WHOOPS!!!!! They're going to be working overtime to keep this little fact about rendition from climbing out of the MSMemory Hole methinks...

D'OH: ' Maybe Harvard's policy on Saudi repression is "don't ask, don't tell." '

A Syllogism For Our Times

Premise #1:
"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function." -- F. Scott Fitzgerald

Premise #2:
Islamofascists -- and their Gramscian Neo-Syndicalist Fascifist allies -- are incapable of holding two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and retaining the ability to function.

Conclusion:
Islamofascists and their allies are not first-rate intelligences.

But what do I know...

The Wall, the NSA and the Memory Hole.

Can you say "turnabout"? Yee-haw!

Tammy Watch: "When your victimhood is your empowerment, recovery is the enemy."

UPDATE: Roger, neo-neocon and Bookworm have the latest on the mastervictims...

Ann strikes again. (HT Power Line)

Today's Suicide Pact Update

"Let's put the issue very simply. The president has the power as commander in chief under the Constitution to intercept and monitor the communications of America's enemies. Indeed, it would be a very weird interpretation of the Constitution to say that the commander in chief could order U.S. forces to kill America's enemies but not to wiretap -- or, more likely these days, electronically intercept -- their communications. Presidents have asserted and exercised this power repeatedly and consistently over the last quarter-century."

"Punditry is one of those strange activities where for the good of your character it is best not to be too successful."

"Our postmodern mind is tightly bound by the idea that a story must be false, and deceitful, simply because it claims to be good, beautiful, and true. The Christmas story breaks these bonds. It may be inaccessible to the cynical and world-weary. But it will always be spontaneously understood by children, and those who can become children, in the presence of Our Lord."

Something a little different for your Christmas reading list...

"Let us know how that works out in '06." (HT Glenn)

Merry Christmas!

Hell bans music just in time for Christmas. But don't worry, Mao was one of the good guys too. What's that you say, only just banal stuff like Ode to Joy?

As far as I can tell, this is what the ironically-named Democrats are wishing for this Christmas. The Christmas spirit is awfully hard to maintain in so many ways when we have to hang around people this contemptible...

"Either way, these are some incredibly clueless people."

"Have we gone insane?"

Holocaust-Shmolocaust.

"On the day when crime puts on the apparel of innocence, through a curious reversal peculiar to our age, it is innocence that is called on to justify itself."

QandO has the balanced assessment ... and a take on 9/10 redux.

UPDATE: 28 additional reasons he must might not be won't be impeached.

Just like Clinton's Kosovo adventure, this doesn't exist...

Key Posts From 2005

• Top 10 Reasons You Might Be A Liberal


• In A Ruined Region


• Venal Innumeracy Coalition Targets Bennett


• OK. Not IKEA. Sorry.


• On Connection Ugly Virgins And Innumeracy


• Touchstone


• No Love In Appeasing Apocalyptic Work Accidents


• Fault (-line) Of The Apocalyptic Cuckoo Clock


• Welcoming Schizophrenia At (C)BS


• Barging Out Of The MSMemory Hole


• All You Need To Know About The War's Progress Since 911


• Katrina Takes On The Tinfoil Apocalypse


• Keep Those Hoods On Boyz!


• NOLA Machine No Go


• Projections From The MSMemory Hole


• Tear Down That Levee -- Another Reason


• Intent On Drowning The Leader


• Tinfoil Update


• More On Democrats Projecting Democracy's Failure


• My Take On Powerline's Take On Hugh's Take On Bennet's Take On ... The Apocalypse


• What Manchurian Candidate?


• Projection 104: Murder Is Normal


• Projection 103: It's Not Cool To Be Smart


• Great Jumping "Reality-Based" Butterballs!


• The Tinfoil Apocalypse Prelude: And Who Do You Think You Are? Einstein?


• W For President -- Of The Miners


• The Canary In The Coal Mine: Stolen Erieness For Our Stolen Election


• Meeting "With The Entire Security Council" Is "Seared -- Seared -- In Me"


• The Greatest Intelligence Failure In History


• I Approve This Message Without The Darned Change Tracking


• Projection 101: Bad Faith Stickers Out


• An "F" No Matter How You Grade It


• Shockingly Updated: NYeT, NYeT, NYeT!


• THE PAOMNNEHAL PWEOR OF THE HMUAN MNID


• BUT I Didn't Mean That!


• NOTICE TO NEW READERS


• Top Ten Reasons You Might Have Liberal Debating Points


• Columbine Cover-Update: Time To Rehabilitate Preemption


• At Last: Puzzle Answer Is...


• The Bush Doctrine in Plain English


• Cambodian Case Closed Conclusively
  
• You Might Be A Liberal If


• FBI's Atta Ass Ablutions Spotted in Prague


• Good Reporting Corroborated, Irony Abounds


• Careening Back to Stupid: A KristoFisk


• That Stupid Bush...


• WaPo Boffo


• The Bodyguard of Lies


• Point, Counter-Point on Iraq Reconstruction


• A Key Point Regarding Hitchens' "Against Rationalization" Thesis
  
• No Evidence?

Dems bring back the WALL. You really don't want to know what I think of them right now...

MICHAEL STRIKES AGAIN: "This probably looks Stalinist to you."

UPDATE: Good grief. Forgot that I didn't point you to this yet. What are you waiting for?

Nailing the NYeT once more. You just can't make this stuff up...

"Why so many secrets? Why so many lies?"

What's that? Ah, yes ... you need to see PALLYWOOD now don't you now?

The Tinfoil Apocalypse Comes Into Focus

"This kind of man would have, to put it gently, less inhibition about starting Armageddon than a normal person."

"Freezing rain blasts across Southeast"

'This raises again the age old-question, why are our mainstream reporters so terrible? Is it malice, or stupidity? As usual, the answer seems to be "both." '

"The only people who don't get it now are Zarqawi, and the spokespersons for the Democratic Party."

GO IRAQ!

MORE TAMMY: "Unfriendly. Like Hitler was, I suppose, cranky?"

GO TAMMY: "Not only will we not go see films which insult us, we refuse to support an existential worldview. We happen to think life does matters, that decency is a good thing, and that people are inherently good, not bad. We also have stopped believing the lie that Americans are bad people. We looked away for 4 decades as that lie was spread, but that time is over. "

A soldier on the inconvenient truth about Iraq.

10-1 that Bubba and H win again.

Wretchard On A WaPo Wonder

"It's about breaking the power of the assassins. ... People like the Tuenis who refuse to be intimidated should inspire the rest of us. So should the millions of Iraqis who will vote tomorrow. They are trying to break the culture of intimidation and death. Americans should feel proud to be on their side."

Truly a miracle for the WaPo. And it looks like Lebanon has done it to them. Well, and the fact that even France isn't on Syria's side.

And there's almost zero chance that any of this would have happened without NastyMcShrubby's little Iraq adventure.

No wonder the Gramscian Neo-Syndicalists have become more and more unhinged...

NYeT. Like shooting ducks in a barrel.

"Shambolism" in Afghanistan. Let's do let NATO defend us...

TODAY'S MSMemoryHole UPDATE: Contains a rhetorical question.

Yes, How Did That Happen Again?

"Somehow, Europeans have managed to transform the atrocities which they committed and which occurred in their countries from a badge of shame (which, arguably, it need not be any longer) into some sort of badge of moral superiority and entitlement to sit in judgment."

UPDATE: What superiority again???

Being overlawyered is the real torture. And what of boot camp? I predict Amnesty's next glorious cause...

Sowell On Utter Ignorance

"Utter ignorance of history enables any war with any casualties to be depicted in the media as an unmitigated disaster.

Even after Nazi Germany surrendered at the end of World War II, die-hard Nazi guerrilla units terrorized and assassinated both German officials and German civilians who cooperated with Allied occupation authorities.

But nobody suggested that we abandon the country. Nobody was foolish enough to think that you could say in advance when you would pull out or that you should encourage your enemies by announcing a timetable.

There has never been the slightest doubt that we would begin pulling troops out of Iraq when it was feasible. Only time and circumstances can tell when that will be. And only irresponsible politicians and the media think otherwise."

And for once I can say that Sowell -- while still doing a wonderful job -- has missed the most amazing piece of ignorance of all. Doubling the peacetime military death rate. Yup. That's just got to be unsustainable all right. Gramsci is giggling and Orwell is spinning.

"Meet the new appropriator, same as the old appropriator."

READ THE PROSECUTOR'S REBUTTAL: "If we somehow manage to catch the "three-striker" and place him on trial, it will be in his best interest to sabatoge his own trial by killling witnesses, jurors, prosecutors or judges."

Iraqi voter has navigation advice for (our anti) Dems...

WHAT ARE THEY THINKING?

AFTER THE TERRORISM.

Harvesting Hillary.

Conjuring Neville's ghost...

PLAME? WHAT PLAME?: "For some, the risks are worth the temporary gain." (HT Glenn)

"It is not at all clear that [the CIA's] survival is in the national interest."

Are the men disappearing? Or the women reporting for duty? (HT Glenn)

Eurabian fools.

60X!

"If Allah is indeed all-powerful and all-knowing, why would he need to revise and correct himself so often?"

Did I forget to mention that WWII never ended? More technically, you could say that WWI never ended of course...

What project???

"Fairly typical" would be a vast understatement...

Yes, and what about the 500,000th? < crickets > ...

James Dobson reviews 50 cent?

"And at what point do they receive a failing grade?"

Strategy Page on desperate measures.

"He was for the plaintiffs before he was against them!"

Way, Way Beyond "Heh" ... Dementia Territory In Fact

Glenn points to this BOWT entry as a "heh" today. I don't see how that even begins to describe it. Dementia patients that ask what time it is every 5 minutes are more with it than this. What the h*ll is sub-puerile nonsense like this doing in anything rumored to be a respectable publication like WaPo -- complete with editors no less?

Froomkin quoting Murtha as saying pulling out of Iraq will cause the terrorists to leave us alone followed by smirking dismissal Cheney's argument that "It is a dangerous illusion to suppose that another retreat by the civilized world would satisfy the appetite of the terrorists and get them to leave us alone" as a straw man? That nobody is making this argument???

WaPo and Froomkin are literally demented themselves or have absolute confidence that their readers are enough so that they won't notice. The only good thing I can say is that it may be difficult for them to be both...

If Froomkin isn't old enough to be demented then smoking a lot of dope would be the likely alternative.

"MSMemory Hole" doesn't begin to describe this either. Not only have they sucked Orwell into his own Memory Hole, but their brains are at the epicenter of it.

I'm finally beginning to understand -- and it's scaring me. As C.S. Lewis said, the devil's greatest advantage is the belief he doesn't exist...

Virgins? What Virgins?

"The Admiral Emeritus once told me that the definition of disillusionment was watching your martial-arts instructor get his ass kicked in a country-western bar. Having one's commander surrender to the enemy when he and his ilk have sent dozens to kill themselves just to take out a few women and children in buses and pizzerias has to come in at least a close second on that scale. I wonder what Abu Rob's cohorts think of his sacrifice for the cause tonight."

Jeff's Rockin'

"In Kos’s world, there is no difference between US military and the regime of Saddam Hussein—between humiliation and rape rooms ; between the sanctioned use of WP against entrenched terrorists and the use of nerve agents and WP on Kurdish civilians; between fighting to free a people and fighting to keep them subjugated.

Such moral relativism is not clever or nuanced, though it likes to pretend to be. Instead, it is obfuscatory for the sake of personal aggrandizement: Kos and his ilk like to play as the conscience of the country, but what they are, really, are the kinds of intellectually feeble brats who have come to take for granted the very system they hope to tear down. "

To which I would add: generally drug-laced too. And probably buying it from the mullahs ...

More On That CNN X-Rating...

Cheney gets MSMemory Holed once "again" by the MSMedia MSMorons. If you haven't read Goldstein's take on this -- including Cheney's well done speech itself -- you need to. The reason Cheney got the CNN X-Rating is that no lefties could possibly read it with due consideration without their brains actually melting. He's terminally nice in fact. But his intentions aren't good you see...

Did I mention that I consider Bush and Cheney both to be liberal softies?

But then that's why they're elected and I'm not. Well other than the obvious fact that anyone smart enough to be a principled politician is smart enough not to drag his family through a hellish cesspool of hateful garbage that in fact has no principles involved whatsoever on most days lately...

"What's wrong with this picture?"

"I would rather lose the presidency and win the war than the reverse."

Hillary out of step again...

"Matthews' enemy is the Bush administration, and he clearly doesn't understand its point of view. "

StrategyPage on Iraq beyond the Newspeak...

This story doesn't exist ... and neither do our borders...

The latest subliminal Newspeak from the Communist Neo-Syndicalist News Network. But don't worry ... now what was I saying again?

"Be ready to fight for it. "

"The most amazing part of all of this to me is that when the Clinton administration launched Operation Desert Fox in December 1998, Saddam's response was to quickly dispatch his top intelligence operative to bin Laden. Bin Laden then issued a condemnation of the U.S.-led air strikes and called on Muslims to retaliate against British and American targets. We know this because the worldwide media reported [it]. So, when you write, "it's not surprising that Saddam saw al Qaeda as a vehicle through which he could operate outside of his box," I think you are right in ways many will never admit."

"It's scary to think that Scheuer could have been the chief of the CIA's Osama bin Laden unit at its Counterterrorist Center. It's even scarier to think that his policy views may well reflect the agency's. "

TODAY'S REID DEMENTIA UPDATE: It's just beyond bizarre that the Dems are letting Harry lead them over this cliff.

McQ On Peters and Lieberman

You really need to read this. The whole thing. Here's at taste of the Peters snippets:

For God's sake, don't talk about democracy in the Middle East. After all, democracy wasn't much fun for the Dems in 2000 or 2004. Why support it overseas, when it's been so disappointing at home?

Human rights? Oh, dear. Human rights are for rich white people who live in Malibu. Unless you can use the issue to whack Republicans. Otherwise, brown, black or yellow people can die by the millions. Dean, Reid & Pelosi, LLC, won't say, "Boo!"

You've got to understand, my fellow citizens: None of this matters. And you don't matter, either. All that matters is scoring political points. Let the world burn. Let the massacres run on. Let the terrorists acquire WMD. Just give the Bush administration a big black eye and we'll call that a win.

Don't worry, I haven't given away the best stuff either.

And Lieberman -- apparently the only remaining non-amnesiac in the Dem party -- seems to recall something about a beach or the water's edge or something too...

"Vintage Bubba."

"IT IS TIME TO HAVE A SERIOUS BI-PARTISAN DEBATE ON BRINGING THEM HOME." (HT Glenn)

"He is a small piece of a large problem..."

I'm tired too!

Barone Has It Nutshelled

"Now, the progress toward democracy in Iraq is leading Middle Easterners to concentrate on the question of how to build decent governments and decent societies. We can see the results -- the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon, the first seriously contested elections in Egypt, Libya's giving up WMDs, the Jordanian protests against Abu Musab Zarqawi's recent suicide attacks and even a bit of reform in Saudi Arabia. In Syria, The Washington Post's David Ignatius reports, "people talk politics here with a passion I haven't heard since the 1980s in Eastern Europe. They're writing manifestos, dreaming of new political parties, trying to rehabilitate old ones from the 1950s."

Almost surely none of this would have happened without the liberation of Iraq. And there democracy goes forward: Seventy-eight percent voted for the Constitution last month, and democratic parties are contesting the elections to be held next month.

Against this backdrop, mainstream media headlined the call for withdrawal of Democratic Rep. John Murtha, who has long been skeptical about the war. The propagators of the big lie against President Bush are trying to delegitimize not only him, but also all the progress that has been made as a result of Iraq, progress both toward freedom for Middle Easterners and toward a Middle East that will no longer threaten the United States. "

" ... in the only place he could shine a beam."

DebkaFile on Zarqawi

Debka is typically questionable in its reliability. But there's something worth posting today:



Zarqawi is an incompetent or a clear butcher if Debka is right. If they're spinning fantasies as they often do, Z-man is just about 2 orders of magnitude worse of an "oppressor" of Muslims than the legions of moonbats around the world accuse the U.S. of being.

This guy is nuttier than a Cuckoo Clock. And people who would consider giving him even a nanometer are also. Nuff said.

Oops, Sorry!

"Zarqawi wants Muslims to believe that sending two "agents" into a ballroom obviously occupied by a wedding reception, positioning themselves to maximize the damage, and then exploding themselves to kill as many as possible amounts to some kind of unforeseen error. All he proves is that he isn't terribly bright or reliable when it comes to picking his targets. Nor would he care if the end result destabilized Jordan enough for King Abdullah to either flee or agree to ally with Zarqawi. Like most sociopathic monsters, he's only sorry to the degree that his crime backfired on him, and only apologizes to the extent that he's sorry that others cannot recognize his overall genius."

Somehow, I'm not recognizing the overall genius of our "Democrats against democracy" party either...

"No, really -- we didn't want the bomb. It came automatically whenever anyone purchased their first 1,000 centrifuges! Only an idiot would believe that the Khan network just blithely handed out that kind of information unsolicited, and only the Iranians would believe the West to be precisely that stupid. Meanwhile, the Iranians showed their embarrassment at having been caught by the IAEA in another lie by announcing their intent to continue processing uranium."

"What's his objection again?"

Read the SGT.

Did Bush Lie?

You can check it out yourself... (HT Michelle)

Page 134. Oh, and Clarke's opinions may be rather confusing to lefties about the Oklahoma City bombing. Well, if they actually had brains enough to actually read anything that is...

Silver Stars down the MSMemory Hole... Where else?

"Unless, by "competent" you mean "able to cow the Iraqi civilian population"."

"As I recall, Marshal Petain managed to prostrate himself right quickly before the Nazis despite his status as a WWI hero, too. Besides, where exactly will Murtha draw that line -- New York City? Logan Airport?"

"Have a nice day."

"I intend to cross the Rappahanock River with the Army of Potomac and engage the Army of Northern Virginia and keep them continuously engaged until they are destroyed or surrendered."

"It seems to me that the Left's position is inconsistent: if WP rounds are WMD, then Saddam clearly had massive WMD stockpiles, and the war was justified."

Freeh is on ABLE!

"The Able Danger intelligence, if confirmed, is undoubtedly the most relevant fact of the entire post-9/11 inquiry. Even the most junior investigator would immediately know that the name and photo ID of Atta in 2000 is precisely the kind of tactical intelligence the FBI has many times employed to prevent attacks and arrest terrorists. Yet the 9/11 Commission inexplicably concluded that it "was not historically significant." This astounding conclusion--in combination with the failure to investigate Able Danger and incorporate it into its findings--raises serious challenges to the commission's credibility and, if the facts prove out, might just render the commission historically insignificant itself." (HT Glenn)

"The President and I cannot prevent certain politicians from losing their memory, or their backbone but we're not going to sit by and let them rewrite history."

Pallorous amnesiac talks about the final last chance ... until the next one ... and the next ... and yet another ...

Go To FrontPage Now!

Here's how. Here's why:

"FP: So do you think the WMD is the central issue regarding Iraq?

Tierney: No, and it never should have been an issue. The First Gulf War -- and I use this term as a convention, since this is actually all the same war -- was a prime example of managing war instead of waging it. Instead of telling Saddam to get out of Kuwait or we will push him out, we should have said to get out of Kuwait or we will remove him from power. As it was, we were projecting our respect for human life on Saddam, when actually, from his point of view, we were doing him a favor by killing mostly Shi’ite military members who were a threat to his regime. I realize that Saudi Arabia, our host, did not want a change in government in Iraq, and they had helped us bring down the Soviet Union with oil price manipulation, but we should have bent them to our will instead of vice versa. Saddam would not have risked losing power to keep Kuwait, and we could have avoided this whole ordeal.

We topped one mistake with another, expecting Saddam Hussein and the Baath Party, a criminal syndicate masquerading as a political party, to abide by any arms control agreement. Gun control and Arms control both arise from the “mankind is good” worldview. If you control the environment, i.e. get rid of the guns, then man’s natural goodness will rise to the surface. I hope it is evidence after more than a decade of Iraqi intransigence how foolish this position is. The sobering fact is that if a nation feels it is in their best interest to have certain weapons, they are going to have them. Chemical weapons were critical to warding off hoards of Iranian fighters, and the Iraqis knew they would always be in a position of weakness against Israel without nuclear weapons. The United States kept nuclear weapons to deter the Soviet Union, but we would deny the same logic for Iraq?

There is also the practicality of weapons inspections/weapons hunts. After seventeen resolutions pleading with the Iraqis to be nice, the light bulb still didn’t go off that the entire concept is fundamentally flawed. Would you like to live in a city where the police chief sent out resolutions to criminals to play nice, instead of taking them off the streets? "

(HT Power Line)

Scrappleface has pretty much all you need to know about the Plame fiasco. You'll never laugh harder!

The tri-partisan effort.

"Once again, it looks like the Republicans have hit the Democrats in the fist with their mouth."

Not to say that ignoring economics doesn't play a role. N'est pas?

"Paris burns anyway. As the French seem to learn every 70 years, appeasement does not work. It merely whets the appetite. And the angry alien young were already hungry."

Five questions.

Giving new meaning to predation...

On Setting Them Free

DETAILS, DETAILS DEPT: "There are important consequences of a prisoner of war designation that have nothing to do with the humane treatment that all detainees receive. For example, the Geneva Prisoner of War Convention provides legal immunity for precapture warlike acts. This means that there could be no future prosecution of terrorists who are deemed to be prisoners of war." OOPS.

So. We finally come to incontrovertible proof that liberals are actually not even in favor of prosecuting terrorists as criminals. They just want to set them free!

Of course, most of them haven't even read Geneva to know it. But you can guess what I think of the ones that actually have...

EURABIAN DEATH SPIRAL DEJA VU REDUX: "Actually, refer back to my college sophomores point. One’s not ready to be a parent until one is ready to stop being a child."

HE'S BAAACK: "Their current claim to have been fooled or deceived makes them out, on their own account, to be highly dumb and gullible. But as dumb and gullible as that?" This is one of Hitch's finest tinfoil hat vaporizations ever!

A winning strategy (for us that is).

"The French won't do anything and soon, we will be in the majority here."

Did I forget to mention that they had no pre-war intelligence? Nil. Nada. Nihilists one and all...

Today's Wanton Ways

Z on the defensive finally? That -- at last -- the wanton destruction of "innocent" PALESTINIANS causes long, long overdue self examination tells you all you need to know. In fact, I think it's SO long overdue that it will soon be forgotten due to the burden of sustaining its novelty.

[ wanton: behave extremely cruelly and brutally ]

And Over To Roger

"I'm beginning to hope the traditionalists who think this is all about poverty and racism and not at all about rolling history back to 1492 are right. Because if they're wrong, this is not going to be over for a long time. The problem with the traditionalist's argument is that it is a tad racist in and of itself. It assumes these "youths" are ignorant of the demographics of the country they are living in and of the rudimentary history of Christianity and Islam. As they say in France, je m'en doute."

Apocalypse Warren In Due Course

"Soon, the average age in Europe will be beyond childbearing. Among non-Muslim Europeans, i[t] probably already is. We can no longer dream of a recovery. Europe has leapt. New immigrants are taking possession of the continent, transforming it, as in the "Dark Ages". Rome will be sacked again, in due course."

Today's Residue Update

"Yes, the student behavior was somewhat offensive. But the black gangsta identity—the glorification of drug-dealing, crime, and serial sexual conquest, coupled with a blithe rationalization of fatherless black children—is what really deserves condemnation and concern, and not just in black barbershops, churches, and homes. Bill Cosby excepted, however, few have raised public concerns when blacks outfit themselves in the sartorial and ethical drapery of common street hustlers. Many young blacks walk around saying n**** this, n**** that, but then take offense when others borrow the attendant stylistic signifiers, which our culture foolishly condones and celebrates as black authenticity."

Amnesia, Part 4,984,765

You may think that Bush is Hitler. You believe it with every fiber of your body. And you are passionately in favor of gun control. That would make you an amnesiac at best...

BusHitler has some comments on amnesia today as well. Finally.

"Complexity kills."

"I don't know, but it's surprising the extent to which people who routinely make the Halliburton and chickenhawk slurs seem to require much greater delicacy from others."

VDH Again...

"Second, for all our pride, we are not like the once-powerful — and scary — Soviet Union, so Latin Americans and Europeans know that there is rarely any price to be paid for attacking the United States. Slandering us is a win-win situation — cowardly and expedient to be sure, but hardly like indicting bin Laden or embargoing Iranian oil. No Argentinean is furious over Chinese unfair trade; no Spaniard protests Russian oilmen for spoiling the arctic. And worse still, we know why."

MSMemory Hole? Or just ADHD?: "Who could that be? Don't count on the Times or the Post to find that out for you."

France on fire...

“We’re Dumber than Bush!”?

"(God forbid the congressional darlings have to work on a Saturday)"

So The NYeT

covers W's speech (finally) going after the 5th column Dhimmis today and here's how it ends:



In my opinion, that's pretty much all you need to know...

"Or is Scheuer the biggest liar since Joe Wilson?"

What If They Held A War And Only One Side Came?

"But having said that, I do think that what's pathetic about all Western countries, including the United States, including France, including Canada, and a lot of other countries, is that they make these sort of high school sophist arguments about terrorism, as if it's some sort of theoretical debate. It's not. We're dealing with a very difficult situation here. And if you accord to terrorists all the rights of somebody who gets arrested for holding up a liquor store in Des Moines, you are going to lose to the terrorists, because when you accord them the full rights of somebody who is a criminal, you make it impossible to prosecute this as a war, which is what it is. "

Sick French Accidents

"Now, Francois Bayrou, leader of the centrist group that with the neo-Gaullists, makes up Jacques Chirac's presidential majority, describes France as a "sick state, a state swollen into impotence" with "a democracy that doesn't work well." This means, he said, that "reality never enters political discussions."

But asked why the riots were happening here, since France's neighbors seemed to be escaping its misery, Bayrou offered a general response that, like the answers of the other politicians he condemned, hid from the specifics of both responsibilities and solution:

"As long as French democracy doesn't change," Bayrou said, "these accidents are going to continue." He left it there. "

Unless it's Iraq, of course...

The next worst. But close enough it doesn't matter methinks...

Warren Again

"It is against this background reality, that the riots happening today across France must be considered. They are a turning point, not only in France but all Europe. For the “moral and demographic vacuum” I mentioned above, is not in France alone. The same cultural deathwish prevails in Spain, Italy, Germany, the Low Countries, Britain, Scandinavia -- and Canada, by the way. It is called “multiculturalism” in this generation, but in another generation will be called something else."

RTWT. It's short but action packed.

UPDATE: And check out QandO's commentary on Warren: "The French role? Pay for this time they need to organize and they will pretend, for a while, that the French are still in charge. And the French, if history is any indicator, are particularly adept at this role."

MSMemory ***Holes on the stand soon: "Oh, she is going to be one fine witness for the defense."

The Heart Of Nihilism ... Is Nothing

"Unless the invertebrates in charge can grow spines, France seems poised to become what Spain was before Ferdinand and Isabella, a patchwork of principalities where Moors ruled some communities, Christians others, with constant tension between them. It seems inconceivable that a civilized Western nation would bargain away to a handful of thugs its democratic principles and sovereignty over much of its territory.

But the Islamists may well succeed. For though what the Islamists believe in is vile and reactionary, it is something. The French believe in nothing."

Wow -- Blankley Is The Oracle Of Apocalypse

"As Paul Belien, writing from Brussels this weekend observed: "It is not anger that is driving the insurgents to take it out on the secularized welfare states of Old Europe. It is hatred. Hatred caused not by injustice suffered, but stemming from a sense of superiority. The "youths" do not blame the French, they despise them."

The Ambiguous Apocalypse

"Meanwhile, the Union for Islamic Organizations of France, which has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, has issued a fatwa declaring: “It is formally forbidden to any Muslim seeking divine grace and satisfaction to participate in any action that blindly hits private or public property or could constitute an attack on someone’s life.” There is a strange ambiguity in this, recalling that of the CAIR-backed American fatwa condemning attacks on innocent civilians without defining “innocent”: what constitutes attacking “blindly”? Is a focused, targeted attack somehow acceptable?

The time for such ambiguity is long past. And indeed, lines are being drawn everywhere."

"One wonders why they have suddenly developed amnesia about it now." I don't. I call it the MSMemory Hole...

It looks like the infiltration is working fine.

"EVERY MUSLIM LIVES UNDER A PERMANENT DEATH THREAT."

STEYN: A New Dark Ages. (He forgot to wonder about the French H-Bombs though...)

Demarche Has Today's Eurabian Apocalypse Update

"It's like Baghdad here! It's the Apocalypse!" ...

"These riots may yet be put down without serious loss of life, but they are a glimpse of the future that awaits Europe. The youth who shouted out the phrase that is the title of this piece is sorely mistaken. Baghdad is on its way to recovery- Europe is on the slippery path to suicide by appeasement."

Go read it all...

Youths Islamofascists Torched An Ambulance

Roger points out that the Islamofascist violence is not abating in France:

Widespread riots across impoverished areas of France took a malevolent turn in a ninth night of violence, as youths torched an ambulance and stoned medical workers coming to the aid of a sick person. Authorities arrested more than 200 people, an unprecedented sweep since the beginning of the unrest.

And did I forget to mention that 9,000 police cars have been stoned in France since the beginning of the year? 9,000!?

Oh, and they set a disabled woman on fire. Because they feel "oppressed" you see. C'est la vie...

Look down just a few posts to:

It is better to be opposed by an enemy than to be adrift in meaninglessness, for the simulacrum of an enemy lends purpose to actions whose nihilism would otherwise be self-evident.

Killing or even attempting to injure medical personnel in the act of rescue is nihilism pure and simple. The irony is that rationality would easily argue that anyone attacking medical personnel should either be killed on sight or immediately whisked into a rubber room.

And it exposes the great Catch-22 of the advance of civilization: We've somehow advanced to the point where the best of our societies have their lives constantly at risk to help save nihilists. Because they truly believe that nobody is beyond the reach of being "saved". And the very success of our best via these heroic acts helps foster the very dependence that is a -- probably the -- critical root cause of nihilism.

And why do they perceive ambulances as evil? Because as PALLYWOOD makes clear, they themselves use them as mere props -- if not actual instruments of terror.

"Recent newspaper stories report how imams and community "mothers" have been marching against the violence, only to have themselves stoned and jeered. De Villepin unleashed his ultimate weapon and it turned out to be a rubber sword.

What de Villepin's planning probably missed was that the millet system plus the Internet formed a combination that would go through the 21st century "impassable Ardennes" like s..t through a goose. The millet system meant that potentially hostile foci were were already pre-deployed outside the cordon, often in cities outside Paris. And the Internet of course ensured that command and control could be exercised at a distance by command cells despite any number of deployed riot police. My guess is that by day 6 or 7 the French leadership began to doubt whether their impenetrable defenses would hold. By 9th day, I think, a real panic had begun to set in and they are now scrambling for a Plan B."

BEST QUOTE HEARD SO FAR TODAY: "Often wrong but never uncertain."

March, 1939?

The Root Of The French Fried Fires

"They therefore come to believe in the malevolence of those who maintain them in their limbo: and they want to keep alive the belief in this perfect malevolence, for it gives meaning-the only possible meaning-to their stunted lives. It is better to be opposed by an enemy than to be adrift in meaninglessness, for the simulacrum of an enemy lends purpose to actions whose nihilism would otherwise be self-evident."

UPDATE: Here's the non-signup link to the Taheri article you should have read by now.

'... the issue jelled around a demand by the representatives of the rioters that the French police leave the "occupied territories"'

Day By Day delivers this week's knock-out blow:

ORWELL SPINNING IN HIS GRAVE DEPT: "Aside from protecting us at the front and the rear, our great leader Kim Jong Il, the benevolent father of the people, showed us mercy by filtering the water. And, in order to help and care about the health of our people, he progressively practiced appropriate measures. Now, in North Korea, the land of pure hope, the people can gracefully drink clean water through the endless love of the great leader comrade Kim Jong Il." (HT Publius)

(C)BS Update: Mary my better.

What the hell-ABLE? Over?

"But this is France."

UPDATE: "Sadek has learned how to be French. He is the perfect Frenchman. The path ahead is tough- and he quit. Fight the Nazis? Non, too hard. Carry groceries up stairs? Merde! J'ai stoppé."

AND I WOULD TOP THIS BUT I CAN'T: From his hospital bed, Le Pew issued an apology to the Parisian cat community, explaining that "I am to be walking in zee park one day, in ze merry merry month of Mai," and "Pepe, he is to thinking this feline girl, she is un belle skunk femme fatale, no?"

"C.S. Lewis once said that the greatest advantage that the devil has is the belief that he doesn't exist."

Darn, and I was so sure listening to the lefties that being high and dry in Colorado would be such a good real estate investment...

"Precisely those who do not recognize Israel's right to exist have been opposed to the birth of an independent Palestinian state. Such as happened in 1948 when, in order to prevent the Jewish state from seeing the light of day, they only prevented the creation of the Palestinian state foreseen in 1947 by UN Resolution 181. And why did Jordan, instead of annexing Cisjordan in 1949 and Egypt, instead of governing the Gaza Strip in 1967, never agree to have a Palestinian state in those territories?"

"The First Amendment specifically protected the free exercise of political speech, and yet under the BCRA the First Amendment now offers more protection to nude dancing and pornography than it does to political candidates who want to communicate with prospective constituents."

"These are not simply American claims, they are also the official positions of the Egyptian, Algerian, and Saudi governments."

Dalrymple On The Heart Of Suicide Hell

"Of course, hatred is the underlying emotion. A man in prison who told me that he wanted to be a suicide bomber was more hate-filled than any man I have ever met. The offspring of a broken marriage between a Muslim man and a female convert, he had followed the trajectory of many young men in his area: sex and drugs and rock and roll, untainted by anything resembling higher culture. Violent and aggressive by nature, intolerant of the slightest frustration to his will and frequently suicidal, he had experienced taunting during his childhood because of his mixed parentage. After a vicious rape for which he went to prison, he converted to a Salafist form of Islam and became convinced that any system of justice that could take the word of a mere woman over his own was irredeemably corrupt.

I noticed one day that his mood had greatly improved; he was communicative and almost jovial, which he had never been before. I asked him what had changed in his life for the better. He had made his decision, he said. Everything was resolved. He was not going to kill himself in an isolated way, as he had previously intended. Suicide was a mortal sin, according to the tenets of the Islamic faith. No, when he got out of prison he would not kill himself; he would make himself a martyr, and be rewarded eternally, by making himself into a bomb and taking as many enemies with him as he could.

Enemies, I asked; what enemies? How could he know that the people he killed at random would be enemies? They were enemies, he said, because they lived happily in our rotten and unjust society. Therefore, by definition, they were enemies—enemies in the objective sense, as Stalin might have put it—and hence were legitimate targets.

I asked him whether he thought that, in order to deter him from his course of action, it would be right for the state to threaten to kill his mother and his brothers and sisters—and to carry out this threat if he carried out his, in order to deter others like him.

The idea appalled him, not because it was yet another example of the wickedness of a Western democratic state, but because he could not conceive of such a state acting in this unprincipled way. In other words, he assumed a high degree of moral restraint on the part of the very organism that he wanted to attack and destroy."

(HT Charles) Dalrymple gets to the heart of the matter. One part mental illness and one part attacking us in -- and relying upon -- the heart of our virtue. And on reflection, it's nearly impossible to distinguish this from the moonbats...

As Wretchard pointed out, we have it correctly sized up as a long one. Well, on our more sanguine days anyway...

Miniter On ...

Pushing back the hands of the Tinfoil clock. It's a reasonably persuasive piece and I hope he's right. Unfortunately, it doesn't invalidate the basic Tinfoil Apocalypse thesis: Technology keeps growing but their minds don't...

JAW DROPPINGS a brewin': 9,000??? ... ?

TODAY'S INNUMERACY UPDATE: The reverse Ponzi scheme.

TODAY'S UPDATE from the "extremely complicated science" department.

"Islam has always been militant and the West only recently supine. In fairness, Islam's only fault may be that it retained a belief in itself long after the West embraced self-disgust. It may be that Gingrich's Long War is less about fighting Muslims than about the West rediscovering itself. While it's apparent battlefields may be in the mountains, jungles and desert fastnesses, the only frontier that matters is in its own heart."

"If the media wanted the US to lose this War in Iraq what would they change about their reporting today?"

COMMENT OF THE DAY -- AND MORE: "It is for these reasons that the eventual resolution of the war on terror is inextricably bound up with dismantling the welfare state, with one side in the civil war absolutely determined not to reopen the issue. The tipping point which leads to total war, our own Maginot Line, runs now through our own societies and will only be crossed in locality after locality as affluent professionals and their children, rather than immigrants, less educated citizens and inner city welfare recipients, are blown apart." As you can imagine, you need to read Wretchard's post first...

"Islamofascists are cowards. They attack unarmed civilians precisely because they know they cannot succeed with their activity any other way. Anyone who would plan and carry out this kind of crime has no sense of humanity, honor, or worth. The only rational response is to find them and kill them before they attack more children for their sick and twisted motives."

Speaking of which. You have seen PALLYWOOD by now, haven't you?

India pays the beheader's price today. Although it's nothing new, of course. And France RSN. They're both such mindless allies of BusHitler don't you know...

MSMemory Hole TODAY: Five days ago.

POST OF THE DAY: Marc and Scooter. Don't let the door hit you in the butt! I am curious though if there's still a romance / somebody used somebody angle here between Scooter and Judy...

Tinfoil. Apocalyse. Approacheth. David. Telleth.

"For the West, whose command centre is ultimately the White House, the question has been how to assess the ayatollahs’ intentions. Would they respond to external challenges, and internal decay, by gradually admitting the necessity of reforms? Might they capitulate? Or would they (in every sense of the phrase) “go nuclear”?

To people like me, the answer has been plain for several years now. It should now be plain to everyone else. President Ahmadinejad’s bold repetition of the promise to bring about a new Holocaust, in combination with Iran’s scarcely-concealed race to become a nuclear power with long-range missile delivery systems, leaves nothing ambiguous. But then, neither did Ahmadinejad’s recent underreported, psychopathic speech to the U.N. General Assembly. And it should be remembered that even his opponent in the Iranian presidential run-off last June, Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, had called repeatedly for Israel’s annihilation, as speaker of the Majlis through much of the 1980s.

The Iranian Holocaust policy is thus nothing new. What is new is the way it is being declared, openly and internationally. And as Tony Blair, the British prime minister, hinted aloud yesterday, we have come to the point where we must consider military means to make the Iranian policy change.

"To anybody in Europe knowing our history,” Mr Blair said, “when we hear statements like that made about Israel it makes us feel very angry.” He actually looked angry. "Ask yourself: A state like that, with an attitude like that, having a nuclear weapon?"

Condemnation came from many unusual quarters, including the Palestinian Authority, which must be uneasily aware that an Iranian nuclear strike that eradicates Israel, will also have the effect of eradicating them. Even Kofi Annan expressed his displeasure.

North American media have had no time to report these world-shaking events, this week, for President Bush has been manoeuvred into a political pit inside the Beltway, and that’s what they live for. That we cannot afford to have a U.S. President tied down with cheap domestic controversies, at a time like this, was one of my unstated reasons for luke-warmly supporting the Supreme Court nomination of Harriet Miers.

I have myself been unsure whether the wiser course were sabotage rather than direct attack. For years I have thought the West should be trying harder not to appease, but rather to undermine, the Iranian regime, by aggressively supporting its domestic opponents. An external attack might help the regime rally domestic support. And of course it would have to be done over the demonstrating bodies of the worlds’ angry Left. Therefore try every option, short of open war.

I don’t think “every other option” is credible any more. We must look squarely at what is before us, and not for an excuse to look away.

It should be realized that President Ahmadinejad’s threats -- and his subsequent failure to retract them -- themselves constitute acts of war. The Israelis, at the least, are in a moral and legal position to act in self-defence; and all decent men and women are under a moral obligation to support them."

RTWT.

UPDATE: What "wipe"?

AND AGAIN: "... my guess is the UN's response will to be to name Iran to the Commission on Human Rights as the chair."

"Is he even sacrificing a good night's sleep? Is he sacrificing his future with his child? He is not sacrificing anything. He and his cabal of warmongering crooks are asking us Americans to give up our lives and our children's lives for his lies and mistakes and I am sure the grim milestone is barely causing a blip in their souls. ... In unrelated news in the past month, General MacArthur has retaken the Phillipines, many atolls continue to fall to American forces in the Pacific, and General Patton continues to roll through France on to Germany." (HT Glenn)

"... and things look likely to get worse." MOST EXCELLENT.

"Democracy, then, will not diminish either radicalism or anti-Americanism (or opposition to Israel) in the Arab Muslim world. But it will create many more active enemies of al Qaeda, and in this war the enemy of our enemy is definitely our friend. " (HT Roger)

Have they got there yet? Eh?

Who decided to do that?

Just sad.

"As it happens, I'm pro-choice, too, but I don't fool myself into believing that Roe v. Wade was anything other than pure sophistry. As it happens, I also think married couples should have free access to contraceptives, but that Griswold v. Connecticut was a complete travesty, with all its talk about penumbras and emanations. One notes the irony however, in that Roe is essentially an emanation of Griswold."

"Heh. Politicians. The only class of people stupid enough to commit felonies to cover up misdemeanors. Or, as it appears in this case, to cover up something that probably wasn't even a crime at all.

But, hey, it's only perjury, right? If memory serves, in 1999, some argued that a little perjury wasn't even a crime worth anyone's attention at all...

Any takers on the odds for a pardon for Karl Rove?"

What do (C)BS and Don Kofi have in common besides their excreble politics? Troubles understanding Word...

"Sadly, couples don't place a high priority on bringing children into the paradise they've created."

Hell From Space Yet Again

Una handa la.

Stopped clock rule today at 60 Minutes:

In his first U.S. television interview, the former U.S. Army sergeant who deserted to North Korea speaks for the first time about the abuse and control inflicted on him by the communist dictatorship over his nearly 40 years there. Charles Robert Jenkins tells Scott Pelley he Êhad a "U.S. Army" tattoo sliced off without anesthetic and was even told how often to have sex by his communist "leaders" in a 60 MINUTES interview to be broadcast Sunday, Oct. 23 (7:00-8:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.

Most leftists make excuses for this hellhole just as they claim the beheaders are oppressed by me.

That's right, me.

The f***ing imperialist pig dupe, me.

I've had enough today as you might notice.

By the way, this is one of the few countries in the world that's such a hellhole that Transparency International is stymied even gathering statistics about corruption. Off the scale in other words.

And a hellhole when viewed from space also:

...

(Gray on the map indicates 3 CPI polls were not available; TI suggests these countries could be among the most corrupt. [D'oh! --ed] Black on the night picture from space indicates countries that are indisputably hellholes. Period. Halt. Full Stop.)

Una handa la.

Will W grab the lifesaver?

ABLE to flee???

"Maybe O.J. can help Hezbollah look for the real killers!"

"We’re talking about real fanatics here. Fun reading, yes, but they kill a lot." (HT Roger)

"However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once."

LIBRARY? OR RE-ELECTION?: "Freeh's demands were not his top priority, gas prices were."

Condi Plays The Dating Game

Check this out from Ramos-Horta via DeMarche:

...I oppose wars as a matter of personal conviction. But because of my own experience, I also say that sometimes the use of force is necessary to put an end to tyranny and genocide. Can anyone condemn the U.S. for having intervened during World War II, to save the Jews from total annihilation? Can we condemn the NATO countries for intervening against Milosevic in 1998? For saving the Kosovars from annihilation? And moving to Afghanistan, it is often far too simplistic for blaming the U.S. But people forget that the U.S. gave an ultimatum to the Taliban regime to turn over Osama bin Laden. Pakistani diplomats traveled to Kabul twice, to persuade the Taliban to hand over Osama bin Laden. Here you have a state, Afghanistan, ruled by a regime that hosted a network and boasted about it, and defied the rest of the world about it. So, what should you do? The pacifists say "bring them to justice." Sure. Tell me how to bring them to justice without using force.

This little tour-de-force (pardon the pun) was just one from Ramos-Horta set in the context of DeMarche's support for Condi holding her ground during the "dating game" in her latest testimony before the Senate. Thankfully, she held her ground and refused to set any dates for withdrawing from Iraq, properly noting that:

"The terrorists want us to get discouraged and quit," Rice said. "They believe we do not have the will to see this through."

But the best line was reserved for one of DeMarche's commenters:

The next time someone on the left wants a date for withdrawal from Iraq, ask them for a date to give up on diplomacy with Iran. The Iraq date will be a month after the Iran date which will be 1 day before Iran is invaded. See if that doesn't stop the whining.

That about sums it up. Well, except for some "accidental" bombings in Syria as well. Why let the Palis have a monopoly on "bombing accidents"? But in our case, the bomber crew will come back safe and sound to load up for another mission. This time actually hitting Iran.

Well, only after a "severe" chastising of course. Oh so severe.

Really.

Fooled ya with that title, didn't I?

What has them so afraid?

"I also think it's interesting to see how many people are now pretending (1) that Miller's WMD/Iraq reporting didn't start until the Bush Administration's war buildup, when actually it goes back to the 1990s; and (2) that nobody else thought that we'd find vast WMD stockpiles when we invaded, when in fact everyone thought we would. (The valuable lesson for would-be Saddams -- don't run a bluff against the United States -- is also lost)."

TODAY"S YUCK: Emanating Harriet's Texas penumbras...

Here's what W is for. Here's the result of his ludicrous inattention to real immigration justice. But don't worry -- Karl Rove controls my brain at all times. Yeah, right...

Well, then, learn to think for yourself.

WARREN AGAIN: "Bali is a favoured target because it is the one large island in Indonesia that was never converted to Islam. It remains Hindu..."

Steyn Time

You can’t tell the players without a scorecard, and that’s just the way the Western media intend to keep it. If you wake up one morning and switch on the TV to see the Empire State Building crumbling to dust, don’t be surprised if the announcer goes, “Insurging rebel militant forces today attacked key targets in New York. In other news, the president’s annual Ramadan banquet saw celebrities dancing into the small hours to Mullah Omar And His All-Girl Orchestra . . .

TODAY'S liberal innumeracy update...

Congratulations to the Iraqi people! And a just rebuff to the beheaders...

Covey Corner

Being a long-time "7 Habits" fan, I've been recommending Stephen Covey's "The 8th Habit" to all. One of my victims sends back this as his favorite excerpt so far:

The truth is you can never succeed with stockholders until you first succeed in the marketplace, and you can never succeed in the marketplace until you first succeed in the workplace. (page 110)

Now you know why you need to read it too...

T-SHIRT SPOTTING: "I'm trying to find myself. If I should get back before I return, please ask me to wait."

Glenn has an interesting and varied (read: this one isn't amenable to a 10-minute solution) post on the decline of American science. Check it out.

"Then Achmed the Saudi raises his hand. Now, you have to understand, Achmed is pretty much the team wiseass, so half the room was smiling and the other half was cringing when he stood up. “Imam,” he says, “let’s go back to phase number one on your waterfall chart. Ummmm, how does this expel-the-crusaders thing happen again?”

So Zawahiri just sorta stands there, mute for a minute, and says, “well, er, the vision statement is really very simple. We build mindshare with the masses with six-sigma beheading QC processes, and then the kaffirs will run away like in Vietnam. We just need to be ready for it, like the Vietnamese.”

Achmed just stands there and looks at him, completely deadpan.

“No seriously, this is exactly what happens with best-of-breed insurgencies, like Vietnam,” says Zawahiri. “It’s in all the books.”

So then, Achmed does this sarcastic confused look, and starts scratching his temple with his left stump. Man, it’s a good thing they broke for lunch, because I thought I was going to fucking crack up."

Today's Islamic Nihilism Update

Phares takes on Dr. Z's "old news". Actually, I think that the interesting part is of course not the old news -- although our peurile fascifist crowd could never digest that without their heads literally melting. No, the interesting stuff is the possibility that the Islamofascists are actually considering the need to stop machine gunning children to death so they can gain more sympathy from the populace.

Not that is a given mind you -- it's a worthy debate since Dr. al-Z has brought it up though.

Of course, anyone with an actual functioning brain would realize within about 12 nanoseconds that even the need for such a debate would be the very definition of nihilistic insanity.

End. Full Stop. Cuckoo.

About that (Reid-ian) Theocracy...

The Repulsive Chirac

CHECK THIS OUT:

"Perhaps Chirac's deepest friendship has been with Saddam Hussein.[30] The two first met in December 1974 when Prime Minister Chirac visited Baghdad to negotiate trade agreements, including the delivery of a nuclear reactor[31] later destroyed by an Israeli air raid in 1981. When Hussein visited France the following September—his only visit to a Western country[32]—then-prime minister Chirac said, "I welcome you as my personal friend. I assure you of my esteem, my consideration, and my affection."[33]

Resigning from government in 1976, Chirac founded the Rassemblement pour la Republique, which would soon become France's largest political party. There remain persistent rumors that Hussein helped finance the party, supported by allegations by Lebanese arms merchant Sarkis Soghanalian[34] and by various Iraqi politicians. In 1992, Saddam reportedly threatened to expose French leaders who had earlier accepted his largesse. "From Mr. Chirac to Mr. Chevènement, politicians and economic leaders were in open competition to spend time with us and flatter us," the Iraqi leader reportedly said. "We have now grasped the reality of the situation [of France's support for the 1991 Gulf War, a betrayal in Saddam's eyes]. If the trickery continues, we will be forced to unmask them, all of them, before the French public."[35] According to an aide, Chirac's friendship with Hussein was such that he would stop for a night in Baghdad whenever he traveled between Paris and Asia.[36]"

I'd tell you what I really think of Chirac and the French except it would scald your eyeballs. You might check out "The Wanted War" for a mild introduction though... [HT Power Line]

Like A Moth To The Drain

"It does, however, demonstrate the toxic combination of hyperbolic media and sensational events. Not content with reporting the news that happened before their eyes, media outlets had to reach beyond the news to report events that never happened, all without doing even basic research to determine the veracity of their reports. How difficult would it have been for NBC or the New York Times to get a test of the water before unleashing reports on the so-called toxic soup? How about getting reporters to verify accounts of rapes and murders by the score before airing such rumors to a repulsed nation?

How many people did these reports turn away who might otherwise have offered assistance? Laughably, the media gave itself a big pat on the back within days of the Katrina disaster, declaring themselves vindicated after a year of CBS memo debacles and Eason Jordan embarrassments. Only much later can we see that they learned nothing over that past year and have moved themselves even closer to the National Enquirer in terms of credibility. Instead of congratulating themselves, the media needs to eliminate the hysterics that drive the news coverage during unfolding catastrophes to make sure that they don't contribute even more damage to the victims and the nation."

TODAY'S NYeT: "Perhaps the Gray Lady finds democracy too distasteful for her scrubbed hands, but the rest of us find these developments very pleasing and reason for hope of eventual unity and peace.

Or if you can't cheer up, at least hire someone who knows how to write an honest editorial."

Brother Michael Is Back

"In a world like that, several things happen. Above all, creative activity ceases to exist, since culture depends on advancing knowledge and improving understanding. Neither of these interests the clerical fascists who rule the terror countries. They want good little Muslim androids, who will accept the preposterous belief that all knowledge was acquired several centuries ago and that man’s only worthwhile intellectual activity is to imbibe that knowledge in order to recite it when called for.

The most devastating critique of such a system is laughter, which the leaders of the terror regimes can not and dare not tolerate. Laughter bespeaks fun, and fun is totally forbidden. Remember the Taliban, from whose caves Osama bin Laden and his merry band of killers emerged about ten years ago? They not only locked away all the women, they banned music. Some French film producer went all over Afghanistan, filming eerie landscapes featuring poles driven into the ground, wrapped with audio tape. The only sound was the rustling of the tape in the wind. This was the country in which Osama et al. found the perfect atmosphere for their preparations for the jihad."

"If you had high hopes for the President Bush's shiny new Tax Reform Commission, then do yourself a favor and dash your hopes on some sharp pointy rocks right now."

And just keep scrolling while you're there...

Well, no, we didn't actually mean the really rich!

"No doubt the bien pensants will still be hooting at born-again Texans on the day the House of Lords gives a second reading to the Sharia Bill."

About that Caliphate...

"We suffered a stunning surprise attack at the hands of the Japanese in 1941, just as we have from al Qaeda. The Japanese believed that their religion (a divine Emperor) would provide the ultimate victory, and their kamikaze bombers destroyed themselves in attacking us in their emperor's name. Sound familiar?"

"something didn't still doesn't feel right."

Did I mention the high cost of high school failure?

I don't either.

Happy Columbus Day...

"But we are living in a strange world when cynical opportunism can masquerade as moral superiority, and get away with it."

"It's the same people who think that hatred consists of nothing more than a misunderstanding, and that a nice, friendly conversation cures evil."

UMPH... Pants're tight...

Looks like time for another Salvation Army donation...

"Why are we hearing this stuff from Beldar and not the Administration?"

"The expanding use of Iraqi police and soldiers has also led to passing control of areas to Iraqi commands. This month, the Iraqi 6th infantry division took over military control of Baghdad. Last month, Iraqi security forces assumed control of the southern city of Karbala (the home of many Shia shrines and holy places.) More such transfers of control will take place each month. This is scaring the Sunni Arab minority like nothing else. Control of the army and police was, for generations, the cornerstone of Sunni Arab control of Iraq. With Shia Arab and Kurdish police and soldiers taking effective control of more and more of the country, and working with American troops to root out Sunni Arab terrorist operations, the Sunni Arabs see their dream of regaining control of the country fading away, and turning into a nightmare of democracy and majority rule."

neo-neocon yet again:"We can sense this thing, but can't describe it. It spooked people long ago, and it fills us with dread now, to look into those empty, empty eyes." Just making sure I get caught up ...