Big Media's Pro-Democrat Agenda
Professor Hanson lays it out for you:

Contrast the Democratic reactions to respective advice offered by Congressman Murtha and Senator Joe Lieberman. The former is a respected but not nationally known Democratic figure; the latter ran for the vice presidency of the United States. The Democrats gushed over Murtha’s bleak Dean-like assessment that the war is essentially lost and that we must leave as soon as possible. But then when a vote was called on the issue, they voted overwhelmingly not to follow the congressman’s prescription.

In contrast, when Lieberman returned from Iraq and gave a cautiously optimistically appraisal that our plan of encouraging elections, training Iraqis, and improving the Iraqi economy is working both inside Iraq and in the wider neighboring region, he was shunned by Democrats — who nevertheless by their inaction essentially agreed with Lieberman and so made no move to demand an immediate withdrawal. How odd to be effusive over the Democrat whose advice you reject while ignoring the spokesman whose advice you actually follow.

This shunning of Lieberman is most apparent in Big Media's news coverage: Murtha's announcement was made into a major event and a peg for a lot of stupid commentary. But Lieberman's remarks? Practically ignored.

Via the MRC comes this notice of Kathleen Parker's recent Orlando Sentinel column discussing just this problem:

It's not that Murtha doesn't deserve airtime to voice a point of view many Americans share. It's that Lieberman surely deserves at least equal time for a point of view that other Americans, as well as most Iraqis, share.

Those who rely on traditional news sources other than The Wall Street Journal, which published an op-ed by the Connecticut senator, may not even have known that Lieberman recently returned from Iraq. Or that his conclusions were that the U.S. has to keep fighting the insurgency, and that two-thirds of Iraq is in "pretty good shape."

You don't have to be a partisan war hawk to see the difference in treatment of these two stories, from news reports to the talking-head shows. Nearly all news outlets have presented Murtha as though he were suddenly emerging from the fevered swamps of manly conscience to share his revelations with a duped public.

But Lieberman? The Leftists are slamming him for his heresy, calling him "Holy Joe" ---an obvious swipe at his religious identity as an observant Jew.

In another week, Iraq will have undergone a third national election this year in their quest for a self-governing country. I say we applaud their efforts and remember that it's American might that helped bring them to this milestone.

It's time for Democrats to quit trying to surrender in the middle of this crucial work that our best and bravest have undertaken in the heart of the Middle East.

The Best Ads on TV
I think you'd have to say that the people who do the PowerAde ads are making some of the best. I am thinking of this one I've just seen with the human catapult contest at some weird, nocturnal, and post-apocalyptic college for sadistic overachievers. The kids are launching each other across the goalposts at their local stadium ---and it's a cross between a snippet of Triumph des Willens and clandestine video of the Burning Man ceremonies.

Check it out. I think they're selling a sports drink.

The New McClellanism
Now Playing: "Strange Fruit" by Billie Holiday
Ed Morrissey has written a brilliant essay at The Weekly Standard on the Democrats' insane calls for retreat and surrender in Iraq. He calls it a return to McClellanism:

Not even during the Vietnam War did a major American party position itself to support abject retreat as a wartime political platform. For that, one has to go back to the Civil War, when the Democrats demanded a negotiated peace with the Confederate States of America and a withdrawal from the South. Celebrating the popularity of former General George McClellan, who had come from the battlefield to represent a party whose platform demanded a negotiated settlement (which McClellan later disavowed), the Confederates assumed that the war could be over within days of McClellan's presumed victory over the controversial and hated Abraham Lincoln. Even some Republicans began to question whether Lincoln should stand for reelection--until Sherman took Atlanta and exposed McClellan as a defeatist and an incompetent of the first order.

Good stuff, Cap'n.

The Contrary Position
Now Playing: "Vamos" by the Pixies
I force myself to listen to Chris Matthews and Jon Stewart and Keith Olbermann and other such celebrity propagandists because I have to keep my contempt for Leftists and liberal Democrats sharp. It's like sickening myself to achieve immunity.

Respectability in Big Media is all about taking the contrary position without any sincere regard for the logic or morality in what that might be. It is everything to resist and ridicule this President and his Administration because that is what [serious journalists and analysts] do. They don't fool with such frivolities as considering whether their positions are the same as those of the murderers in Iraq. That's because the first thing comes first: savage Bush the Younger.

You know why it's so hard to explain why we need to be in Iraq to these people? Because they haven't lived the future of that decision. They don't know what they will, which is that we were preparing the way for the necessary and welcome secularization of Islamic society. And they wouldn't want to live in the alternate future they might imagine would proceed from their ignorant pacifism and calls for immediate withdrawal if they could only see what it would entail: completely uncontrollable borders with Syria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia; huge and permanent spikes in the price of oil; rampant terroristic activity in all four of those countries and others; and a loss of American military prestige in a vital part of the world.

Oh...maybe they would want to.

From the Grounds of the Hey Dammitscold Plaza
I know that doesn't make any sense, but it had to be said.

If it's not in the 20s right now here in Austin, I'd be surprised.

Out Where We Can See It
This is what Howard Dean told a radio station in San Antonio yesterday:

..."the idea that we're going to win the war in Iraq is an idea which is just plain wrong."

You know, at least with Terry McAuliffe, the treason took a back seat to the money-grubbing.

That Dean's a whole lotta lightning rod, ain't he? Enjoy, comrades.

Plagerism
Earlier this evening, I commented on a thread at The Left Coaster (a Leftist blog where quality and character still usually count, unlike the execrable Eschaton). With regard to the news that the judge has thrown out Ronnie Earle's conspiracy charge against Tom DeLay, I remarked:

Wait a minute. Tell me again how dismissal of the conspiracy charge is irrelevant.

I think this is the soft punditry of low expectations.

Now, to a person whose news consumption does consist of more than Jon Stewart's post-coital drippings, it would be pretty clear that I was riffing off of a rather happy phrase made famous by George W. Bush. But look how fellow commenter SnarkyShark unloads on me:

Toby you fat fuck!

When you rip off someone elses words, its customary to give credit, or at least use italics.

Like this-

Talk about the soft bigotry of low expectations.

Which was lifted straight from here...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/russert-watch-wheres-th_b_11678.html

Plagerizing dick-wad

Children should be seen and not heard.

Not Misspeaking
Now Playing: when bush does it, it's somehow.. worse
Via Glenn Reynolds, here's a fascinating quote from John Kerry during his appearance on Face the Nation yesterday morning. Bob Schieffer asks (emphasis added):

Let me shift to another point of view, and it comes from another Democrat, Joe Lieberman of Connecticut. He takes a very different view. He says basically we should stay because, he says, real progress is being made. He said this is a war between 27 million Iraqis' freedom and 10,000 terrorists. He says we're in a watershed transformation. What about that?

Kerry: Let me--I--first of all, there is so much more that unites Democrats than divides us. And Democrats have much more in common with each other than they do with George Bush's policy right now. Now Joe Lieberman, I believe, also voted for the resolution which said the president needs to make more clear what he's doing and set out benchmarks, and that the policy hasn't been working. We all believe him when you say, 'Stay the course.' That's the president's policy, which hasn't been changing, which is a policy of failure. I don't agree with that. But I think what we need to do is recognize what we all agree on, which is you've got to begin to set benchmarks for accomplishment. You've got to begin to transfer authority to the Iraqis.

And there is no reason, Bob, that young American soldiers need to be going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children, you know, women, breaking sort of the customs of the--of--the historical customs, religious customs. Whether you like it or not--

Schieffer: Yeah.

Kerry: --Iraqis should be doing that.

Go read the punchline.

Kick out the Blocks
Via Charles Johnson, I find this in today's Jerusalem Post:

IAEA chairman Muhammad ElBaradei on Monday confirmed Israel's assessment that Iran is only a few months away from creating an atomic bomb.

If Teheran indeed resumed its uranium enrichment in other plants, as threatened, it will take it only "a few months" to produce a nuclear bomb, El-Baradei told The Independent.

On the other hand, he warned, any attempt to resolve the crisis by non-diplomatic means would "open a Pandora's box. There would be efforts to isolate Iran; Iran would retaliate; and at the end of the day you have to go back to the negotiating table to find the solution."

What does el-Baradei mean when he says that Iran would "retaliate" against those who would isolate it? Is he passing along some word from the Party of God to Israel?

Also, there shouldn't be any question that Ahamdinejad is a madman. He and the mullahs can't keep from putting their own country on the fastrack to re-education.

Murderers' Row
Now Playing: something from Bing Crosby
Yeah, you're going to need to check out this post over at Aaron's cc. It's a positively undeniable blow-by-blow from the Democrats' anti-Saddam rhetoric of the past decade.

The same public that gives its opinions so fickly cannot be trusted to remember anything older than about a month. So what is their opinion worth when they cannot be bothered to study or to recall anything?

I realize that partisanship is inevitable even in times of war, but there's a name for the type that pursues it beyond its warrant. Let's not let our irreparable traumas from these past election losses make us into the political wing of our enemies' cells.

Try to distinguish yourselves, comrades ---from the enemies of your country.

X-Posting
Here's what I said over at Steve Soto's place in response to Juan Cole's latest [analysis] of the situation in Iraq:

Cole:

Indeed, by chasing after imaginary weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, he may have lost any real opportunity to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon should it decide to do so.

Non sequitur.

Another way of saying that Bush the Younger lied about Iraq having WMD is that he knew, as a matter of fact, that they did not have any. Which means that he purposely chose to invade a country next door to another country that even the IAEA acknowledges does have a nuclear weapons program. That's far wiser strategery than any of you can admit. Thus, the greatest military machine on Earth now sits on the east and west flanks of Iran. It is a machine that has demonstrated to all the world that it does and will act against Islamist terrorism and Arab dictatorships with enormous destructive power.

How does this fait accompli ---along with whatever political, economic, cultural, and intelligence tools we will eventually bring to bear on Iran--- hinder us from neutralizing their threat?

Cole's analysis is crap.

Pushpolled
Now Playing: "Such Great Heights" by The Postal Service
The screenshot you see here was taken from CNN's homepage yesterday afternoon.

It epitomizes the abject ignorance, defeatism, and meaninglessness of the anti-Bush/anti-war Left in the West today.

Our Commander-in-Chief and our military cannot wage the War for Iraq by referenda. We cannot succeed in destroying Islamofascism there or anywhere else if Big Media insists on undermining our efforts with their stupid horse-race mentality.

If these [internationalists] are such fucking fans of Islamist doctrine and violence, then why don't they just be upfront about it?

But if they actually do realize that animals like Zarqawi need and deserve to be eradicated, then they have an obligation to do more to educate the world about such Islamofascist enemies. It's a real obligation, as I see it, but Big Media won't do it because they are frightened little dhimmified losers.

Like I say, beat up on Bush the Younger all you want for his refusal to make The Argument every fucking day of the week. That's on him ---and he damned well knows it. But don't dare pretend that there aren't great things to be achieved through a democratized and friendly Iraq. Our men and women are fighting and dying for that potential. It's a moral outrage that the people who presume to bring us the news can't also bring themselves to take the right side in this conflict and enlighten the public.

Monstrously Stupid
In the course of discussing a recent assault case, local KTBC reporter Crystal Cotti just said that students at Travis High School told her that the school's administration actually shortened the lunch break earlier this year to reduce the opportunity for the kids there to get into fights.

I don't know if that's true, but if it is, then the prinicipal there should he ashamed of himself. His whole crew should be.

Shit like that is a big reason why I couldn't hack it as a public schoolteacher. Do these overpaid assistant vice-morons realize what sort of stress it puts on a growing body to make eating a rushed and inconvenient ordeal? It's monstrously stupid to punish every student just because some of the vermin posing as students can't keep it together.

Whatever happened to the lunch hour? Why is there such pressure to force young people through these schedules where there's no time to relax and socialize and be teenagers? That, too, is what high school is all about ---and the idea that students whose bodies are still maturing on a daily basis ought to be made to wolf down their grub and rush off to the next thing is just stupid.

Lengthen the lunch break, get rid of unnecessary homeroom and "advisory" bullshit, and flush the pieces of shit who want to get into fights. Strangle those worthless fucks with their own shoestrings and start doing right by good kids.

UPDATE: I can't seem to find any proof of this shortened lunch break policy, but I'll look into it. It may have been a district-wide policy change for all I know.

Urinal Puck
Have you seen the photos of Mother Sheehan's recent book-signing in Crawford? Word has it that they are as fraught with metaphoric meaning as the President's attempt to exit a press conference in China. You know: no exit strategery and all that?

Yeah, baby.

Bombing al-Jazeera ...and the Beeb
Is it true that the President wanted to bomb the offices of the al-Jazeera television network in Doha, Qatar and "elsewhere" back in the spring of 2004? That's what the Mirror said last week (emphasis mine):

Its single-storey buildings would have made an easy target for bombers. As it is sited away from residential areas, and more than 10 miles from the US's desert base in Qatar, there would have been no danger of "collateral damage".

Dozens of al-Jazeera staff at the HQ are not, as many believe, Islamic fanatics. Instead, most are respected and highly trained technicians and journalists.

To have wiped them out would have been equivalent to bombing the BBC in London and the most spectacular foreign policy disaster since the Iraq War itself.

And that's supposed to be an argument against such a plan? Ha, ha. Lousy fucking clowns.

Party of Treason
Now Playing: "Street Spirit" by Radiohead
No one believes that the anti-war Left actually cares about the military or about the lives from amongst its ranks that have been lost or affected in the fight against our Islamofascist enemies. But because it makes good copy or TV to confuse the supposed concerns of these rodents with the true interests of the American people, we are expected to take the word of Big Media seriously on the topic of war.

But I just can't.

I don't care what goddamned Howard Fineman says to the excremental Keith Olbermann about anything. These miserable rats squeak at each other and groom each other's hides on the TV every night, but am I supposed to believe that they have our country's or our military's best interests at heart? Get real. This isn't about conscientiously defending the lives of American servicemen and women against the irrationalities of war ---this is only about a couple of liberal Democrats getting their shots off at the President.

And when the only reason why you are anti-war and anti-military is because you can't cope with the grief of losing the past two Presidential elections, then what that makes you is a fucking tool in the hands of the party of treason.

The Old Man
This is a picture of my old man when he was a young man.

He passed away ten years ago tonight.

I don't think I've done much in the decade since that awful night that would genuinely have made him proud, but I certainly don't think that he would be ashamed of me. Maybe just a little disapppointed that I should have so little ambition.

But life is long and my pace is not his. There is time enough to make him proud ---and that is what I will choose to believe.

I miss that man beyond words. But so long as I live, so does he. Whatever I accomplish is his, too.

I give thanks to him tonight that I exist. That is the first thing any son must do.

Some Unusual Crap
The guys over at the Power Line direct my attention to this article by Murray Waas in the National Journal on the undying subject of the Plame Unpleasantness (emphasis mine):

The Plame affair was not so much a reflection of any personal animus toward Wilson or Plame, says one former senior administration official who knows most of the principals involved, but rather the direct result of long-standing antipathy toward the CIA by Cheney, Libby, and others involved. They viewed Wilson's outspoken criticism of the Bush administration as an indirect attack by the spy agency.

And why shouldn't they, Murray? It was George Tenet and his miserable bunch of lawyers who referred this nonsense to the Department of Justice after his agency basically allowed Wilson to run his fucking mouth to anyone who would listen to him talk about Niger.

At this point, it would take a lot to convince me that Tenet wasn't ratfucking the White House on the WMD issue.

Those grievances were also perhaps illustrated by comments that Vice President Cheney himself wrote on one of [Douglas] Feith's reports detailing purported evidence of links between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. In barely legible handwriting, Cheney wrote in the margin of the report:

"This is very good indeed … Encouraging … Not like the crap we are all so used to getting out of CIA."

Of course, what fascinates me most about all of this is that it's the anti-war/anti-intelligence Leftists who are sticking up for the CIA. Have you noticed that? They will sometimes lapse into their usual mode and even criticize the Company for its incompetence, but most of the time these days, the anti-Bush Left are perfectly happy to find heroes like Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson coming in from the cold to help them undermine this Administration.

Expediency is the the new ethic, see.

As for whether Saddam was linked to al-Qaeda, I have only one name for you: Zarqawi. There's your answer, friends. If you can explain Zarqawi's activities in Iraq in the aftermath of the War for Afghanistan without involving the Saddamites' collusions, then it may be you who is manipulating the evidence.

This Is Me Giving You the Finger, Animal Lovers
Mood:  happy
Have I mentioned lately that people who are better with their pets than they are with other people are actually goddamned sociopaths? No, really; it's true. Dressing them up and posing with them for Christmas photos? Talking about them glowingly and attributing human qualities to their behavior? Spending more quality time and generally showing more care and concern for their welfare than for that of their own family?

These people are fucking garbage.

And I want them to know that I know they are.

Sympathies
The Left believes in the perfectability of the individual by elevation of the State.

The Right believes in the perfectability of the State by elevation of the individual.

Therefore, Leftists are more naturally inclined to favor the ideology of Islamist absolutism, where the individual is subsumed into the community; and Rightists are more naturally inclined to the liberalism of Christian doctrine, which teaches free will and personal redemption.

That is to say, the American Left are true dhimmis. How they would reconcile themselves to the homophobia, xenophobia, and misogyny of Islam is something I'd rather not suffer to see.