Goad
Mood:  mischievious
Ha, ha! The miserable wankers over at Eschaton are still talking about me! While this boosts my ego enormously, I shouldn't take too much pleasure in it, knowing what my presence there cost them in terms of their dignity and the embarrassment to their shallow understanding of the world.

Thus, I can hardly blame Duncan Black for banning me. It's his prerogative. I know I wouldn't want someone refuting and challenging and mocking me day after day on my dime. But that's the burden that being wrong entails. With his groupies, especially, the frustration in being bitch-slapped all the time usually manifested itself in throwing foul-mouthed and ad hominem garbage at me. But, when you got nothing, what's to be expected?

I'd wish the commenters there a Happy Fourth, but it looks like a lot of them are feeling too much hatred towards their own country today for me to bother.

A Dilemma for Some
Charles Johnson brings us more news of Iraqi insurgents taking on the jihadists:

American troops on the Syrian border are enjoying a battle they have long waited to see - a clash between foreign al-Qa'eda fighters and Iraqi insurgents.

Tribal leaders in Husaybah are attacking followers of Abu Musab Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born terrorist who established the town as an entry point for al-Qa'eda jihadists being smuggled into the country.

The reason, the US military believes, is frustration at the heavy-handed approach of the foreigners, who have kidnapped and assassinated local leaders and imposed a strict Islamic code.

Just think of how much better it would be if we paid the insurgents by the scalp!

Seeing the Whites of Their Eyes

(Thanks to Kathryn Kidd.)

Got It
Now Playing: "Johnny Has Gone for a Soldier" as sung by James Taylor
Now that I've been inexplicably banned from Eschaton, I'm looking for other venues to argue with people.

I tried Oliver Willis' site, but he deleted my only message there.

He probably likes to keep a few house conservatives around just so long as they don't get too smart. You know, some punching bags for the groupies.

And that may be part of the problem I had at Eschaton. I very obviously kicked their sorry hippy asses every time I dropped by, and Duncan Black, the owner of the site, finally banned me. But I don't know what the final straw was. Oh, well. I like arguing too much to stay out of commission for too long.

But you know what they call people who cannot abide different points of view, don't you? Fascists. That's what the Left has become, even if they are unaware of their own tendencies.

Staying with the Theme
Courtesy of Professor Reynolds, try this fun-filled link to the "underappreciated art of firecracker labels."

Memo for Morons
Now Playing: "Hi Hi Hi" by Paul McCartney and Wings
Be sure to read this brief look back by Daniel McKivergan at what we knew about Iraq's WMD programs before the war:

On March 18, 2003, the day before ground forces entered Iraq, the president confronted a broad range of concerns regarding Saddam's weapons programs, his connections to terrorist organizations, his history of aggressive behavior, his use of poison gas, and his failure to comply with the 1991 Gulf War cease-fire agreement and subsequent U.N. resolutions.

American intelligence and other foreign governments concluded at the time that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction. Senior Clinton administration officials stated that the regime possessed stockpiles. Saddam has "stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country," declared former Vice President Al Gore on September 23, 2002. And even a month after the invasion Defense Secretary William
Cohen believed we would find weapons: "I am convinced that he has them. I saw evidence back in 1998 when we would see the inspectors being barred from gaining entry into a warehouse for three hours with trucks rolling up and then moving those trucks out. I am absolutely convinced that there are weapons. We will find them."

On top of this were the findings contained in detailed U.N. reports. For example, on March 6, 2003, the United Nations issued a report on Iraq's "Unresolved Disarmament Issues." It stated that the "long list" of "unaccounted for" WMD-related material catalogued in December of 1998--the month inspections ended in Iraq--and beyond were still "unaccounted for." The list included: up to 3.9 tons of VX nerve agent (though inspectors believed Iraq had enough VX precursors to produce 200 tons of the agent and suspected that VX had been "weaponized"); 6,526 aerial chemical bombs; 550 mustard gas shells; 2,062 tons of Mustard precursors; 15,000 chemical munitions; 8,445 liters of anthrax; growth media that could have produced "3,000 - 11,000 litres of botulinum toxin, 6,000 - 16,000 litres of anthrax, up to 5,600 litres of Clostridium perfringens, and a significant quantity of an unknown bacterial agent." Moreover, Iraq was obligated to account for this material by providing "verifiable evidence" that it had, in fact, destroyed its proscribed materials.

I don't know what happened to all of this stuff, except to guess that some of it is now in Syria. Maybe some of it is in the Bekaa. But we could only have learned about these weapons in one of two ways: by actively going and seizing them ---or by becoming passive victims of their use.

We have done the right thing in Iraq, even though a lot of fools do not know it.

Today's Picture of Liz Claman

Conflicted
I just caught a glimpse on CNN/Headline News of some footage from today's demonstrations in Edinburgh, Scotland calling for an end to world poverty. A nice idea, of course, but one that can never be realized.

I mean, it's never been realized before, has it? Has the human condition recently improved so much that such a call isn't just the masturbatory political gesture we all know it is?

We're as likely to see the end of world poverty as we are to hear America-hating Leftists acknowledge the factors that make that poverty, especially in Africa: the culture of corruption, the repression of the people through violence and Islam, and political primitivity at every level of society.

Which brings me to the point of this post. Carried amidst the giant crowd snaking through the streets of Edinburgh was a large banner that read: "9-11/Inside Job/Frame Up."

Got that? The people who seek an end to world poverty are the same ones who are willing to believe the most paranoiac crap about the one country that is most indispensable to that goal.

The essentially childlike nature of the pipe-dreaming Left is itself an obstacle to the progress of mankind. These losers do not know who to root for: the "Great Satan" or the Mohammedan menace. Time to grow up, losers. Time to make judgements and live by them.

Chattering Sphincter
Now Playing: "With a Little Luck" by Paul McCartney and Wings
According to Lawrence O'Donnell, Karl Rove was the one who told Robert Novak that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA:

I revealed in yesterday's taping of the McLaughlin Group that Time magazine's emails will reveal that Karl Rove was Matt Cooper's source. I have known this for months but didn't want to say it at a time that would risk me getting dragged into the grand jury.

McLaughlin is seen in some markets on Friday night, so some websites have picked it up, including Drudge, but I don't expect it to have much impact because McLaughlin is not considered a news show and it will be pre-empted in the big markets on Sunday because of tennis.

Since I revealed the big scoop, I have had it reconfirmed by yet another highly authoritative source. Too many people know this. It should break wide open this week. I know Newsweek is working on an 'It's Rove!' story and will probably break it tomorrow.

I still don't think outing someone's spouse as a CIA operative would have been a particularly effective way of taking revenge on a Saddamite sympathizer, but maybe it is.

Anyone care to explain how that works to me?

(Hat tip to Eschaton.)

McJive-Asses
I stumbled across this very funny blog entry about stupid crackity-ass crackers trying to represent:

Nothing is better than when a giant company makes an attempt to be cool with their marketing, only to do something that is completely moronic causing the very audience it is chasing to mock them.

[...]

[W]hen I headed over to Page2 on ESPN.com[,] I instantly was hit with a great McDonalds ad that can be seen below. Although I firmly believe that McDonalds is not advocating hot man on sandwich action, it is quite obvious that they did not do their homework on urban slang. If they had, it is likely that they would have realized "I’d Hit It" is not exactly the catch phrase to use when selling fast food.

Ha, ha. I still don't know how I found this guy, but he's pretty funny.

Rats
Now Playing: "Sympathy for the Devil" by the Rolling Stones
Some people I know are very eager to see Judith Miller and Matthew Cooper go to jail for not ratting out their sources, but why is that? Why are liberals and Leftists salivating at such a prospect when it's the evil Bush-Ashcroft-Gonzales Justice Department who are threatening Miller and Cooper with incarceration?

Oh. Because the information they have might get one of Bu$hitler's cronies in trouble.

See? It's not partisan ---it's principled.

Actually, I don't really care who told Robert Novak that Valerie Plame was a CIA agent. Because, as it turns out, Plame and her self-aggrandizing, war-profiteering consort didn't care, either. Plame's day job was no secret to the chattering classes in Washington. And no crime was committed.

Tough luck, Lefties. Plamegate is still DOA, no matter how many times it shows up at the back door.

And Then, As If on Cue...
Thanks to Charles Johnson, here's an example of a point raised in the preceding post:

A Hamas-led town council in the West Bank has banned outdoor music and dance performances planned as part of a summertime Palestinian festival.

A Qalqilya council spokesman said it was partly to avoid damaging the grass.

But he also said the council had been elected to protect the conservative values of the city, which included not approving of men and women mixing.

In May the militant Hamas won the West Bank town's elections, ousting the mainstream Fatah party.

Gee, it's almost like Ashcroft draping a cloth over a statue, but not quite. I'm trying to think of the difference...

Oh! I know what it is! Hamas are a group of Jew-hating mass murderers!

Whew!

Sorry for the stretch, but I had to work it out.

Wrong
Now Playing: "A Woman in Love" by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
I don't know who this "Dafydd" character who's guest-posting over at the Captain's Quarters is, but I know I don't like his explanation of why he won't use the term Islamofascist.

[...] creating a new word for Islamic terrorism changes how we perceive it, which affects how we fight it. This is especially true when the new word is actually a contraction of two other words, Islamic and fascism, into Islamofascism. The shortening restricts the ability to think critically about the alleged connection, short-circuiting rational thought and heading straight for the emotional centers.

Nonsense. I don't use Islamofascism unthinkingly as though it were some tossed-off slur; I use it deliberately because it conveys exactly the notion these murderous Submitters have of a new global Caliphate. They do not draw any distinction between their religion and the world-state to which they aspire; therefore, Islamofascist pretty much covers it. They wish to put Sharia ---their law of militant domination of everyone from women to the dhimmis in their midst--- at the pinnacle of all human government. It is a legal and ideological system of spiritual repression, political illiberality, and genocidal xenophobia. Sounds like certain other fascist systems I've heard of.

And make no mistake: Arab nationalism and Ba'athism and even the oil kingdoms of the Arabian Peninsula are all believers in the socialist state. The state is everything with these vast tribes ---and when that is so, fascism is a natural posture. If Osama bin Laden hates the current Saudi regime in Arabia, it's only because he would prefer to see his own regime there. Osama ---just like the Madrird train-bombers--- does, indeed, wish to see a new Caliphate. Thus, Dafydd is particularly wrong when he says (emphases in the original):

Most of the militant Islamist groups around today simply have no economic ideas, plans, or principles. Yet the distinguishing characteristic of fascism -- what differentiates it from garden-variety socialism, racism, and antisemitism -- is intensely economic: fascism is totalitarianism that operates through corporatism.

So what? There's more aspects to fascism than economics or an actual affinity with Mussolini or Hitler. There's also the hatred of pluralism and the psychotic adherence to orthodoxy and even the far-reaching control over the aesthetics of cultural being. Is there any more precise a term than Islamofascist to apply to a government like the Taliban? No. It captures what they are perfectly.

Let's not presume to question why we non-dhimmis choose to use that term. I say it because I mean it.

I Saw This Myself
Over at the very hot Michelle Malkin's site is a round-up of some reactions to what Brian Williams said on the NBC Nightly News Thursday evening. I happened to catch this, too, but was struck mostly by how routine it is to hear such abject historical ignorance in Big Media and elsewhere ---and, so, went about my chores, thinking on Williams' moral equivocation for all of five seconds (emphasis added):

In his newscast tonight, "NBC Nightly News" anchor Brian Williams compared America's first presidents to the president-elect of Iran, alleged hostage-taker Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, saying they were "certainly revolutionaries and might have been called terrorists by the British crown."

At least six of the Americans held at the U.S. embassy in Tehran as hostages for 444 days claim Ahmadinejad was one of the leaders of the captors, having recognized him on television reports.

Williams' comment came in a question to reporter Andrea Mitchell.

At the end of Mitchell's report, Williams asked, "What would it all matter if proven true? Someone brought up today the first several U.S. presidents were certainly revolutionaries and might have been called 'terrorists' by the British crown, after all."

At best, Williams is a dilettante who was told by an intern that such a question would be clever. At worst, he is a news anchor.

At the perverted heart of Williams' question is the absence of his belief in American exceptionalism. It must be a burden for some to think that our system of government and the genius of our civilization is superior to that of oppressive theocratic regimes. In Williams' case, the burden is too great: why not casually compare a man (who's essentially no better than a wife-beater with respect to women's rights and a Nazi with respect to the safety of Jews) to Washington or John Adams? Who wants to be so unhip as to insist ---even if it must be subliminally--- that we are better than the mullahs and ayatollahs who run Iran? Certainly not the smug and ignorant anchor of a major American news organization.

Don't forget: the men who instituted our form of government gave rise to a nation that respects and observes human and civil rights to a degree that would have been unimaginable to the previous five thousand years of human civilization. Yes, our Founding Fathers waged war and enslaved human beings. But were they theocratic fascists with no dreams of a free society? Were they not freethinkers and men of enlightenment and pluralism? Are they not to be judged by what they finally wrought? Would you imagine that the vision that Ahmadinejad has for Iran includes such exalted ideals and realizations?

Hardly, infidel.

Some Strange Pendulum
Now Playing: "No Expectations" by the Rolling Stones
Some of the former hostages from the Iranian Hostage Crisis are saying that the newly-[elected] president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was one of their captors.

Says Col. Charles Scott:

"This is the guy. There's no question about it" [...] "You could make him a blond and shave his whiskers, put him in a zoot suit and I'd still spot him."

I wish I had the skills to PhotoShop that.

An Important Point
Now Playing: "Knowing Me, Knowing You" by ABBA
Says The Power Line's John Hinderaker:

The mainstream media continue their faux outrage over the link that President Bush drew between September 11 and the Iraq war in his speech Tuesday night; here is one of countless examples. This is, frankly, mystifying; as one of our readers pointed out yesterday, the connection between the Iraq war and September 11 was made explicit in the text of the Congressional resolution that authorized military action in Iraq.

Go ahead and read them. At least for a few hours there, the lying assholes in Congress who are [mad] at Bush right now thought that there was a link between the Saddamites and the atrocities of 11 September 2001.

One would think that administration critics like Joe Biden, John Kerry, Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer would remember what was in the resolution, since they voted for it. I can understand why it would be convenient for the Democrats to forget that the resolution that authorized the Iraq war specifically and repeatedly linked the rationale for that war to the September 11 attacks. It is not so clear why mainstream reporters and commentators are so willing to share the Democrats' amnesia.

Does anyone remember how we first took on Hitler's Third Reich? By invading North Africa. If only we had sent in more troops and sent them into Fortress Europa from the start, all our boys would have been home in a couple of months and basking in the light of victory! Those idiots Roosevelt and Marshall and Eisenhower. What incompetence!

At Least She Has a Great Rack
Courtesy of Ramesh Ponnuru at the National Review Online's The Corner, read the full exchange from Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's press conference today on the issue of the Supreme Court's recent eminent domain ruling, excerpted here (emphases added):

Q. Later this morning, many Members of the House Republican leadership, along with John Cornyn from the Senate, are holding a news conference on eminent domain, the decision of the Supreme Court the other day, and they are going to offer legislation that would restrict it, prohibiting federal funds from being used in such a manner.

Two questions: What was your reaction to the Supreme Court decision on this topic, and what do you think about legislation to, in the minds of opponents at least, remedy or changing it?

Ms. Pelosi: As a Member of Congress, and actually all of us and anyone who holds a public office in our country, we take an oath of office to uphold the Constitution of the United States. Very central to that in that Constitution is the separation of powers. I believe that whatever you think about a particular decision of the Supreme Court, and I certainly have been in disagreement with them on many occasions, it is not appropriate for the Congress to say we're going to withhold funds for the Court because we don't like a decision.

Q Not on the Court, withhold funds from the eminent domain purchases that wouldn't involve public use. I apologize if I framed the question poorly. It wouldn't be withholding federal funds from the Court, but withhold Federal funds from eminent domain type purchases that are not just involved in public good.

Ms. Pelosi. Again, without focusing on the actual decision, just to say that when you withhold funds from enforcing a decision of the Supreme Court you are, in fact, nullifying a decision of the Supreme Court. This is in violation of the respect for separation of church -- powers in our Constitution, church and state as well. Sometimes the Republicans have a problem with that as well. But forgive my digression.

The only reasonable question a person could ask at this point is what the fuck? What the fuck is this woman talking about?

Read the whole transcript at the link above. She isn't mishearing this reporter; she literally has no idea what he's referring to. Is that possible?

So what do you think of a Supreme Court that says it's okay for a local municipality to seize your home and land and sell it all to a private developer for the sake of increasing the local tax base?

Want the shock of the day? Go find out who voted how on that decision. And then tell me that it's conservatives who have a monopoly on Government meddling.

CORRECTION: I should not have written that local municipalities can "seize" one's home and land. Instead, they can now force you to sell it to them. In a homeowner's mind, this may, indeed, be a seizure, but my term was incorrect.

But, Duncan, There's Not Even an Election Going On!
I'm wearing my badge of honor. Proudly.

And Whatever Happened to the Frito Bandito?
Mood:  suave
You're gonna love on this:

MEXICO CITY, June 29 - Just weeks after President Vicente Fox made an offhand remark that angered many African-Americans, the Mexican government has taken another action that shows the gulf in racial sensibilities between the countries: it put cartoon caricatures of a black boy on a series of stamps.

Mexican postal officials on Tuesday unveiled the series of five stamps, a total of 750,000 stamps, depicting a character known as Memin Pinguin, a broadly drawn comic figure with thick lips, big eyes and protruding ears.

Created in 1943, the comic-book character was inspired by a Cuban child, its creators said. He is well-intentioned but hapless, and his mannerisms and speech reinforce 1940's stereotypes of blacks as lazy, mischievous and uneducated, anthropologists and civil rights advocates say. Comic books featuring the character are still being published in Mexico.

As my little brother once said, "Way to go, Ex-Lax!"

But here's my favorite rationalization from this story (emphasis added):

The stamps are part of a series that pays tribute to Mexican comic books. Memin Pinguin, the second in the series, was apparently chosen for this year's release because it is the 50th anniversary of the company that publishes the comic.

Publisher Manelick De la Parra told the government news agency Notimex the character would be a sort of goodwill ambassador on Mexican letters and postcards. "It seems nice if Memin can travel all over the world, spreading good news," de la Parra said, calling him "so charming, so affectionate, so wonderful, generous and friendly."

Ha, ha, ha!

Something to Make Me Smile
Mood:  happy
Get a load of this story at Charles Johnson's indispensable Little Green Footballs (emphasis added):

A hostage held alongside Australian Douglas Wood in Iraq has hired bounty hunters to track down his former captors, promising to eliminate them one by one.

Swede Ulf Hjertstrom, who was held for several weeks with Mr Wood in Baghdad, was released by his kidnappers on May 30.

Mr Hjertstrom has since claimed he shared information with US and Iraqi troops about Mr Wood which led to the release of the 63-year-old Australian engineers two weeks ago, after 47 days in captivity.

Now, he wants to find those responsible.

“I have now put some people to work to find these bastards,” he told the Ten Network today. “I invested about $50,000 so far and we will get them one by one.”

Fuck. Yeah.