Islam: the best friend gays have ever had. It's really quite rational I think that large numbers of radical left gays think Bush is their number one enemy in the world. (Soft sound of crinkling in the background.)

Crinkle, Crinkle, Little Fascifist

Get out your tinfoil hat for A Mystery, Wrapped in a Riddle, Stuffed in a Turkey. But don't worry about the glare when you put them under a light -- the fascifist conspiracists are really quite normal. Doesn't EVERYONE make crinkling noises in the breeze? Who could deny it???

UPDATE: And get this, a reporter actually ASKED this question about Bush's Baghdad Turkey trip: "Q What are the legalities of filing a fraudulent flight plan?"!!! Yuppers. This is so incredibly hilarious! The big press doesn't even seem to have caught on that Bush also spent part of his time there meeting with reps of the Iraqi Governing Council and getting a status update from the Coalition commanders! This question is actually the equivalent of complaining FDR didn't announce his routes to meeting with Churchill and Stalin in WWII.

The big press can only be described as insensate cubed.

Does the public have the right level of trust in the elite media? Looks like it to me. (Yet more refutation of the fascifist canard about how brainwashed and stupid the unwashed masses are. Could it be that the media are even more stupid than the general public? To ask the question may be to answer it :)

HINDSIGHT CHECK. I'm growing VERY weary of self-righteous fascifists who take no responsibility for their continuous stream of fantastic predictive failure. But then that's the point isn't it -- their ideal is that NOBODY take responsibility...

ANTI-SEMITISM NO LONGER PROBLEM, SAYS NOTED HOLOCAUST DENIER. Nuff said.

Whoops Again...

More no evidence:

The CIA is convinced that Atta’s terrorist group must have been led by professionals from an intelligence service, perhaps Iraq’s. U.S. experts believe that during the two aforementioned Prague visits, the execution of the terrorist action was to be confirmed. Atta was to visit Prague a third time in April 2001. The Czech secret service received from one of its informers a warning that Al-Ani, the Iraqi consul, was to meet with a “distinguished Arab student” from Hamburg—this is information that up until now was top secret. BIS monitored the meeting: The men met in a Prague restaurant on the evening of April 8. To this day, it remains unclear whether this “Hamburg student” was Atta. Yet again, three days after that meeting, $100,000 arrived in Atta’s Florida account.

... deaf, dumb and blind and thus can hardly comprehend anything.

Prudence gridlocked

Lileks: Dems are as American As Apple Pie

When Lileks gets up a head of steam even apple pie can't save the Dems:

Howard Dean: Well, you have to understand that George Bush not only doesn't get the complex history of splicing and cross-breeding that led to the modern apple, he's alienated the countries in the world whose apple stocks might replenish our own after the worst environmental policies since Catherine the Great threatened the domestic Macintosh-producing regions. You can't solve that by flying to Baghdad and serving pie -- which I understand was pecan, an ironic choice, since they've stopped serving pecans at VA hospitals because of Bush cutbacks.
...
In the same interview Dean referred to the Iraq campaign as "a unilateral pre-emptive" action. He meant this in a bad way, of course -- as if attacking bin Laden's base in Afghanistan and killing him dead before Sept. 11 would have been a bad idea. Dean said we should also enlist the help of the "Soviet Union" to put pressure on Iran. (They really should update the atlases in the Vermont Foreign Affairs Department.) He vowed to break up media conglomerates like Rupert Murdoch's Fox empire, presumably because it's government's role to save you from Bill O'Reilly.

In short: Howard Dean says a lot of things. Come the presidential election, the GOP will have a two-word response:

Roll tape.

(Hat tip Hewitt.) My advice to the Dems is to start stocking up on cable and satellite TV jammers now -- you're going to need them desperately to counteract the Repubs "instant replays". No other strategy has a prayer of working.

Orwellian Prudence?

Check out this snippet on Orwell in relation to this blog's recent fixation:

In his last years, Orwell had an odd friendly acquaintance with Evelyn Waugh, based on wary mutual admiration. Orwell was planning an essay in which he proposed to call Waugh as good a writer as it was possible to be while holding impossible opinions. In return, Waugh deplored Orwell's irreligion and "unreasoned animosity of a class war". But he also recognised something more important than any animosity or "ism", his "unusually high moral sense and respect for justice and truth". That perhaps describes better than any longer analysis the politics of George Orwell, and why we still love and revere him.

Must ... pull ... harder ... against ... the memory ... hole ...

Prudence Isn't Dead Yet?

Check out this piece by Robert Samuelson of Newsweek:

Just so. Today’s polarization mainly divides the broad public from political, intellectual and media elites. Of course, sharp differences define democracy. We’ve always had them. From Iraq to homosexual marriage, deep disagreements remain. But the venom of today’s debates often transcends disagreement. Your opponents—whether liberal or conservative—must not only have bad ideas. Increasingly, they must also be bad people who are dishonest, selfish and venal.

Among politicians, the bitterness reflects less political competition, especially in the House of Representatives. Democrats and Republicans increasingly have safe seats. In 2002, 83 percent of House incumbents won at least 60 percent of the vote; in 1992 only 66 percent of incumbents won with that margin. As a result, members speak more to their parties’ “bases,” which provide most electoral and financial support. There’s less need to appeal to the center. The Founders saw the House as responding quickly to public opinion. But “the barometer is broken,” says veteran congressional correspondent Richard E. Cohen of National Journal.

As for media and intellectual elites—commentators, academics, columnists, professional advocates—they’re in an attention-grabbing competition. They need to establish themselves as brand names. For many, stridency is a strategy. The right feeds off the left and the left feeds off the right, and although their mutual criticisms constitute legitimate debate, they’re also economic commodities. To be regarded by one side as a lunatic is to be regarded by the other as a hero—and that can usually be taken to the bank through more TV appearances, higher lecture fees, fatter book sales and larger audiences and group memberships. Polarization serves their interests. Principle and self-promotion blend.

All this is understandable and, in a democracy, perhaps unavoidable. But it distorts who we are and poses a latent danger: Someday we might become as hopelessly polarized as we’re already supposed to be. [Emphasis added. Hat tip Simon.]

A rare "journalistic lapse" from Newsweek -- almost up there with John Burns of the NYeT. READ THE WHOLE THING -- AND THEN REMEMBER THIS LITTLE DITTY? Brewing, brewing, brewing...

Please remember to cross the invasion of Taiwan off your Christmas shopping list.

"Buries its fossil hippie head in pillows." I just couldn't let it whither ;)

This is a religious war.

"WHATEVER"

Prudence is Dead -- And We Miss Her So

Also caught on Simon:

The modern Left despises individual liberty, because it naturally produces inequality.

Many Leftists will murder hundreds of millions and upend all the laws of human nature in an attempt to produce an impossible utopia in which inequality doesn't exist.

Most Leftists will turn away from such drastic measures and it is those people whom the Right must reclaim as fellow guardians of Western Civilization.

Democracy only works when democrats of both Right and Left compete against each other in the battle of ideas.

That's what makes this current nihilistic phase of the Left so scary.

An entry is brewing...

Orwell and More 30s Reprise

Caught this from Roger L. Simon:

AND YET ANOTHER: Reader Bill Rudersdorf has reminded me of what might be the best term of all--from Orwell, not surprisingly, in the 1930s. He called them "fascifists." Oh, that Orwell! [Emphasis added.]

FASCIFISTS -- it just sings with beauty about the cycles of history...

He Couldn't Do It With These People

Check out today's David Brooks column:

But despite all this, their epic bouts of complaining are interrupted by bursts of idealism. Most of them seem to feel, deep down, some elemental respect for the Iraqis and sympathy for what they have endured. Far more than the population at home, the soldiers in the middle of the conflict believe in their mission and are confident they will succeed.

When you read their writings you see what thorough democrats they are. They are appalled at the thought of dominating Iraq. They want to see the Iraqis independent and governing themselves. If some president did want to create an empire, he couldn't do it with these people. Their faith in freedom governs their actions.

Most of all, you see what a challenging set of tasks they have been given, and how short-staffed they are. And yet you sense that in this war, as in so many others, the improvising skill of the soldiers on the ground will make up for the cosmic screw-ups of the people up the chain of command.

If anybody is wondering: Where are the young idealists? Where are the people willing to devote themselves to causes larger than themselves? They are in uniform in Iraq, straddling the divide between insanity and order. [Emphasis added]

Nah, since so many of our soldiers come from "flyover country" they must all be evil imperialists. Arrrggghhhh.

Quote of the Day

"Critics say that America is a lie because its reality falls so far short of its ideals. They are wrong. America is not a lie; it is a disappointment. But it can be a disappointment only because it is also a hope." -- Samuel Huntington

Another Angle ...

... on the memory hole:

Stalin was reportedly fond of a certain saying: "There is a man, there is a problem. No man, no problem." The left, to save the history it wants to embrace, has removed Stalin from it. Despite countless testimonials from Louis Aragon, Lillian Hellman, Pablo Neruda, Jean-Paul Sartre, and others, he wasn’t really of the left, it turns out; he was merely an "aberration." No Stalin, no problem. [Emphasis added.]

Whenever I think of Hitler, it's hard to forget good ole Unca Joe. What's a few tens of millions dead between friends after all? We'll just hush it all up -- shhhhhh now. BUT SCREAM VISCERAL HATRED AT THEM IF THEY TRY TO SAY A BAD WORD ABOUT HIM!

A Sea of Lampshades Revisited

A letter writer from Tehran tries the moral superiority game on Den Beste -- and runs headlong into checkmate:

If my nation was made up of the kind of monsters who "debate final solutions" and feel no qualms about "mass murder", you'd already be dead, because Tehran would have been converted to a glowing crater about 12 hours after the collapse of the WTC towers. [Emphasis added.]

My take on it a while back was that we would have rendered them as a "sea of lampshades". Hitler would have considered nukes to be too painless I'm quite sure.

But don't worry -- the left follows in Hitler's footsteps as surely as I breath crisp Colorado air. The next time you hear rants of hate just remember the masterful footsteps they emulate:

Hate, hate, and more hate. There is nothing that sustains you like hate! - Adolf Hitler

The church of the left careens into the arms of its final authority -- and final solution.

It's not exactly Vietnam -- and this post lays it out beautifully. But "his donkey rockets impress the media".