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.
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.
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.
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 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.
don't ask
