Beyond Cuckoldry
Now Playing: thirty seconds on cape fear
Those Morgan Stanley ads are really creepy. You've seen them, right? Some special occasion; maybe a graduation ceremony or a wedding reception and an older gentleman is waxing nostalgic over the life of the young person whose special day it is. Then, some acquaintance pipes up to the young person, saying that "your dad" is really an old softy.

But it turns out that this weird interloper ---this overly-involved investment fund employee--- is not the father of the bride or the graduate or of anybody else; he's with Morgan Stanley and he's been long-dicking the mother of the family and probably a daughter or two for decades. And the ineffectual father is so beaten that he never forgets his place and the whole thing is just weird.

If I were a wealthy person, I would specifically not use Morgan Stanley. I wouldn't want to run the risk of them sending me some psychopathic Robert Mitchum clone to work on my portfolio.

"A Duly Enacted Statute"
Now Playing: fisa is unconstitutional
There's a lot to mine from this Eric Lichtblau and Adam Liptak article in yesterday's New York Times, but try just this one little passage in which Duke Law School professor Curtis A. Bradley shows what he knows about the President's Constitutional authority:

"Before FISA," Professor Bradley said, "it may have been the case that the president had the authority to do this kind of surveillance. What the Department of Justice is trying to do is use the prior practice to support the present program when the present program is a violation of a duly enacted statute."

Since it is taken for granted by everyone except terrorist-sympathizers that the President of the United States has a Constitutional authority as Commander in Chief to gather signals intelligence against the Islamofascist enemies of this country, it is impossible to agree that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) is Constitutional. How can the Congress pass a law that restricts one of the Executive's highest powers? That is an usurpation on two counts: on the first, the Legislative branch delimited a basic Presidential military power by statute, which is supposedly contrary to the separation of powers; on the second, that statute subjects the actions of the Executive to Judicial review, which is another blurring of the lines.

Professor Bradley concedes that it was FISA that was intended to strip away an authority the President already had and ---to anyone with a lick of common sense--- still has.

The only reason why this problem with FISA has gone unaddressed for more than a quarter-century is because it has almost never asserted itself. In the theoretical and bureaucratic worlds, this is solid policy. It makes politcians feel better about themselves. But when we are living in an age of global terrorism and global communications and travel, nonsense like FISA is self-destructive.

And let's not ignore the history of FISA. It was passed by a Democratic-controlled Congress and signed by the nauseating Jimmy Carter in 1978. It was a law intended as a rebuke to any imperial successors to Richard Nixon. As such, its potential as a tool in the hands of the Democratic Party has been wrongly reawakened off the buzz of these leaks and accusations.

Remember that Congress impeached, tried, and almost removed President Andrew Johnson after they had tried to strip away his Executive authority to simply fire a Cabinet member.

I don't know how it can be done, but FISA needs to get tossed. I hope the shysters are on the job right now.

Unambiguous
Now Playing: the theme from Welcome Back, Kotter
What's this crap I'm hearing on the TV? We shouldn't do anything that would harm the Palestinian people? Like cutting off their funding. Why? Because they didn't just elect a government of Jew-killers and psychopaths? This is one of the clearest messages we have ever received from that particular intersection on the so-called "Arab street": the overwhelming majority of the Palestinian people have chosen to be governed by terrorists.

I wish more people would appreciate what President Bush said earlier this week about the Palestinian elections. He was very clear: the Car Swarm People have spoken. They have said they are dissatisfied with the status quo.

So, now, let them appeal to their new representatives: monsters who cannot engage the Israelis without subjecting themselves to arrest or extermination. They're all criminals. They cannot function. So, clearly, they will have to go.

Red Liners
Thomas Joscelyn gives us the reason why Bush can breezily accede to this gibberish about letting Russia work with Iran on its nuclear programs. Quoting the Iranians in this New York Times article:

Kazem Jalali, the "spokesman for Parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission," explains:

"Russia's proposal is still very vague, but we cannot accept it if does not allow us to enrich uranium inside Iran. We will continue the negotiations with the Russians but it should be a partnership inside Iran."

"Having the fuel cycle inside the country is our red line, and we cannot compromise over our national interests."

Joscelyn then asks (with his emphasis):

Got that? Having the fuel cycle inside Iran is their red line. Their red line.

Who's in charge here?

Why, a few Nobel Peace Prize laureates, that's who!

The Iranians have absolutely no intention of following through on this. If the usual Leftist dickheads can't see that and can't see that eocnomic sanctions ---especially those administered by the "international community"--- are less than worthless, then they have forfeited their right to be taken seriously on any subject ever again.

Get What You Deserve
Now Playing: "Winter" by Tori Amos
Tom Maguire thinks there's some reporters with NBC News who are about to share a giant shit sandwich. Well, I paraphrase.

The following is from one of the filings made on behalf of Lewis Libby (and you can grab .pdfs of all this stuff at Tom's sub-blog). His lawyers want to know what Patrick Fitzgerald learned from Tim Russert and the others:

Another issue concerning Mr. Russert’s expected testimony which the defense needs to investigate to examine him effectively at trial is whether any of the NBC reporters who worked for him were aware of Ms. Wilson’s identity prior to July 14, 2003. (6) If any such NBC reporters knew this information before that time, the defense would be entitled to gather that information to prepare its cross-examination of Mr. Russert. Once the defense gets further information about the sources who disclosed Ms. Wilson’s employment status, we can investigate whether these sources were in communication with any reporters in the NBC Washington bureau prior to July 14, 2003, or if they talked to other individuals who might have passed this information on to NBC’s Washington reporters.

That's right, baby. Scooter's gonna take a bunch of double-dealing craphounds on the ride of their professional lives. Everybody's so interested in who betrayed the secret identity of a Great American Patriot? Let's see who knew what, you smarmy little pricks. We'll find out just how deep between y'alls cheeks your Leftist overlords go.

And subpoenas are a bitch, I'm told.

Insanitard
Now Playing: "Take Five" by the Dave Brubeck Quartet
There's many such examples of post-election madness to choose from, but Charles Johnson points us to this gem of Euro-degeneracy when it comes to dealing with the Car Swarm People. Jonathan Steele, writing in the Guardian Unlimited, says (emphasis added by Johnson):

Above all, Europe should not get hung up on the wrong issues, like armed resistance and the "war on terror". Murdering a Palestinian politician by a long-range attack that is bound also to kill innocent civilians is morally and legally no better than a suicide bomb on a bus. Hamas's refusal to give formal recognition of Israel's right to exist should also not be seen by Europe as an urgent problem. History and international politics do not march in tidy simultaneous steps. For decades Israel refused even to recognise the existence of the Palestinian people, just as Turkey did not recognise the Kurds. Until 15 years ago Palestinians had to be smuggled to international summits as part of Jordan’s delegation. It is less than that since the Israeli government accepted the goal of a Palestinian state.

Hamas may eventually disarm itself and recognise Israel. That will be the end of the process of establishing a just modus vivendi for Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East. It cannot be the first step. Today’s priority is to accept that Palestinians have spoken freely. They deserve respect and support.

Respect? For overwhelmingly electing a terrorist organization of Jew-killers to lead their country?

What the fuck's the matter with you?

A Great Pair
Now Playing: maybe it was that spy magazine cover that scarred me
National Review Online has a great pair of columns on Hillary from Mark Goldblatt and Jonah Goldberg.

I have to agree with Goldberg that Hillary is an attractive woman. I don't know what he responds to with her, but there is something I like about her, too, and I'm not sure if I could explain it without embarrassment.

But Goldblatt has the most fun with Hillary's recent Dr. King Day remarks to the black audience about how the Republicans are running the House like a plantation:

But back to Hillary's plantation crack on King Day. As I said, something about that clip was bothering me, and I couldn't figure out what it was until perhaps the seventh viewing. Then, suddenly, I realized it wasn't the sentence about the plantation; it was the following line. Here's the entire passage: "When you look at the way the House of Representatives has been run, it has been run like a plantation, and you know what I'm talking about."

Except she doesn't say talking. She says talkin'.

She drops the "g."

There should be a name for this linguistic tic, perhaps Sudden Melanin Syndrome. It's the habit of white-guilt besotted liberals of adopting the mannerisms of Ebonics in a desperate attempt to indicate their solidarity with black listeners. Naturally it’s insultingly patronizing and what it actually indicates is someone who's not comfortable in her own skin, who unconsciously conforms her very being to whatever she imagines will ingratiate her with her audience. I doubt you'll ever hear Hillary dropping a "g" at a lily white Wellesley College reunion. Or at a lily white Chappaqua bake sale. Or at a lily white pro-choice rally.

You know what I'm sayin'?

Keepin' it real ---real phony.

CORRECTION: My correspondent Rider corrected my mistake of naming Mark Goldblatt "Jeff Goldblatt." Thanks.

Eggrolling in Our Time
Now Playing: "S.O.S." by ABBA
You really need to see some of the great examples of Google protest art that Michelle Malkin is collecting over at her place.

I had to borrow one of them. It's from Discarded Lies.

I'm not sure yet where I come down on this issue of Google in China. You'd almost think it was as big a deal as Nixon in China. But it may be that Bill Gates is right:

Bill Gates, the billionaire founder of Microsoft, took the rare step of standing up for arch-rival Google today as he argued that state censorship was no reason for technology companies not to do business in China.

The richest man in the world told delegates at the World Economic Forum in Davos that he thought the internet "is contributing to Chinese political engagement" as "access to the outside world is preventing more censorship".

All three of largest internet companies - Google, Microsoft and Yahoo - have been fiercely criticised by human rights groups for toeing China's line on restrictions of free speech.

It would be a mistake to believe, as pie-in-the-sky liberals often do, that such endeavors as the internetting of China must be zero-sum games. In fact, if we are to see a transition to normal human and civil rights in the Communist and Islamist worlds ---and that is what the internet can help realize--- it is only reasonable to expect that it would come incrementally.

An imperfect interface to the rest of the world? If that is how it starts, don't damn it too much; it is more important that is ends with complete openness.

And lots of hot Chinese porn.

Credit Cad
Over at Eschaton ---where I own literally dozens of asses--- Duncan Black has linked to this story at The Carpetbagger Report where they complain that John Kerry isn't getting the credit he's due for his idea that Iran's nuclear fuel be provided by the "international community" ---that would also take back the spent fuel to keep it f[ro]m being misused in radiological bombs or worse.

Remember that shit? Kerry was saying it back in 2004. Bush and his people (and I) thought it was a stupid idea. I still do. In fact, I suspect that Bush still does, too.

So what is he doing, saying now that it might not be such a bad idea? The Carpetbag asks as much when he quotes this column in the New York Sun:

Neither Mr. Bush nor his aides directly addressed Mr. Kerry's proposal at the time, perhaps because European countries were pursuing a similar tack. A Bush campaign spokesman told the Reuters news agency that Mr. Kerry was aping Mr. Bush's nonproliferation policies.

However, Secretary of State Rice, who was national security adviser at the time, dismissed efforts to cut a deal with the Iranians. "This regime has to be isolated in its bad behavior, not quote-unquote 'engaged,'" she said in an August 2004 interview with Fox News.

The administration's reticence about Mr. Kerry's plan was not shared by Republican commentators, who accused the senator of favoring "appeasement" and warned that the Iranians could divert nuclear fuel to make bombs.

The only possible reason why George W. Bush would endorse a plan for Russia to supply and retrieve nuclear fuel to and from Iran is because he knows it will never happen ---and yet he can still benefit from appearing to give peace every chance. He'll even stoop so low as to adopt the proposal of his 2004 opponent and Old Europe, with their superior diplomatic skills.

This is a huge bluff-calling and it should be quite interesting to watch these two old sharks swim around each other. I'll bet the preparatory work alone will yield enormous intelligence value when the IAEA and UN start sticking their beaks in it.

So, shit yeah! Credit Kerry with this! I would want him to have all the credit for enabling a nuclearized mullahcracy within hailing distance of millions of pesky Zionists.

They Know Better Than You Because That's What That Election Thing Was All About
Now Playing: i think i need an ice cold coca-cola
The guys at the Power Line have a link to a new ad from the GOP in which they make sure the public gets to hear Harry Reid say:

We killed the Patriot Act.

You better get to it quick because it looks like one of them URLs that aren't meant to last.

Oh, and don't be offended by the subliminal trick they do with the dates. It doesn't mean any of my Leftist friends are un-American or anything.

Peace Be upon Him
Now Playing: multiple intelligences
I don't know why, but this guy's comment over at Charles Johnson's place has just left me in stitches:

Muslims, heed the words of John Kerry (peace be upon him) from the Mount of Switzerland. Do not accede to the prevarications of Bushitler. John Kerry (peace be upon him) will save you from the evil Bushither. Acknowledge him, John Kerry (peace be upon him) as your imam. He will lead you to the virgins. That is all you need to know. Do not seek any additional enlightenment regarding this issue. Or you will be slimed.

That's a funny damned cartoon he put in my head.

Thanks, jumpininhere.

A Comment I Left at The Left Coaster
As I told my friend Steve Soto over at his crizzib.

Steve, you may have to learn to look at Justice Alito as Israelis do the reality of Hamas being in power in the Palestinian areas: it's a development that may very well lead to the worst thing a lot of people can imagine (i.e., the loss of reproductive rights for American families), but one that might also make the choices between right and wrong very clear.

Of course, for my own part, I hope that the conservative Justices of the SCOTUS know better than to utterly ruin their party for the next generation by throwing out Roe. I suspect that they are politically aware enough to not do that to the GOP.

Kooximity
Now Playing: and a man in my position can't afford to be made to look ridiculous! now you get the hell out of here!
Y'know, I'm half-way to believing that John Kerry is a GOP plant hired to make liberalism look ridiculous.

The notoriously French-looking and decadent Europhile Senator is calling for a filibuster of a Supreme Court Justice while lounging around Davos, Switzerland? Jesus Christ. I've seen more plausible portrayals of clueless degeneracy among the villains in James Bond movies.

The only sport in this is to see which Leftist sites I visit will have the intellectual honesty to call Kerry what he is, which is the kept bitch of a very crazy widow-woman.

One of the Gifts of Growing Old
Now Playing: memory is the mother of the muses
I remember exactly where I was tomorrow morning twenty years ago.

I was a junior at John H. Reagan High School in Austin, Texas. And I was at school that day, just leaving the library there in the Old Mall, when I heard a bunch of kids laughing and joking about how the shuttle had exploded.

I was bewildered at their disrespect and it pissed me off deeply. In fact, not long after, I had occasion to write a column for my school's newspaper ---the Reagan Radar--- in which I criticized those fellow students' inexcusable behavior.

But I also recall that our librarian, a good and interesting man named Jordan Grams, told me after my little outburst that those kids were dealing with the news in the only way they knew; that they weren't as insensitive to what had happened as I believed, but were only showing their emotional immaturity.

Mr. Grams was probably right, but the disintegration of the Challenger was one of those events in my very early manhood that made me consciously value being an American and bolstered my great love of History. It was a terrible slap in the face from which the only healthy response was to insist that we recover. And I think we have.

But I also worry that we are not taking seriously enough our obligation to History and Humanity when we do not do more to make our way to the Moon and Mars and into the greater solar system. That is our final destiny and I fear that we are looking away from it again.

I will die on Earth, but Man must live everywhere.

After all, we can't allow the Quadrengians of OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb to have the whole place to themselves, can we?

CORRECTION: I don't know why I thought yesterday was the anniversary. I am embarrassed. Today, 28 January 2006, is the 20th anniversary of the Challenger Disaster, so I changed a word in the opening graf to reflect that.

I stand by the rest of the post, though.

This Is Not a Joke
Now Playing: that damned "Leyenda" from Albeniz
I had occasion this afternoon to spend some time with an Irishman from Limerick. We got to talking about our various travels and he mentioned that he had spent a year in Russia back around '93. We talked about the mobocracy that had taken over there with the usual small expressions of regret.

But then the Irishman made the remark ---with absolute innocence--- that "in theory, Communism is the perfect system, but not in practice." I laughed at the first part of his remark and basically recited the second right along with him.

I kid you not: I could not have been any older than 10 by the time I had disabsued myself of the idea that Communism would be a preferable system to ours. And I can't even say that I knew ---or know--- what ours is!

I mean, this was a business guy about my age. Where is he ideologically to think that Communism is the theoretical limit of human government?

It's a little-appreciated fact about 30-somethings ---and, I guess, it really is particular to Americans of that age--- but many of us were taught about Communism. Knowing about it was a part of our lives. We knew that there was something else out there that sought to control as many people as possible. People that were being made into something we were not.

That's a powerful thing to believe. And I also believe in the power of believing in things that are powerful to believe.

Dissent into Madness
Tigerhawk points us to this recent interview at the ultra-Leftist site CounterPunch.org with Mother Sheehan in which she holds forth on Bill Clinton:

You know, I really think he should have been impeached, but not for a blow job. His policies are responsible for killing more Iraqis that [sic] George Bush. I don't understand why to rise to the level of being president of my country one has to be a monster. I used to say that George Bush was defiling the Oval Office, but it's been held by a long line of monsters. We don't have to support our administrations to love our country. True patriots of my country dissent when our country's doing something so wrong.

Uh, oh. I'm starting to notice a pattern here. First, Mother Sheehan says she won't support the pro-war Hillary Clinton and now she says that President Clinton should have been impeached for policies that have killed more Iraqis than even the Chimperor has killed! Wow.

Oh, and read Tigerhawk's rant on this, too. It's a thorough ass-kicking.

Gog and Magog
Now Playing: "I Turn My Camera On" by Spoon
I just saw on C-SPAN that the President has come out and given his endorsement of the Russian plan to process the Iranians' uranium. It was just a bulletin item, so I don't know all the particulars, but I would guess that Bush is calling both their bluffs. Y'all want to take that on? Okay. You can both go down the toilet together.

I wonder if John Kerry will try to take credit for this plan. Maybe he'll spend a few hours on it next week while he's filibustering Sam Alito and making his party look like the goddamned idiots they are.

Can you imagine how boring Kerry is going to be? It ought to be the most mind-numbing shit ever seen on American television.

Derbyshire: "The Clarifying Effect of Hamas"
Now Playing: "The Air That I Breathe" by the Hollies
John Derbyshire writes at The Corner:

"But now, splendidly, everything had become clear. The enemy at last was plain in view, huge and hateful, all disguise cast off."---Evelyn Waugh's character Guy Crouchback in Men at War, speaking of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.

Before these network news-clowns can deny it or soften it up or euphemize it again, remember: Hamas are mass murderers. The Palestinian people have given their consent to be openly led by mass murderers.

Will the anti-Bush Left deny that, being the moral cowards they are?

Freak Not
Now Playing: all facts verified by the rhodesian police
History will note that when the Palestinian people made their first legitimate foray into democratic elections ---and it was legitimate because Jimmy Carter was on hand to verify it--- they overwhelmingly chose a party of mass murdering Jew-haters.

Hamas are the fucking Nazis, see.

I do wish people wouldn't freak out about all of this, though. The Car Swarm People have very generously shown us their very asses with this election. They have, as fools do, opened their mouths to remove all doubt of their [wisdom].

You murderous idiots will get nothing from us. No more bribes: if you savages want to be represented by a party of child-killers and wife-beaters, then you can be so without a single sou from me. I might actually write my Senators to make my feelings on that subject known.

This is what needed to happen to begin the legitimization of Israel's eventual military response to these knuckle-draggers, so don't sweat it.

Seventy Million "Kick Me" Signs
Now Playing: iranian uranium
I don't know why the bombings in southern Iran aren't getting more attention, but they should be:

Jan. 25 (Bloomberg) -- Prime Minister Tony Blair rejected Iranian claims that British soldiers were involved in two bombings that killed at least nine people in the city of Ahvaz, describing the accusation as "ludicrous."

"The Iranian government's suggestion that we somehow had a hand in yesterday's bomb explosions in southern Iran is obviously ludicrous and deserves to be treated with scorn by the international community," Blair's office said today in a statement read over the telephone.

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said British soldiers equipped and directed the perpetrators of the two bombings, according to a report by the IRNA news agency. He said British forces had provided "safe haven" and `"practical and extensive facilities" for the attacks.

You know, that's a mighty big accusation to make. Roger L. Simon wonders aloud:

What's interesting is why the Iranians would want to up the ante with the British in this way. The mullahs seem to be pushing, pushing, pushing for some reason.

I'm not sure what Simon's alluding to. The Iranians do have a habit of trying to stir up Prime Minister Blair, but this may be just as simple as picking a fight with our junior partner to see what it does to the E3 power arrangement (and the Sino-Russian responses).

But if Ahmadinejad and the other nutbags are trying to lay a pretext for hostilities of some kind against Great Britain (and its thousands of armed soldiers next door in southern Iraq), then they are stupider than I feared to guess. Do these rug salesmen realize ---if even Chiraq is making nuclear threats--- how certainly their own fates are sealed if they mix it up with Tommy?

Like I've been hearing all month: 2006 is the Year of Iran.