The Neo-Syndicalists will now commence foaming...

"But I'm prepared to make an exception for Pat Robertson."

I have to admit amazement that the Catholics have selected such a clear-eyed Pope. He may even deserve that capitalization if he keeps this up...

"The best of us live in the hope of receiving judgment, not escaping it."

WALL WATCH: "The world is getting flatter but the great wall is getting thicker."

And now ... just in "time" ... the garden of the Finzi-Continis.

QandO Has Had It Today

And I'm nearly there myself:

The best defense is a good offense, offense, in this case, being to transmit the culture and values that have underpinned Western economic and political dominance to the Muslim world. That means promoting democracy, limited government, human rights, and free markets to a region of the world where they have been essentially nonexistent for the last millennium. And, even then, I'm not sure it's possible to do effectively. I just think it's the only policy that has any chance of succeeding.

Whether we'll actually even attempt to do so, and do so consistently, over the long term—is an open question. In the current political climate of America, I doubt it. And the only thing that will change the political climate is, I think, another—or perhaps more than one—terrorist attack. And a truly horrific one.

As I've related before, back in the early days after 9/11, Sci-Fi author John Ringo predicted that America would pull together for a while, but would soon fall back to squabbling, until there was another terrorist attack, at which point the cycle would start all over again. He predicted the cycle would repeat until the patience of the electorate snapped, and we went to full-scale war with the Muslim world.

Apparently, he was right. Maybe that's what it will take for the current generation of Americans to learn what our grandparents learned to their dismay in the 1930s: that liberty must be defended, and that our society, for all its faults, is far, far better than anything that is available to replace it.

So, you know what? To that end, I'm perfectly prepared to let the Left have its way.

I'll make a deal with the Left: You wanna impeach President Bush? Go ahead. Knock yourself out. In fact, let's just go to the polls and turn the whole government over to the Democrats. You wanna run the whole show? Fine. Elect Howard Dean President. End all surveillance against possible enemy combatants, unless you can get a warrant based on probable cause. Withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan immediately. Permanently kill the PATRIOT Act. Do whatever you want to do. I'm perfectly willing, at this point, to do it your way.

I mean, really, what's the worst that can happen? An American city goes up in nuclear fire? Well, it'll probably be New York, Chicago, or LA. You know, a major city. I don't live there, nor do most Americans. So we'll be fine.

But here's the other half of the deal: If that happens, we get to march on Washington, drag you naked and screaming from your offices, and hang you from the ornate lampposts that line The Mall. Then, free from roadblocks thrown up by infantile political fools, maybe we'll get serious about defending the United States, her people, her freedoms, and her values, in an increasingly hostile world.

The only little problem here is that one of the hits we take turning our cheeks in the warm-ups may put us down so we can't get back up. And that would include my family that I love so dearly.

Frick.

RTWT. Period.

Today's miracle. And today's predictable pronouncement from the loony bin.

Think small (cap).

And down the MSMemory Hole with the net...

Gotcha!

"It is no wonder that genocide is so often preceded by efforts to disarm the people."

Someday there may be a Wretchard of the left. I'm not holding my breath though: What do you leave behind?

"The second rule is to give credit to people that they are sincere in their beliefs."

"[I]t is these Democrats, not George W. Bush or their Republican critics, who have raised the question of whether they are on America's side."

Pure motives? ... NYeT!
(HT Power Line)

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. "