One Riot, One Ranger Now Playing:it's a texas thang, baby: you wouldn't understand
According to thisWashington Times report on President Bush's recent meeting with the Congressional leadership to get the Patriot Act renewed:
"If I worried about the polls, I'd be laying on the ground in the fetal position," Mr. Bush said.
I often ask my ideological opponents why they are so enamored of polls and numbers when they never seem to make any difference. So Bush's approval rating is 42 percent or whatever it is? Who cares? If it were half that, he would still be right to prosecute the war against Islamofascism and if it were twice that, it wouldn't make it any more right. That may not be an especially "democratic" way of thinking about it, but let's be serious: the American People are going to have to have cartoon violence in their own streets before they finally brush off the liberal losers who try to undermine this President and give him their support as they have done before.
The End of Pornography Now Playing: "Sweet Surrender" by Sarah McLachlan
We learn fromThe Jawa Report that the magazines in Mexico are saying that Salma Hayek and Penelope Cruz are lovers.
It all began when the two were promoting there upcoming film Bandidas.
During a press conference to promote the film, Penelope reached over and grabbed Salma's butt in front of reporters. Lesbian rumors quickly hit Mexico.
"I grabbed Slama's ass just to keep things moving," Cruz told the National Enquirer. "And the energy changed when I did that."
Don't Look Now Now Playing:some King Crimson you've probably never heard of before
John Hinderaker has a great response to the Associated Press report issued today with the headline "Libby: White House 'Superiors' OK'd Leaks."
The term "leaks," as Hinderaker points out in the context of Lewis Libby, suggests at first blush that Cheney ordered Libby to rat out Plame.
Actually, the story has nothing to do with anything Plame-related.
In fact, what Libby is saying is that he was given the task of leaking information from the 2003 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) to the press because that's what chiefs of staff sometimes do to move the news and to inform the public.
Do you realize how much of what we know is classified information that was deliberately shared with a member of the press? Much of our diet of information about the Government comes from the Government. The gumshoes are simply listening to their masters' voices. From the AP:
Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said in documents filed last month that he plans to introduce evidence that I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's former chief of staff, disclosed to reporters the contents of a classified National Intelligence Estimate in the summer of 2003.
The NIE is a report prepared by the head of the nation's intelligence operations for high-level government officials, up to and including the president. Portions of NIEs are sometimes declassified and made public. It is unclear whether that happened in this instance.
Hinderaker responds:
"Unclear"? How is it "unclear"? The NIE has been declassified since the summer of 2003, and we have quoted from it many times since then. These proceedings from the House of Representatives show that the NIE had been declassified no later than July 21, 2003. So it's not exactly a mystery whether "that happened in this instance." There are only two alternatives here: either AP reporters are too lazy to spend 30 seconds on Google to educate themselves as to what happened during the ancient history of 2003, or they write articles that are deliberately misleading.
Go look in your local rag this morning. How many stories of national and international import mention senior administration officials or sources familiar with the case?
Do we not tell ourselves how we know what we know? Would that be too embarrassing to our intellectual dignity?
No, I don't believe in neutral observers. I don't think neutral information exists. That's not how people learn.
He is not charged with leaking classified information from an intelligence estimate report.
Yeah. But this is a story about something, isn't it? Probably and stuff.
Shitting on Katie Couric's Perky Little Head
I am not seeing nearly enough about the pigeons who shat on Katie Couric's head while she was doing a live spot from Milan yesterday morning. Drudge had a piece on it and a few others have picked up on it, but I WANT VIDEO, MAN!!!
If anyone reading this can hip me to a downloadable video clip of Katie Couric, I would really appreciate it.
My plan is to purchase several big-screen plasma TVs and install them throughout my house so that no matter what room I am in, I can always look up to see an unending loop of Katie Couric getting shat on by pigeons.
Barometric Choices Now Playing: "Us" by Regina Spektor
Professor Reynolds says that John Bolton's been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. The report:
(CNSNews.com) - John Bolton, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, is one of two Americans who have been nominated for the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize.
Last year, Democrats and a few Republicans refused to confirm Bolton to the U.N. post, forcing President Bush to resort to a recess appointment.
Bolton and Kenneth R. Timmerman were formally nominated by Sweden's former deputy prime minister Per Ahlmark, for playing a major role in exposing Iran's secret plans to develop nuclear weapons.
They documented Iran's secret nuclear buildup and revealed Iran's "repeated lying" and false reports to the International Atomic Energy Agency, a press release said.
No more rewards for the moronic Jimmy Carter or the wilfully Egyptian Mohammed el-Baradei ---intended as rebukes to George W. Bush? A remarkable shift for these dhimmified Europeans, isn't it? It's almost like they understand the nature of the storm that's coming.
So Crazy It Might Just Work Now Playing:plop plop fizz fizz
Scott Ott of Scrappleface fame gives us this report:
Dean: Rove Plans Bush Failures to Embarrass Dems
Democrat National Committee (DNC) Chairman Howard Dean today accused White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove of engineering a series of Bush administration failures and scandals in order to highlight the Democrat party’s inability to capitalize on political opportunity.
Wretched Old Hypocrite
In a ham-handed slap at the current President, the wretched old hypocrite Jimmy Carter complained yesterday about how Dr. King and his wife had been wiretapped by the Government. But Carter didn't mention, as the Captain did, that
the wiretaps were approved by Bobby Kennedy, one of the saints of his party, and that the reasons for it had nothing to do with national defense.
Bobby Kennedy, eh? That's just terrible. And I'm sure that other icon of the Great Society, Lyndon Johnson, had nothing to do with using J. Edgar Hoover against their mutual enemies, either.
The sooner you understand that Democrats can get away with anything, the closer you'll be to understanding how the liberal Big Media and its heroes manipulate America's historical memory.
Anti-Danish Cartoon Rallies Now Playing:what a very weird notion
I learned from Roger L. Simon's blog about how the mullahs put on a demonstration. From the website of the Student Movement Coordination Committee for Democracy in Iran (SMCCDI):
An Islamist crowd, composed mainly by Bassij Para-military force's members, smashed windows and threw several petrol bombs and pieces of rocks at the Austrian and Danish embassies in Tehran.
The organized rallies were intending to show, what was supposed to be, the massive indignation of Iranians over the publication of cartoons depicting the Islamic Prophet Mohammad. But despite all supports from governmental circles and advertisements made by Mosques related to the theocratic regime, which had called for a massive participation, the demonstrators stayed under 400 individuals while the Iranian Capital has over 12 millions of inhabitants.
The regime's regular Law Enforcement Forces made a show of resistance in facing the Islamists. The scenario was to fill the lack of Iranians "collective indignation" while showing, as well, some aspect of challenges for foreign journalists reporting from Iran.
The more I read about a nuclearized Iran, the more I realize that they are going to have to be stopped before they vaporize Tel Aviv.
I am unwilling right now to advocate broad military action against Iran. I believe we must, instead, engage the pro-democracy forces there and use all means at our disposal to bring down the regime from within. That means doing what the Israelis have done with the leadership of Hamas: kill them wherever they can. Make being a fascist leader in Iran a nasty, brutish, and short experience. We have friends inside Iran. People who can commit assassinations against these nutbags.
Wouldn't that be preferred to our other options, which are very limited?
There Goes the Neighborhood
I read about this in passing earlier today, but just had to make sure y'all saw it, too, before I retire.
A LOST world rich in new animal species so unafraid of humans they permit scientists to pick them up and carry them away for observation has been discovered in the warring Indonesian province of Papua.
The remarkable find - a veritable Garden of Eden that has preserved species hunted to near extinction elsewhere - was announced yesterday by Australian biologist Stephen Richards, who led an international team of scientists into Papua's steep, jungle-covered mountains.
The group has documented new species of frogs, rodents and butterflies, a new species of honeyeater bird, a bird of paradise unseen for decades, rarely seen echidnas and a tree kangaroo never before seen in Indonesia.
Get a load of that guy's expression. He's all, like, whatever, dude.
The Alien Nation Now Playing: "Living for the City" by Steve Wonder
Look at that sign.
I take this as a general concession from Islam that, since they have no respect for the principle of free speech, neither can they believe that it is capable of being illegally monitored or used against them.
Imago Porci, Mofo! Now Playing: "Walk on By" by Dionne Warwick
Via Professor Reynolds (natch), have a look at this report from "The Politicker" at the New York Observer:
The editorial staff of the alternative weekly New York Press walked out today, en masse, after the paper's publishers backed down from printing the Danish cartoons that have become the center of a global free-speech fight.
Read the explanation from former Editor-in-Chief Harry Siegel. It would be, as Jeff Goldstein might say, all about the hypocrisy.
And let me just add something which has apparently been scared out of just about everybody (and, no, I'm not saying that what I am about to say is shit): our society is filled with enough super-talented refugees from organized religion to come up with vastly more offensive anti-Muslim cartoonery than what those Danes managed. Do you doubt that? America has vulgarity to burn. And even though I am not an especially gifted artist, I could draw ---if I wanted to--- the most offensive fucking cartoons about Mohammed that any of you wankers have ever seen. Stuff that would appall Larry Flynt on ecstasy.
Un-Nonplussed Now Playing:wellstone and good
I am actually unconcerned about the politicization of Coretta Scott King's funeral today. She and her husband were political forces unto themselves ---and even in death that was to be her purpose.
She was a dignified and beautiful lady, and I am glad that she was who she was when she was.
As for how she and her children have managed the legacy of their father and husband, the less said on a day like this the better.
The First Black President Likes the White Womens
I'm catching a snippet of Bill Clinton at Mrs. King's funeral earlier today and he makes some allusion, apparently, to Hillary's eventual succession to the Presidency.
The crowd, overwhelmingly black, blows the roof off with applause.
I mention this with much amusement, of course, since it will not occur to a great many on the Left wing of the Democratic Party (you know: the ones with all the piss and vinegar in 'em) that Hillary already has the black vote sewn up for 2008. It's hers. But the granola-heads on the anti-war Left want nothing to do with her.
At least that's what they say now.
So start lovin' it, baby! The 2008 Democratic primaries should be extremely interesting. All the college boys fighting it out with the descendants of the Great Society.
When Will It End? Now Playing: "Over Under Sideways Down" by the Yardbirds
Proponents of the War on Islamofascism often turn to the justification of contingency: our Government is only surveilling people because we are in "a time of war."
But with no formal declaration of war and with enemy forces that do not comport with our conventional notions of an organized military, when will we be able to say that we are no longer in a time of war?
Because that's where we want to be: back in peacetime America.
Maybe the reason why this Administration is doing such a strange job of explaining its intelligence-gathering is that it cannot do more without revealing and wasting all its advantage. Why can't morons like Chuck Schumer and Russ Feingold and the others consider that possibility? Why can't they remember what other Presidents in other wars have had to do?
We are in a time of war. The Left can call it "war" and they can rail against the Chimperor and his imperialist mercenaries who got us into it and they can ignore the reasons why we are there ---but they will have a role to play in determining when the war will be over for us. So they had best learn to take responsibility for it now.
When will the War on Islamofascism be over, comrades? You are more involved in the answer than you know.
Inapplicable Now Playing:a lot of posh talk
Jeff Goldstein refers us to Andrew C. McCarthy's recent dismantling of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. Here is just one hammerblow: a 1994 memo from Assistant AG Walter Dellinger to Bill Clinton's White House Counsel Abner Mikva on the issue of statutes sent to the President for his signature ---or ones already imposed upon him--- that may very well be unConstitutional. Dellinger wrote (my emphasis):
I have reflected further on the difficult questions surrounding a President's decision to decline to execute statutory provisions that the President believes are unconstitutional, and I have a few thoughts to share with you. Let me start with a general proposition that I believe to be uncontroversial: there are circumstances in which the President may appropriately decline to enforce a statute that he views as unconstitutional.
McCarthy observes:
Evidently, presidential power -- including the authority to ignore statutory restrictions that would curtail the President's inherent power to collect foreign intelligence information and protect national security -- was worthy of vigorous defending when it was being wielded by a Democrat.
So what is Dellinger's opinion of this President's exercise of his Constitutional authority to gather signals intelligence? Need you even ask?
Dellinger is a signatory to this open letter to the Members of Congress (published in the New York Review of Books) in which we read the following:
We do not dispute that, absent congressional action, the President might have inherent constitutional authority to collect "signals intelligence" about the enemy abroad. Nor do we dispute that, had Congress taken no action in this area, the President might well be constitutionally empowered to conduct domestic surveillance directly tied and narrowly confined to that goal—subject, of course, to Fourth Amendment limits. Indeed, in the years before FISA was enacted, the federal law involving wiretapping specifically provided that "nothing contained in this chapter or in section 605 of the Communications Act of 1934 shall limit the constitutional power of the President...to obtain foreign intelligence information deemed essential to the security of the United States." 18 U.S.C. ? 2511(3) (1976).
But FISA specifically repealed that provision, FISA ? 201(c), 92 Stat. 1797, and replaced it with language dictating that FISA and the criminal code are the "exclusive means" of conducting electronic surveillance. In doing so, Congress did not deny that the President has constitutional power to conduct electronic surveillance for national security purposes; rather, Congress properly concluded that "even if the President has the inherent authority in the absence of legislation to authorize warrantless electronic surveillance for foreign intelligence purposes, Congress has the power to regulate the conduct of such surveillance by legislating a reasonable procedure, which then becomes the exclusive means by which such surveillance may be conducted."
A dozen years ago, when the pain-feeling snake oil salesman Bill Clinton was in the White House, Dellinger made the case that the President is not necessarily obligated to follow those statutes he believes are unConstitutional.
But now, with the Chimperor in charge? Well, the Congress can insinuate itself into the areas of Presidential authority. It can erect a judicial firewall against the President's authority to root out our enemies. It can hold him to stupid and arbitrary rules, such as limiting warrantless searches in wartime to the first two weeks of a declared war. Whether we say the Authorization for Use of Military Force is something like a declaration of war, it really isn't ---and once again we realize that the FISA is an inapplicable statute that makes no sense in the current state of the art of surveillance.
The FISA is an unConstitutional weapon that was created by the Democratic Party a quarter century ago and is being used again in the service of its political agenda today. Keep pursuing this, you idiots, and you'll guarantee another electoral loss come November.
Yeah, Alright: One for the Thumb Now Playing:steelers by ten
I don't like the Pittsburgh Steelers for the sole reason that I am a Dallas Cowboys fan and still get pissed off at the very sight of Lynn Swann.
But since my guys ain't in Super Bowl XL, I really have no good reason to begrudge the Steelers their success. And, after all, I do have familial links to that town and I really respect the Rooney family and I like the class angle on this, so have at it, you'ns: I'll be rooting for you today.
A Board with a Nail in It Now Playing:run, kang! run, kodos!
Over at the Belmont Club, Wretchard references this Ralph Peters essay ---and I think it's got a nail in it:
A paradox of our time is that the overwhelmingly secular global media--a collection of natural-born religion-haters--have become the crucial accomplices of the suicide bomber fueled by rabid faith. Mass murderers are lionized as freedom fighters, while our own troops are attacked by the press they protect for the least waywardness or error. One begins to wonder if the bomber's suicidal impulse isn't matched by a deep death wish affecting the West's cultural froth. (What if Darwin was right conceptually, but failed to grasp that homo sapiens' most powerful evolutionary strategy is faith?) Both the suicide bomber and the "world intellectual" with his reflexive hatred of America exist in emotional realms that our rational models of analysis cannot explain. The modern age's methods for interpreting humanity are played out.
What do you call an anti-war Leftist who has so little sense of intellectual or moral responsibility that he would ally himself with Muslim extremists? These are sharia-abiding haters whose unambiguous rejection of democratic and secular principles obligates them to hate the anti-war Leftist as much as the pro-war Christian infidel.
Or does the typical anti-American journalist think that his own secular cosmopolitanism is going to make him an unjudging neutral in the eyes of an Islamist? The Christian and the atheist are the same thing to Mo: infidels. He also knows that many of these infidels are in favor of any or all of the following: pederasty, ice-cold beer, women in shorts, a catchy dance number, bitching about their leaders, gay marriage, depictions of Christ, and a big fat pork roast.
Why tolerate any Mohammedan who wants to take those things away from you?
Don't be a fucking dodo. Even pacifists have enemies, whether or not they know what to call them.
It Gets Worse
You know, what makes this whole cartoon violence thing so outrageous is that these cartoons aren't even that mean. Or funny. In fact, they're rather tame.
How are these nutjobs supposed to top themselves when they start looking into the really vicious anti-Muslim cartoons and images?
