwide outbreak of SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) in 2002-2003, which was believed to have originated from unsanitary food markets in southern China, was not, of course, a biological weapon. But due to poor public health practices and efforts by the Chinese Health Ministry to suppress reports of the initial outbreaks, SARS soon spread into neighboring Hong Kong, and from there to Southeast Asia. It then leaped the Pacific to Canada.

By the time the epidemic ended some 8,000 people were infected, of which 775 died--evidence of how quickly a lethal pathogen could spread before medical teams could identify it and mount effective countermeasures.

The SARS epidemic vanished almost as rapidly as it emerged, but soon afterwards physicians began warning of another scary disease--avian influenza--that's been killing birds by the tens of thousands. Since it's capable of killing humans as well, researchers are in a frantic race to perfect a vaccine before human-to-human transmission becomes endemic.

Still, all it takes for a catastrophe to occur is the right combination of circumstances, which seem to pop up frequently in China. On January 10, a case was reported of human-to-human transmission of avian flu in a Beijing family, resulting in a boy's death.

While this is no more than speculation, the media has widely reported that should an avian flu pandemic occur in Japan, with its high population density, several hundred thousand people might die before it is contained.

If only new and exotic diseases were the sole concern! But much more basic factors, like hygiene and sanitation, still can and do spread illnesses as well. Shukan Jitsuwa notes that in preparation for the Olympics, which will begin on August 8, a number of sports contingents from the U.K., Italy, Poland, Sweden and other countries have announced that their athletes will train at camps in Japan. The reason, the magazine says, is that public sanitation is still poor in rural parts of China.

"Big cities like Beijing and Shanghai, where many foreigners visit, are fairly clean, but in places the foreigners don't see, it's terrible," says a Japanese man who spent time as an exchange student in China. "You can find heaps of uncovered rubbish piled two or three meters high, and when it rains, the stuff dissolves and runs off in all directions.

"Except perhaps for the highest-class restaurants, the kitchens tend to be filthy," the man adds. "They're enough to make even Chinese want to throw up."

After devoting a paragraph to Beijing's notorious smog and its lack of safe drinking water--a potential source of type-B hepatitis--Shukan Jitsuwa warns visitors against rabies. Yes, it's still a concern: rabies is 100 percent fatal unless promptly treated and about 2,500 people in China die from it every year, so dogs are to be avoided at all costs.

"Rabies has been present in China since ancient times," notes Miyazaki. "But when people raised dogs for meat it wasn't much of a problem. More recently, however, they've been keeping them as house pets, which has made it more dangerous. The problem is that unethical dog breeders raise the animals in abysmal conditions. So rabies has become endemic."

Visitors to the upcoming Olympiad, which will run for 17 days beginning from August 8, will also need to be on their guard against AIDS. A 2007 report issued by the Chinese government estimated the number of HIV carriers at 700,000. The most likely method of contagion would be between Japanese male tourists and local prostitutes, who are said to number 20 million nationwide.

Miyazaki's advice for those who attend the games is, "For high-class hotels, maintaining quality is a matter of face. Stay and take your meals in these places and you'll probably be all right."

"The slogan of the Beijing Olympic Committee is 'One World, One Dream,'" Shukan Jitsuwa observes, adding that unless better health precautions are taken, when the world wakes up from this "dream," it might find itself confronting a host of genuine medical nightmares.

WHEN IT COMES TO HOW FOX NEWS CHANNEL IS DEPICTED THEREON, it seems that the line "whose bread I eat, his song I sing" (is it from some hymn, perhaps?) is a Sanctii Sanctorum of the highest order.

But there are times when the guard can be let down.

Witness on the weekend (hat tip to Think Progress), where liberal comedian Lee Camp tried to make a jerk out of Fox News (and almost got away with it):