Inevitably, a Dog Named Toby
I don't really care for dogs much, but my friend in New York sends this CNN story about a dog named Toby. He's a pretty cute Jack Russell terrier. Go fetch.

Thank God the International Community Thinks the Iraqi Elections Were Legitimate!
The BBC reports:

International observers have praised the organisers of Iraq's parliamentary election, which they said generally met international standards.

A spokesman for the International Mission for Iraqi Elections conceded that there had been minor problems, but said the vote had generally gone well.

About 11m Iraqis were estimated to have voted, a turnout of about 70%, with results due in two weeks or more.

Seventy percent is pretty fantastic. In fact, it's too positive an event for even asshole commies in Big Media to spin or obscure.

Remember last year? Fifty-nine percent of eligible Americans turned out in the re-election of George W. Bush. And without the fear of being murdered in the middle of the street.

Drinking and Blogging
Mood:  suave
Now Playing: "Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead!" by just about anyone you ask, frankly...
That's what I'm up to right now. Drinking surprisingly good Bloody Marys and telling you about it.

I don't remember the last time I drank hard liquor. At least six months. I usually get into and out of the bottle after two or three drinks and don't get back around to it for another several months.

But I don't need no damned celery or celery salt. Just some cheap vodka, some lemon juice, Tabasco, ice, and tomato juice. I hear V-8's the better way to go, but I don't have any at hand.

Know what happens when you make fun of Duncan Black's irrelevant notice of some stupid poll showing that Bush is a monster?

He bans you.

Too bad that the creatures inhabiting his day lounge reflect so poorly on him and his cause. They just can't stand to be bothered when it's time for their apple sauce, meds, and The Price Is Right on the old black-and-white.

Don't forget, vermin: dissent is patriotic.

(Thanks to Anecdotage.com for the picture.)

A Great Face
This pretty young lady is Tamara Chalabi. She voted for her dad in yesterday's elections in Iraq.

Read her story at Slate at the link above. You will also find a larger version of this picture there where I borrowed it.

What a great face!

You're Going to Need to Read This
Now Playing: "Feel Like I Do" by Peter Frampton
You're going to need to read this fantastic narrative from Michael J. Totten in the L.A. Weekly.

It's all about him hanging out with Hizbollah.

The man sitting next to me introduced himself as a Lebanese journalist named John.

“Where are you from?” he asked me.

“United States,” I said.

“Ooh,” he said. “Don’t tell them that.”

“They already know,” I said. You can’t just walk into a Hezbollah event without being vetted.

I thought I had an idea what Lebanon would feel like if these guys ruled it. It would be a micromanaging Daddy State, the very opposite of what it is now. But I had no idea. Not yet.

Don't miss this one.

Light is, indeed, a disinfectant to those who would know.

Meshuggener
I'll tell you what, boy: that ol' Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is one crazy fuck. Charles Krauthammer explains that the new Iranian president

is a confirmed believer in the coming apocalypse. Like Judaism and Christianity, Shiite Islam has its own version of the messianic return -- the reappearance of the Twelfth Imam. The more devout believers in Iran pray at the Jamkaran mosque, which houses a well from which, some believe, he will emerge.

When Ahmadinejad unexpectedly won the presidential elections, he immediately gave $17 million of government funds to the shrine. Last month Ahmadinejad said publicly that the main mission of the Islamic Revolution is to pave the way for the reappearance of the Twelfth Imam.

Is there any question that we need to have all of our available fingers in the pie of the Middle East right about now? We need to be there to put the squeeze on this unstable bastard and keep him from destroying the region.

After his U.N. speech in September, Ahmadinejad was caught on videotape telling a cleric that during the speech an aura, a halo, appeared around his head right on the podium of the General Assembly. "I felt the atmosphere suddenly change. And for those 27 or 28 minutes, the leaders of the world did not blink. . . . It seemed as if a hand was holding them there, and it opened their eyes to receive the message from the Islamic Republic."

Jesus Christ! The guy is positively insane.

It's only a matter of time until Israel unloads on him. They have no choice. Ahmadinejad says the Jews should be exterminated.

But he means himself.

Laying Down a Weasel
This is in today's Washington Post (emphases mine):

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said yesterday that Democrats should not seek a unified position on an exit strategy in Iraq, calling the war a matter of individual conscience and saying differing positions within the caucus are a source of strength for the party.

This is almost shockingly bullshit. This woman has done everything she can to lead the opposition in her Democratic Party to this war and to our President. For her to now disavow the clear anti-war direction of her party in such a way is goddamned nonsense.

Pelosi said Democrats will produce an issue agenda for the 2006 elections but it will not include a position on Iraq. There is consensus within the party that President Bush has mismanaged the war and that a new course is needed, but House Democrats should be free to take individual positions, she said.

This is absurd. Opposing the war is a major reason why Pelosi was made the Minority Leader in 2002. It's what made John Kerry the party's nominee in 2004 and Howard Dean the party's chairman in 2005. It's what energizes the party's base and what has catalyzed the party's psychotic hatred of George W. Bush. It simply isn't serious to say that the Democratic Party can abide whatever pro-war position its membership might adopt because that is not what it has done in any meaningful way up to this point.

But, you see, this is Pelosi's way to let Hillary Rodham Clinton off the hook. Otherwise, I have no idea how such a statement is operable.

"There is no one Democratic voice . . . and there is no one Democratic position," Pelosi said in an interview with Washington Post reporters and editors.

Pelosi recently endorsed the proposal by Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) for a swift redeployment of U.S. forces from Iraq over a period of six months, but no other party leader followed, and House Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) publicly opposed her.

And why is that? Because the Democratic Party is hedging its bets. Because they are not to be taken seriously on matters of war or national security. They are inconsistent poseurs and hypocrites who do not stand for America's moral right to make the Middle East safer.

She said her support for Murtha was not intended to forge a Democratic position on the war, adding that she blocked an effort by some of her colleagues to put the Democrats on record backing Murtha.

Pelosi's lost her leverage. The Democratic Party is going to strangle itself on the stupidity of Dean and Kerry and Pelosi and all the rest of them who can't figure out what the fuck they stand for. Ever. All they know is that they oppose Bush.

Not only is that not enough, it's a dereliction of their duties in a two-party system. Shame on these weasels.

Power Save Mode
Mood:  not sure
Not much to tell. Or, more truthfully, not much I can tell. Just waiting for the nice little break from rendering unto Caesar.

I cannot escape the embarrassment of my lack of ambition. I am locked into something which I should know better than to be, but what can I do?

I hear that the Iraqis have had quite a demonstration of that democratic spirit which moves the People from time to time. I am pleased for them. And I am amazed at the progress.

Peaks and valleys, baby. The black dog will have his day.

Post-Shower Update
Now Playing: "Take My Breath Away" by Berlin
Well, I got through it. It's miserable, but the idea, see, is to start off with the shower pressure at about half-strength. Just get your hands and forearms wet first. Then, start working some water into your hair a little at a time. Nothing too bold, but it's the way to build up the courage to turn and let that iciness run down your back and take your breath away.

Eventually, your flesh gets acclimated and all that's left to do is to have done with it.

I smell pretty good at least.

Can't wait for the repairman to show, though.

Cold Like Fire
Okay, so I'm messing around right now ---and not facing up to the fact that I need to go take a shower. But my water heater won't be fixed until Wednesday! Jesus!

This is going to be brutal!

If I happen to see my family jewels again tonight, I'll report it here.

Denied
I'm genuinely surprised that Arnold Schwarzenegger has denied Tookie Williams' appeal for clemency. I figured that Schwarzenegger would take the opportunity to win some love with the black community in urban California, but he is standing firm.

I hadn't bothered to look at the facts of Williams' crimes until today. They're pretty damning. Moreover, Williams was a founding member of the Crips. That, in itself, is a crime from which there is no reprieve ---because being a Crip brings with it the inherent responsibility for extreme violence and terror.

In a very real way, Tookie Williams is a war criminal who is going to die tonight for what he did. And what he personally did was to rob and murder a young man who was clerking at a 7-11. And, then, two weeks later, he robbed and slaughtered a family of three in the offices of the motel they owned.

His total take? A few hundred bucks.

But as a leader of a violent street gang with cells in major cities from coast to coast? He is responsible for probably thousands of deaths and even more destroyed lives.

It's insanity.

Be sure to read Schwarzenegger's statement. I was intrigued by its argumentative rhetoric, but most impressed by its logic:

The basis of Williams' clemency request is not innocence. Rather, the basis of the request is the "personal redemption Stanley Williams has experienced and the positive impact of the message he sends" (quoting Williams' own clemency reply). But Williams' claim of innocence remains a key factor to evaluating his claim of personal redemption. It is impossible to separate Williams' claim of innocence from his claim of redemption.

That is to ask, from what has Williams been redeemed? Crimes he did not commit? You cannot claim redemption if you won't even admit that you have done wrong.

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.