Switchgrass Man
There are surely billions of people on Earth who should be saying "We've just got to get over our dependence on hydrocarbons" before Bush the Younger does, right? Is there anything he is doing now or ever has done to make anyone believe that he could possibly mean that?

The Eyes of College Station Are Upon Me
Now Playing: twelfth man, inc.
All the live long day.

But it ain't nothin' but a thang, baby.

Nice to have y'all along for the ride. Maybe.

America the Beautiful
Now Playing: but this is
I hear the dollar's about to collapse. What does that even mean?

My ignorance of monetary policy and of economics, in general, is almost complete. I have no idea what most of that stuff means. That's no joke.

Hope some clever Jews and crackers get it figured out so I won't have to care.

Whitewashed Walls, a Riddle
Now Playing: "Sing This Song All Together" by the Rolling Stones
Where is America's great protest art? Are the kids giving us anything to remember these times by? Dammit.

I listen to music so seldom anymore that I don't know what's worth a damn. All my soundtrack is antique (albeit by preference).

Maybe I shouldn't try to find the protest art on the radio. Maybe the chief art form of these days is propaganda by cinema.

Breaking It Over
Now Playing: ridin' shotgun
How bad will the overreach be on this Cheney thing?

Enough to make the Democratic Party look like the estranged and incoherent spouse to the Government they are.

It's no surprise that the Vice President of the United States's shooting of a man this past weekend gives them lots of wood. The very phrases that would succinctly convey the fact of the incident are nearly erotic in their mouths: "The Vice President of the United States has shot a man in the face and chest."

It's a stunning idea, isn't it?

But are the public going to countenance this coming tide of chickenshit remarks when Cheney has shown as much personal contrition in his words to Brit Hume this afternoon as he has ever shown in public before?

It was an accident, after all. People do make them.

What can I say? You got lucky, Dick. Extremely lucky. If the worst that comes of this is giving History and Comedy a little piece of your dignity, it will be a blessing. But, for now, accept that those who hate and fear you are having their time of it and love their new metaphor for you. Don't fight it. Let it break over you.

Sieg Heil!
Now Playing: vanishing for want of motion
Hamas and the moral mutants who elected them to lead the Palestinian government are turning out some mighty unstable product.

How are these fucking things supposed to work once the batteries go dead?

More Cartoon Violence (and Some Sort of Sex)
Now Playing: some motorhead on blown-out woofers
Robert Spencer writes in FrontPage Magazine (my emphasis):

A disgraceful art exhibit in Milan has illustrated once again the deep affinity between the Left and the forces of the global jihad. In these days of Muslims the world over calling for the deaths of those who have “insulted Islam,” anyone who wants to see Oriana Fallaci beheaded need look no further than the Galleria Luciano Inga-Pin in Milan, which is exhibiting Giuseppe Veneziano’s “American Beauty” from January 19 through March 18. This is a series of paintings designed to highlight the “weakness and perversity of the ‘American way of life.’” It accordingly features straightforward, if somewhat lurid, portraits of Michael Jackson and Ronald McDonald, along with the distinctly non-American Harry Potter. Then comes a bizarre depiction of a nude man having sexual intercourse with the Pink Panther, five artistic renditions of the Abu Ghraib prison photos (each with “American Beauty” scrawled across the top), and — Oriana Fallaci’s decapitated head.

Although I find the picture of Fallaci decapitated deeply offensive, I have no plans to attack the Italian embassy, boycott Italian wine, phone in a bomb threat to the Galleria Luciano Inga-Pin, kill innocent people who had nothing to with the painting, or threaten to kill those who are actually responsible for it. Veneziano’s painting is the sort of obnoxiousness that has become commonplace on the Left, and is one of the prices of freedom of speech.

Is this painting, as my old friend from New York once taught me to suspect of other pictures, a "visual pun"? I don't know. It's funny, though.

But the painting of Fallaci is not. It is, instead, a demonstration that the Left and Islamofascism are useful to each other. The former wants to bring down the existing order; the latter ---oh, yeah...

They are natural allies, aren't they?

Totalitarians at heart; desegregators, but really homogenizers; and secret ---but not so secret--- haters of Christians, Jews, and Rome herself, my N-words. Rome herself.

(With a shout-out to LGF.)

Well, at Least They're Not Idolizing a Calf or Something Stupid Like That!
Now Playing: "Make a Move On Me" by Olivia Newton-John
Charles Johnson tells us about today's demonstration of Islamist psychopathy. The report comes from The Australian (emphasis mine):

THOUSANDS of people flocked to southern Egypt today to seek blessing from a calf they believe was born as God's reply to the publication in Europe of cartoons depicting the prophet, police said.

Some 20,000 thousand people had gathered in front of Mohammed Abu Dif's house in the village of Tunis to see the holy mammal, whose skin folds when he was born reportedly formed the words "There is no God but Allah", a police official said on condition of anonymity.

He said the villagers flocked from all over the southern governorate of Sohag to the farmer's house and had to be dispersed by police, who feared the gathering could get out of control.

Witnesses said they believed the calf was "Allah's response to current attacks against Islam", the official said.

These people are absolutely mad. Sure, we have our share of Jesus Tortillas and Virgin Mary Oil Slicks here in the West, but only the heat-addled brains of goat-pokers could come up with some horseshit like that.

As far as I know of these madmen, Allah made Mohammed the messenger with the Last Word on whatever forever. And now come along the folds of a calf's skin to spell out a slogan?

What the fuck? At long last, what the fuck?

Is this not, too, idolatry? A "holy mammal"?

How the hell do these heathens even walk upright?

Almost a President, Irredeemably a Sympathizer
Mood:  don't ask
Now Playing: gorebot of arabia
You know, if the Vice President of the United States hadn't shot a man this past weekend, what we'd all really be talking about is the disgusting speech that Al Gore gave to a bunch of Arabs in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia yesterday.

What is this anti-American dolt's constituency on this?

Former US vice-president Al Gore on Sunday said that the US government had committed ‘terrible abuses’ against Arabs living in America after 9/11 attacks, and that most Americans did not support such treatment.

Why is this inexcusable nutbag saying such things overseas? Is there really some need for it? Al Gore is doing all he can to validate these people's views of us as a nation of Abu Ghraib prison guards. Why? Is it just the money?

Mr Gore said the Bush administration was playing into Al Qaeda’s hands by routinely blocking Saudi applications for US visas.

Yes. Heaven forfend that we should see Saudi Arabia as a natural cradle of Islamofascism and that, whatever else we might say in the interest of not antagonizing our dealers, we could not simply allow the same old "visa express" to keep running unchecked. I lose absolutely no sleep over the great shame that a slightly more stringent immigration policy has visited upon all those innocent Saudi princes who can't just waltz into my country anymore.

So, again, what is the Gorebot's constituency on this?

“The thoughtless way in which visas are now handled, that is a mistake,” Mr Gore said at the Jeddah Economic Forum. “The worst thing we can possibly do is to cut off the channels of friendship and mutual understanding between Saudi Arabia and the United States.”

Sure, but this is a departure from what many on both the Right and the Left say with respect to Saudi visas. But Gore is not likely to pique any curiosity in his party on this point since the vastly more important point is that he is overseas, speaking [truth to the power] of his own country. That's what gives these Leftists I read every day the courage to go on: the potential for their party's biggest names to take the side of Muslim extremists against the United States.

What a despicable fuck Al Gore is.

The Protocols of the Whiners of Weaseldom
What the hell's the matter with the White House Press Corps? Did you get enough of NBC's David Gregory today? What a fucking whiner! Apparently, the White House and/or Dick Cheney's office failed to inform them first that the Vice President had shot a man. Is that the protocol now? David Gregory and the other clowns in the third-rate Greek chorus that sits in judgement of this Administration every day on our TVs are to be informed first whenever something of that (potential) importance occurs?

Horseshit! Time to learn that the media world does not turn on the axis of you network weasels anymore. Our flow of information does not necessarily pass through your screen, David ---and that's a good thing.

I suggested here and elsewhere a few weeks back that the White House should make it a point to engage small media outlets on big items as a way of whacking the Big Media craphounds across their collective snout a little. I doubt, though, that that's what was on Cheney's mind Saturday night.

Let's face it: the reason why no one in the media was told that a sitting Vice President shot a man until the day after it happened is because Cheney and the White House could not fucking believe how lucky they were that Harry Whittington hadn't been killed. They probably had a night of nervous laughter and spinnery before they told Katharine Armstrong (the woman on whose ranch the accident occurred) to go ahead and tell her local newspaper about it. Which she did at Dick Cheney's insistence.

These guys are human beings who make mistakes and scramble like thieves when they fuck up a caper. Let it go. Especially you, David Gregory. Who the fuck are you?

CORRECTION: I originally referred to Harry Whittington as "Bill." Good thing I didn't refer to him as "Dick Whittington".

Freak Flags
Now Playing: standing up for denmark and free speech
Be sure to catch this post at No Pasaran! on a couple of counter-demonstrators in Paris.

Their gesture of bravery in the face of this mob of rats is encouraging.

And go here to see the video.

Cross-Burners
You know why these whacked-out Islamist protesters are so fond of burning the Danish flag? It's not because they know anything about Denmark, per se, but because they are using that particular symbol as a proxy for burning the cross of Christianity.

Perhaps this small insight will be of some assistance to those who do not yet appreciate the necessity of our strongest possible response as Westerners to the threat of Islamist extremism.

Better to be reborn through the liberation of Christianity than to die a Submitter to a message of brutality and ignorance.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I Present to You the Vice President of the United States
Now Playing: a little over 200 years ago

Jimmy Carter Is a Sorry Hypocrite
Ed Morrissey tells us about this report in the Washington Times:

[...In] 1977, Mr. Carter and his attorney general, Griffin B. Bell, authorized warrantless electronic surveillance used in the conviction of two men for spying on behalf of Vietnam.

The men, Truong Dinh Hung and Ronald Louis Humphrey, challenged their espionage convictions to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, which unanimously ruled that the warrantless searches did not violate the men's rights.

In its opinion, the court said the executive branch has the "inherent authority" to wiretap enemies such as terror plotters and is excused from obtaining warrants when surveillance is "conducted 'primarily' for foreign intelligence reasons."

"Inherent authority," eh? That sounds eminently reasonable.

But you will notice that this monstrous abuse of authority happened a year before the passage of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Hmmm... is Carter himself the reason why we are now saddled with an unConstitutional law that gives our enemies free rein to work against us on our own soil?

For one reason (or the other), you have to know the answer's yes.

Never More in Earnest
Now Playing: i keep on thinking of lines from oliver stone's jfk
With a big tip of the hat to Steve Soto of The Left Coaster, let's spend a few minutes with him and Josh Marshall. The boys are powerful upset with how the Associated Press is characterizing a very particular connection between Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and the "disgraced" Jack Abramoff ("disgraced" being the epithet applied to the poor bastard with the insistency of Homeric Greek).

Marshall says that AP reporter John Solomon is not being fair to Reid when he describes the Senator's connections to Abramoff with regard to a bill that would affect the minimum wage of workers in the North Marianas Islands.

I shit you not. Now we're through the looking glass, people! Now we're finally getting down to the real divide between the Right and Left.

Marshall's problem ---although he does not know how to articulate it--- is that Solomon mentioned something Marshall believes should have been left unmentioned since the result of whatever entreaty Abramoff and his people might have made to Reid's office with regard to the miminum wage in the Marianas was one that did not go Abramoff's way.

Got that? Since Reid didn't sell out the wage-earners in the Marianas, it's almost like the constant communications and financial dealings between Reid and Abramoff are irrelevant:

In other words, whatever Abramoff and his crew might have tried to persuade Reid to do, he didn't do it.

That has to be a key part of the story, if you're discussing contacts between Marianas lobbyists on this issue. Only it's a part of the story the AP just neglected to mention.

I would suppose that in the world of sleazy bastards (elected or otherwise), where the cultivation of one by another and vice versa is a way of doing business and having a relationship, it is understood that not every pass is going to score. Lobbyists know they have to sometimes play a shit hand for the very purpose of giving themselves plausible deniability on any questions of influence-seeking.

Are Marshall and Soto denying that there were multiple interactions between Reid and Abramoff that resulted in tens of thousands of dollars in donations and huge favors being done? Look at the rest of that AP report. Reid's people knew Abramoff and his people well.

That, after all, is what the Marianas angle was intended to indicate: a long-term business relationship between the most powerful Democratic Senator and the disgraced Jack Abramoff ---contemporaneous with donations, meetings, and letters made in this and many other cases.

I am tempted to believe that Marshall's reaction to this AP story is some sort of parody of what the Left believes is the Right's approach to spinning bad news. Am I right, Steve?

One Riot, One Ranger
Now Playing: it's a texas thang, baby: you wouldn't understand
According to this Washington 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 from The 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."

Ahh, yes. Bonerific!

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.

Ha, ha, ha...

Porno for Pyros
Now Playing: Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata
My man Arkady sends this picture along for your delectation.

Enjoy.