You really have to listen to this 5 minute segment on the Michael Medved show today in which a liberal calls and ask’s why we don’t take this opportunity to start a dialog with Al-Qaeda since they said they were happy about the change in Congress.

I’m not kidding folks.

Listen here.

This is the new face of our Congress.

UPDATE 0945hrs PST

While those who put the Democrats in charge want to start talking to the terrorists and getting to know how they feel, maybe throw a few hugs their way, we have the Democrats in power already ripping up our defenses: (h/t Webloggin)

Legislation aimed at President Bush’s once-secret program for wiretapping U.S.-foreign phone calls and computer traffic of suspected terrorists without warrants shows all the signs of not moving ahead, notwithstanding President Bush’s request this week that a lame-duck Congress give it to him.

Senate Democrats, emboldened by Election Day wins that put them in control of Congress as of January, say they would rather wait until next year to look at the issue. “I can’t say that we won’t do it, but there’s no guarantee that we’re going spend a lot of time on controversial measures,” Democratic Whip Richard Durbin of Illinois said Thursday.

In Senate parlance, that means no.

Republicans for months have known that no bill accomplishing Bush’s goal could get filibuster-proof support from 60 senators. Sealing off any hope was what Democratic leader Harry Reid put on his lame-duck to-do list. The warrantless domestic surveillance bill was conspicuous in its absence.

We can thank the Democrat Spector for not pushing the bill through in the first place and I will blame him and his fellow cohorts, the Dem’s, if we are attacked once again. Question is, will the voters be smart enough to see the connection?

It’s looking like 9/10/01 every single day.

Then we have further translation of Al-Qaeda’s latest tape over at Powerline:

On 10 November, the website of the Islamic Renewal Organization, a Saudi dissident group headed by Muhammad al-Mas’ari and based in the United Kingdom, posted several links to a new audio message issued by Shaykh Abu-Hamzah al-Muhajir, AKA Abu-Ayyub al-Masri, leader of Al-Qa’ida Organizations in Iraq.

After listening carefully to the tape, I realized that it is not just about one particular message as it was projected in the international media. Yes indeed, the most striking part was al Muhajir’s statements about the results of the midterm elections in the US, and his direct threat against the White House. Without any doubt, to Americans today, this tape falls in the midst of their ongoing political transformations. And on that level, I will (later) provide a special reading of these statements. But the audiotape message included a revealing number of other important Jihadi issues, a real salad bowl. Here are the most salient ones:

1) al Qaeda’s penetration of American politics:

Interestingly, the message asks (American) politicians if they will implement their electoral promises to withdraw from Iraq. al Muhajir praises the choices by the voters of the enemy to “defeat Bush.” More interestingly, he uses and American vocabulary by calling the War “stupid.” Usually Jihadists calls it evil or infidel and rarely qualify it in secular “electoral” terms. But the most striking words used by a Jihadi commander is “lame duck.” When I heard him uttering the words ‘al-batta al arjaa’ I realized he was off the classical Jihadi speech. The introduction of such words will certainly affect our reading of the speech (we will expand later on this particular point)

2) Phonetics

The speech is definitely being read from a prepared text. Different subjects, with different concerns have been sawed to each other, with a variety of tones. Moreover, it is easy to realize the initial taping has been edited. His passion would explode mostly when the issues has to do with intra-Jihadist or intra Islamic issues, and his reading is faster when it is about the enemy, the infidels. The speech is a salad bowl from this perspective.

3) The intra-Islamic conflicts

They are of great concerns: The rise of Iranian-Shiite power, the Sunnis who are not joining his Jihad yet and the bad Arab regimes including the Hashemites of Jordan.

4) The allegiance to a higher commander in the region

Intriguing: al Muhajir, with great passion, committed 12,000 al Qaeda fighters to the “ameer al Mu’mineen” al Baghdadi. So, the Emir of al Qaeda in Iraq has pledged support to a regional “emir.” Hence, the experts should be paying attention to the matter and watch for a transnational “Jihad chief” in the whole region.

5) Last but not least, from the whole speech, I begin to see that the final product is the result of two types of “material.” On the one hand, the complex Jihadi jungle in the region with all the local stuff; and on the other hand Western-based (in this case American-based) Jihadist advice, relaying concepts not-native to the Iraqi Jihadists. Which explains the “salad bowl” structure of the speech and the use of alien political terms.

These and more items are very helpful in the continuous analysis of the Jihadi war of ideas against the West and the United States and the emerging war of ideas in the region.

They have obviously learned from their North Vietnamese brethren on how to get the liberals to do the dirty work for them. Now that the liberals took over they now believe we will cut and run.

I don’t doubt for one second that Bush and his fellow Republicans will fight that tooth and nail, but with every passing day I have my doubts they will be successful.