An Argument For Consistency?

(FAIR WARNING: Be sure not to miss this punch line! Scroll it man!)

Via a friend comes this beaut from the radical right-wing SFgate titled "Flip-flopping charge unsupported by facts, Kerry always pushed global cooperation, war as last resort" that starts this way:

Washington -- No argument is more central to the Republican attack on Sen. John Kerry than the assertion that the Democrat has flip-flopped on Iraq.

President Bush, seated beside Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi said Tuesday: "My opponent has taken so many different positions on Iraq that his statements are hardly credible at all.''

The allegation is the basis of a new Bush campaign TV ad that shows the Democratic senator from Massachusetts windsurfing to the strains of a Strauss waltz as a narrator intones: "Kerry voted for the Iraq war, opposed it, supported it and now opposes it again.''

Yet an examination of Kerry's words in more than 200 speeches and statements, comments during candidate forums and answers to reporters' questions does not support the accusation.

But then ends thus:

Kerry's enthusiastic words seem to conflict with his statement Monday at New York University.

"Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator who deserves his own special place in hell. But ... the satisfaction we take in his downfall does not hide this fact: We have traded a dictator for a chaos that has left America less secure,'' Kerry said.

For a candidate who has been in elected office nearly a quarter of a century, Kerry has at times shown a remarkable inability to explain the nuances of his position.

Asked by radio host Don Imus last week to explain how he could be so critical of the war yet stand by his vote to authorize the use of force, Kerry responded with a 324-word answer, including a discussion of no-fly zones and Iraqi tribal separatism.

The response left Imus -- a self-described Kerry supporter -- perplexed.

"I was just back in my office banging my head on the jukebox,'' Imus told listeners when the interview was over. "This is my candidate, and ... I don't know what he's talking about.''

So we have now apparently moved on at warp speed from Rathergate's "fake -- but accurate" to "incoherent -- but consistent"? Bah-dah-dah-rrrrump!

Did I forget to mention that I started out to fisk this article but found myself preempted by its author?

Security Moms Report Back To Duty?

Via Michelle, we are reminded of Sekimori's "Top Ten Signs You Are A Security Mom":

1. Your attack dog has a bin Laden chew toy.
2. You base your SUV purchase on how many places there are to conceal a weapon.
3. Your neighborhood watch complains you don't leave any perps for them.
4. You'll vote for Bush because the other guy is a wussy.
5. You traded in your Gucci for the M-30 Leather Gun Purse.
6. The guys at the range call you 'Sarge'.
7. You send your kids to Judo Camp.
8. Your son quit the Boy Scouts because they were “amateurs”.
9. Monday is “MRE Night”.
10. You DO wear combat boots.

Did I Forget To Mention? (Appendix A)

Dan rips apart more State Department absurdities posturing as biblical truth about AQ and in an out-of-character move can't resist piling on the more well-known Dan and his Kerry sycophants. Did I forget to mention that Regnum Crucis is one of the must-reads if you're actually curious to look under Osama's skirt?

Speaking of skirts, libs claim that it's just so hard to differentiate between "freedom fighters" and terrorists. I don't think so. Did I forget to mention machine-gunning fleeing children in the back and the Beslan terrorist leadership detonating some of the women terrorists on the way in as an example to coerce the rest of the terrorists to obey orders?

Did I forget to use scare quotes around the word terrorist? Can you fault me and claim an IQ above 10?

UPDATE: Did I forget to mention that to avoid dehydration the children in Beslan had to drink their own pee before they were machine gunned in the back?

Did I forget to mention the MSM is going to go down with an enormous crash if it keeps this garbage up?

Did I forget to mention that dark networks are on the way to dusty death? Wretchard has a dynamic range that is not to be missed -- including one of the most damning takes on the MSM imaginable.

I have a better title for this excellent post about blatant MSM bias from Powerline: "Kerrying Water".

There He Goes Again (Updated)

OK, JUST ONE MORE UPDATE 9/28 9pm: Oops, forgot the Senate floor. I think the bottom line is that he holds all positions simultaneously. Remember the tinfoil, uh, CIA hat found on the pecan plantation?
------
UPDATED 9/24 8pm MT: Powerline says to hold off and wait for the tape -- Lexis/Nexis transcript is not an exact match to this! In the few times I have seen Peter King on tube interviews he seemed to be fairly level-headed and credible. Too soon for a retraction yet but skepticism is warranted for now until the video appears. It is September 26 after all so this could yet be a slightly premature "October surprise" from the omnipotent Rove-meister. (Oh yeah, it took CBS how long to do even a "fake retraction"?)

FINAL UPDATE DECLARED AS OF 9/25 pm: Looks like Washington Times has screwed up royally. Looks like no "October Surprise" here. If you can take some brisk language (!), Neognostikos gives the real deal an aggressive fisking that deals out some much needed perspective. And Just One Minute looks to have the best grasp on the big picture including pointing out that the Washington Times has issued a correction. Good for them for getting it right and bad on King.

On the other hand, did I mention that Dan Rather still thinks the forgeries are real? What's that frequency again, Kenneth? It wouldn't be the one that Carnegie-Mellon PhDs operate on for sure.

And pecan plantations remain unchallenged...

---- ORIGINAL POST STARTS HERE ----

Dissing our allies once more. And no, I don't mean Allawi. It just leaves one slack jawed, doesn't it? He's actually so craven as to support my position on occasion among the 40 billion or so others he manages to hold:

Kerry out attack

During a 1997 debate on CNN's "Crossfire," Sen. John Kerry, now the Democratic presidential nominee, made the case for launching a pre-emptive attack against Iraq.

So reveals Rep. Peter King, New York Republican, who appeared with Mr. Kerry on the program.

Mr. King says the U.N. Security Council had just adopted a resolution against Iraq that was watered down at the behest of the French and the Russians. Yet the candidate who now criticizes President Bush for ignoring French and Russian objections to the Iraq war blasted the two countries, claiming that they were compromised by their business dealings with Baghdad.

"We know we can't count on the French. We know we can't count on the Russians," said Mr. Kerry. "We know that Iraq is a danger to the United States, and we reserve the right to take pre-emptive action whenever we feel it's in our national interest."

While no "Crossfire" transcripts from 1997 are available, Mr. King in recent days produced a tape of the show, sharing it with New York radio host Monica Crowley for broadcast, and this Inside the Beltway column for publication. Stay tuned.

So it looks like I have no choice but to vote for John Kerry! Boy, is the evil Karl Rove going to be surprised to find he doesn't control my mind after all! Whee hawwww! I'm free at last!

Well, OK -- maybe I need to settle down. Perhaps there's a better explanation related to pecan plantations... (Hat tip Matt)

A Sinful Soapbox: The Local Root Cause

---- PREFACE ----

From Glenn quoting a reader today: "Blogs are the letter to the editor that the editor does not want to print."

OK, this one finally popped my patience bubble with the Fort Collins' Coloradoan. Here's my current Soapbox submission (a long letter to the editor format) that they don't seem to have space to print. I wonder why? God-awful, incoherent writing?

Or do you suppose it doesn't fit the MSM story line?

A little more context to understand the Soapbox: To be fair, the Coloradoan used to post everything I sent them and this year they have increased their local columnists and decreased their Soapbox space. I did enter a contest they had to select a new set of local columnists at the start of the year and lost out. And I made no bones about having a foreign policy focus to my writing rather than local interest -- so if that's the reason it's certainly fair enough.

UPDATE: I would be negligent if I didn't mention that part of my columnist proposal was for a simultaneous blog. Needless to say, my work at prototyping "We The Free" as part of my columnist submission has become what you're reading now...

Finally, the last Soapbox of mine they did publish cast some rather negative light on the French -- keep that in mind as you read on...

---- SOAPBOX ON ----

The Local Root Cause

As I was slowing for the stoplight, I noticed that the car in front of me had a “Defend Freedom, Defeat Bush” bumper sticker from MoveOn.org sloppily taped to the inside of the back window. Ah yes, it’s almost election time and the swing voters might remember leftists in a negative light this November if “Bush = Hitler” bumper stickers keep proliferating. Time to fake center.

After all, leftists have such appreciation for the mental acuity of the rest of us.

Speaking of mental acuity, I remembered my drive home from dinner the night before with the boys noticing the slightly scruffy van ahead plastered with an impressively large assortment of unusually smallish bumper stickers. I realized it would cause me to take out a skinny tree or three if I was going to try to read them all -- I love the boys dearly so I passed. But in largest type popped “FREE TIBET”. I agree with that one by the way.

Now -– guilty as confessed -- I couldn’t read them all but idled to speculate that I could also probably find an “ISRAELI NAZIS SHOULD TEAR DOWN THEIR ILLEGAL WALL” in there somewhere if I faltered into in an unsafe enough mood to really gander.

Why this errant thought? Because I recalled that the recent travesty of a ruling by the “international tribunal” at the Hague against the Israeli defensive wall was issued by the President of the court, a Mr. Shi Jiuyong. Did I mention yet that it’s the Chinese that have their iron boot on the throat of Tibet?

To be fair there’s at least, oh, a 10% chance that the van’s driver is a supporter of the Israeli wall – by the way one of the few ideas that all ends of the political spectrum in Israel are agreed on. Did I mention that Israel is an actual democracy?

By this point you’re thinking, “What’s happened to Gronlund? Why is he now after the Chinese instead of the French? And why all the local observations?” No worries, you’ll yet be rewarded.

It turns out that local Colorado events are far more important than you thought. In fact, a key “root cause” of “why they hate us” is actually local. Amazingly, it’s located just up the road in Greeley!

Wha-Huh?

That “wha-huh?” would be the six-month visit Egyptian Islamist writer Sayid Qtub – one of Osama’s and Hezbollah’s key spiritual godfathers – made a little over 50 years ago to what’s now UNC Greeley. He suffered the grievous injury during his visit of attending a church dance where upon the playing of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” he famously (well, to radical Islamists anyway) wrote “The room became a confusion of feet and legs: arms twisted around hips; lips met lips; chests pressed together.”

It was just too much for his tiny, misogyny-soaked brain -- he vowed to devote his life to Islamic fundamentalism. Interestingly, W had barely been born at the time.

Luckily, Qtub wasn’t visiting Las Vegas instead of our local 50’s “Church Lady” crowd or the Jihad may have acquired an even more frenetic pace. Did I forget to mention Paris?

Will the left address the Islamo-fascist’s real “root causes” by slamming suffocating black sacks over our wives and little girls? Who’ll then be exposed as the real Hitlers? (No scare quotes required.)

So it’s time for me to order up some bumper stickers. On the left goes “W”. On the right goes “FREE TIBET”. In the middle I’ll place my own: “actually will”.

And another below: “Greeley, Colorado: Sinfully Fun”.

Bob Gronlund
Fort Collins
bob_wtf@comcast.net

---- SOAPBOX OFF ----

Oh, yes. I've just de-anonymized the blog, haven't I?

The Top Ten Reasons to Vote for John Kerry

10. Finally we'll have a first lady with a World Wrestling Federation champion ranking and the mouth to match
9. The liberals will finally get to invade Pakistan and capture Osama due to the failure of Bush's diplomacy with Musharraf
8. SUVs would be considered owned by the Heinz-Kerry "family" therefore consuming no fuel and instantly halving world oil demand and prices
7. All troops in Iraq would be awarded three Purple Hearts forcing an immediate withdrawal -- thus making it much less costly to support our troops since they'd then get to fight Al Qaeda right at home in the U.S.
6. With Dan Rather as the new White House press secretary all statements could be known in advance to be fake -- but accurate
5. Saddam Hussein would quickly die of a brain aneurism from day-to-day confusion whether he would be restored to power or executed
4. No more secret negotiations in Paris with Osama -- he'd get his own embassy on Washington's newly renamed "Freedom Fighter" street
3. After the pullout, no more confusing assertions that fighting Al Qaeda in Iraq is a distraction from the war on Al Qaeda
2. All doctors would just write a check for their net worth directly to John Edwards thus drastically simplifying their tax returns
1. The French will finally stop pursuing only their own corrupt interests -- and immediately send all 600 of their troops to Iraq to restore Saddam's reign

Apocalypse Ammo

Allah remains on the trail while Roger gives me ammunition for an update on the progress of the Tinfoil Apocalpse...

UPDATE: And then came the Pajamaheddin!

You Might Be A Liberal If (Appendix C)

You consider it normal for your news vans to sport anti-Bush stickers.

Your news producers don't even give a second thought to calling in favors from Kerry campaign operatives to incent your wackos sources to provide promised forged evidence.

CBS a 527?

Glenn has the round-up. And Hugh seem to be implying that there'll be no Kerry press conferences -- before the election anyway...

And be sure to check this out:

The CBS story based on the memos the evening of Sept. 8. Are we to believe that the Democratic National Committee put together "Operation Fortunate Son," in which these memos are front and center, entirely in the hours after the CBS report, and yet had their campaign ready so that these memos are referred to in the first words of the AP story Sept. 9?

Are we to believe that the DNC didn't know ahead of time what was in those memos, and how they could be used to attack the president?

Ladies and gentlemen, I am not a lawyer. Would this qualify as circumstantial evidence that CBS and the DNC were collaborating on using the memos before the story ran?

And would this explain why Terry McAuliffe said yesterday that no one at the DNC or Kerry campaign, 'had anything to do with the preparations of the documents,' but said nothing about the distribution or dissemination of the memo?

Oh — and did no one at the DNC look at these documents and say, "Gee, these look like they were written with Microsoft Word"?

Flypaper -- Umm, Honeypot Update

Command Post has an interesting article about the new Iraqi intervention force (Iraqi troops that is) and the apparent pre-announcement of an upcoming December offensive.

Read it -- I'll wait.

One commenter has an interesting take on the apparent "leak":

Classic Sun Tzu and Clausewitz

Precisely the point, as the jihadis are saying to themselves, ” Who are those two guys? We don’t see their names in the Quran or Hadiths.” They are trapped by their own ideology. They only have the tactics described explicitly in their 7th century jihad playbook but the non-Muslim practioners of the art of war are not constrained by such nonsense.

By invading Iraq the United States is seizing Islamic lands in accordance with Sun Tzu’s strategy of grabbing something that is highly valued to the enemy and using it to draw them to you (a.k.a. “honeypot”). And by going for Baghdad, the very heart of the now defunct Islamic empire and seat of the deposed Caliphate, the US is creating a Clausewitzian “center of gravity”.

Allawi’s remarks today are clear testament that the strategy is working:

“Terrorists are coming and pouring in from various countries into Iraq to try and undermine the situation in Iraq. They’re coming from Afghanistan, Pakistan, from Europe, from Morocco, from Syria and so on.
“Iraq is on the front line of fighting these terrorists. And, God forbid, if Iraq is broken or the will of Iraq is broken, then London would be a target, Washington will be a target, Paris will be a target, Cairo will be a target, as we have seen in the past.”

q.e.d.

Oh, and did he forget to mention New York?

Reality Immitates Scrappleface

As usual:

Dan Rather Uncovers Memo Forgery, Demands Resignation
(2004-09-20) -- In an exclusive report tonight, CBS News anchor Dan Rather will break the story of "a web of deception" which allowed 60 Minutes II to use forged documents to impugn the military record of President George Bush.

"As a crack investigative reporter, I've always wanted to break a story this big," said Mr. Rather. "I can't tell you much before the story airs, but the upshot is that someone may have tried to trick me and my producer into using forged documents to discredit the president. We'll actually show you how the fake documents could not have been written in the early 1970s. It's in-depth investigative reporting that you can't get anywhere else. Tune in tonight for this breaking news."

In addition to breaking the fake memo story, Mr. Rather said that during the broadcast he would demand his own resignation, along with that of news producer Mary Mapes.

"You'll never see a cover-up, stonewalling or excuse making at CBS," said Mr. Rather. "We're interested only in truth and integrity. I'm the one who's breaking the story, and I'm the one forcing myself into early retirement. That's proactive."

Mr. Rather said he plans to spend his retirement "sitting around the living room in my pajamas, posting my thoughts to my new blog."

How can I possibly top that? (Hat tip Glenn)

WHOOPS! WHOOPS! WHOOPS! (The Prelude)

Drudge foreshadows tomorrow:

After days of expressing confidence about the documents used in a 60 MINUTES report that raised new questions about President Bush's National Guard service, CBS News officials have grave doubts about the authenticity of the material, network officials said last night, the NEW YORK TIMES is reporting in Monday runs. Developing...

Can you say destructimundohugeous? I thought you could. Now we search for the "disappearing originals"...

UPDATE: NYeT starts the decompression but notes that the clouded eye may still stick by their guns. Oh brother...

Steyn Peppers The Parking Lot -- Again

And the ending points out the obvious:

And, in the end, the reality is this. A few weeks ago, Prof Bernard Lewis, the great historian of the Muslim world, told Die Welt that "Europe will be Islamic by the end of the century". That seems demographically unavoidable.

Given that much of what we now know as the civilised world will be Muslim, it seems prudent to ensure that what is already the Muslim world is civilised. And, for those who say that Islam is incompatible with democracy, we might as well try to buck that in Iraq today than in France, Scandinavia and Britain the day after tomorrow.

But you really, really need to RTWT... (Hat tip Hugh)

Round Em Up -- Sep 19, 04

Belgravia Dispatch takes NATO out for a scorching. A perceptive commenter raises the ante: "Before you throw NATO on the burn pile of history, can you tie the UN to it?".

Belmont Club weighs in on the recent accusations of Sullivan/Kerry as well as peeking behind the scenes into UNscam and it's terror financiers. You won't see this kind of stuff from NYeTWaPoLaLa -- doesn't fit the program...

Mapes stepping up to the plank? Only if she pledges to provide a firebreak for the Kerry campaign...

UPDATE: C'est le Frenchies, Part 8,459

UPDATED AGAIN: Allah provides more chronological magic.

All Hitler, All The Time

Today's BusHitler roundup includes Hitler pitching a strike, proof that the WaPo is actually controlled by the evil Rupert Murdock who takes his every waking order from the evil Dr. Rove (well, the buyout may not be complete yet since they didn't get into the difference between kerning and pseudo-kerning/TrueType ABC dimensions -- but they had so little space and so many problems to document ;), and, of course, absolute proof that Dems have never said a bad word about BusHitler.

The road less graveled... (UmmmmHmmmmmmmm...)

If You Thought Kofi Was Bad

Ayatollah you nothin' yet...

Allah has ra^ther magical competence with time management. (Hat tip Charles.)

You be the judge. (Hat tip Glenn.)

Facts don't fit the program.

UPDATE: Oh yes -- and counterfeiting the credit to boot.

And Yet More Rather Embarrassing

Questions:

You say you want to be the first to "break the story" if the documents are forgeries. Has it occurred to you that perhaps that story has already been broken?

Two of the experts consulted by CBS warned that the documents might be fake. CBS executives complain that these dubious experts didn't make their concerns starkly enough. So, for you to doubt the authenticity of documents, it is not enough for someone to say, "They might be forgeries"; they have to say, "They might be [expletive deleted!] forgeries"?

One expert you consulted, Marcel Matley, vouched for the accuracy of the signature on one of the four documents. But in your Sept. 10 report defending yourself, you portrayed him as vouching for the authenticity of all the documents. Will you run a correction that accurately reports his views?

You haven't put on air any of the critics of the documents in your follow-up reports about the controversy related to them. Isn't that sort of one-sided reporting?

You say that CBS has been working on this story for five years. Yet the man CBS has called its "trump card" in buttressing the authenticity of the documents, retired Maj. Gen. Bobby Hodges, was consulted about them only over the phone and only two days before CBS aired the report. Was there not time to consult him about this sometime during the prior four years and 363 days? [Much less Staudt --ed.]

Why are you protecting the identity of the source of the documents, since he lied to you and, by extension, the nation?

Interestingly, even the L.A. Times is starting to get concerned about the state of Murrow's memory.

This Olympian level of stonewalling starts to suggest some interesing possibilities. Like this.

UPDATE: Bush smells blood in the water...

UPDATED AGAIN: Catch-22 journalism.

Ungracious buffoons? Well, easy marks at least...

Hey, Mare! It's me Ted! And I have syphilis!

Today's Puzzle

955, 50, 6, and lawn darts.

What famous person does this refer to and what does it say about them that's a bit different than the conventional wisdom? Oh, and did I forget to mention it's largely irrelevant anyway?

Waiting for your answer... C'mon, you love a good puzzle no?

UPDATE: OK, it's a hard one. Here's another hint: there's a simple mathematical relationship between the numbers and the six was rounded up to give less credit to the person in question.

They will not be easily silenced. Even Scotland gets it -_^

Never mind forgery. What about doo-doo diligence.

Eying the anti-Tylenol.

Yes, Virginia, all of the New Romans are not created equal.

Mobius Tolerance

Eurabia welcomes the gay killers. Move along now. Nothing to see here. What's that look on your face? Don't you have any concept of tolerance???

Answer to Question

That would of course be JOHN KERRY'S MAGIC HAT! Funny how all roads lead to dementia...

The party that loves Hugo and Castro and denies that they're un-democratic. I guess that would be about right...

Another Shameless Steal

This time from the Kerry Spot on just how "spot on" the KerRather campaign's focus on military records really is:

WILL VOTERS BE SWAYED BY SERVICE RECORDS? [09/16 12:06 AM]

Tonight on Hannity & Colmes, Democratic pollster/pundit Pat Caddell brought up an important point.

Why is there all this talk about Bush's National Guard days? Well, critics of Bush want to "expose" that he was a irresponsible, heavy-drinking young man in those days. And of course, this contrasts with Kerry's Vietnam years - er, months... Let's just say it contrasts with the reenactment of "Platoon" and "Apocolypse Now" that constituted the Democratic convention.

So do voters automatically prefer war heroes? Of course, just ask President Dole. Or ask George H.W. Bush how his war record carried him over the top in 1992.

Caddell tonight brought up another fascinating example of how utterly meaningless a distinguished service record is to the vast majority of the electorate. Think back to March 3, 1992. The Georgia Democratic primary is in full swing. Bill Clinton is dogged by accusations he dodged the draft. Even worse, one of his opponents is Bob Kerrey, former U.S. Navy SEAL, awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, Bronze Star, and a Purple Heart.

Bill Clinton recieves 259,907 votes, or 57.17 percent.
Bob Kerrey? 22,033. 4.85 percent.

In Georgia.

Service records are not going to determine the winner in this election either.

Uh, yeah. Spot on I'd say. Not to mention we have no idea what W would do under pressure now that he's not "young and irresponsible"...

Next Question

Robin or Hillary^{(Hat tip Glenn)} or ???

TKO Declared

As someone with a Master's in Computer Science and over 25 years experience in the field I can assure you that ^this is a TKO. (UPDATE: Also mirrored here now.) All the spinning going on at the Daily Kos is not only risible but utter technical ignorance from someone who couldn't reason his way out of a paper bag to boot.

Dan Rather is history. Next question is how far the damage extends...

For those still blabbering on about "dialogue".

What's The Frequency, A*shat?

First, you need to look at this to warm up with a good belly laugh -- for you will have tears in your eyes when you look at this and then find out that it was created by a PhD researcher in image registration!

CBS = Pravda. ANOTHER CASE CLOSED -- JUST ON THE TECHNICALITIES ALONE...

UPDATE: Only when you type the final period. Dali isn't even close...

ANOTHER UPDATE: UmmmHmmmm....

LAST UPDATE: And a closing belly laugh.

3rd Anniversary: A Quote on the "State of Remembrance"

Warren quotes an Iranian dissident: "You were scared. But now you have eaten, and you have copulated, and you want to go back to sleep."

There you have it; ours is a country still brimming full of Septenthians -- the Iranian freedom fighters know the depths of hell...

Pulling the forensics together...

By ten thirty-one oh five? Sooner I hope...

The KERNel of Truth And An Elephantine Retraction

While kerning gets straightened out we have another rather big elephant crowding into what's now feeling like a closet bursting at the seams.

You know, I'm making this sound like I take great pleasure in watching the spectacle. I'm not. This is really flippin sad to see Goldberg's "groupthink" right over a cliff.

There really are debates to be had by reasonable people in this election. (UPDATE: like this) And this variant of mental illness is near perfect tinder for the Tinfoil Apocalypse. Coming shortly to a blog near you...

Did I forget to mention that even WaPo's on the scent now?

UPDATE: And of course, there remains a Rove behind every Bush. But just don't call me paranoid. UmmHmmmmm...

Yup, we're rapidly headed for a Torricelli manuever. It's a lot like a Hiemlich manuever only in reverse...

And The Postscript

... has already been written!

UPDATE: Not to mention that the Composer has been cross-examined -- and failed the laugh test. My, oh, my...

UPDATED AGAIN: And don't forget the $10,000 reward. Should be a piece of cake. UmmHmmmm....

You Might Be A Liberal If (Appendix B)

You don't know when to say "^that's all folks!"

C'mon -- you knew it was coming. I forshadowed it and everything ;)

UPDATE UPDATED: And you know there's a problem when you can't even fool the AP. Remember them? BUT OF COURSE! The old "I'm just a little moral degenerate -- look at them!" strategy!

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Even Peter Jennings stops carrying your water.

UPDATE n: The Donald piles on mercilessly. And I pick #1 of course!

Today's Word (Output)

The Selectric time machine effect leads to a newly discovered worm hole...

I'm guessing this can't be topped -- except by???

Did I forget to mention that you want to be sure you're not a liberal?

3/11 Update

Who doesn't want who to testify??? Say what? RTWT. (via rockin' Roger)

Round Em Up

That would be Zell -- hands down.

Obscure linkages. Too difficult to find, really.

The anti-Christ files: Kerry's 1971 Senate testimony where somehow he forgot he was in Cambodia. At least he didn't forget he was in Vietnam.

Blowback reconsidered in light of Beslan.

UPDATE: And don't forget the concise ideological dimensions.

Denial of service meets rope-a-dope. (Glenn's a-rollin' :)

Karl Rove Behind Every Tree

WHOOPS!!!!

Looks like the vets are all Republican Karl Rove stooges funded by Karl Rove. Did I mention Karl Rove? Am I obsessed?

C'est le Frenchies

Part 74,594.

A state of the Swifties update from the good John.

Of work accidents and unilateralism. Do you think Putin will draw world-wide protests from the fascifists? Nah. It was just a rhetorical question of course...

The memory hole X-RAYed.

Depressing and accurate. But we do have options -- and two of the Democrat's own once knew when they were required.

The Left,

having declared itself above the pettiness of all moral belief now finds its emptiness filled by the ugliest and darkest blood-cult on the planet. Wretchard builds on Roger like no other.

More from the "who needs Karl Rove?" department...

UPDATE: Let's face it, Karl Rove is everywhere -- even in Detroit 33 years ago...

You Might Be A Liberal If (Appendix A)

* You don’t see any inconsistency between your “Free Tibet” bumper sticker and your support for the Hague court’s ruling issued by the Chinese court president against the Israeli defensive wall.

* You believe that criticizing "the process" as being “butchered” absolves you of needing to answer the question involved in a consistent manner.

* You believe that all Vietnam Vets are war criminals but that you're clearly the best candidate for President since you're a Vietnam Vet.

* You believe that a lifetime voting record rating by Americans for Democratic Action of 92 and near-perfectly symmetrical lifetime rating of 5 by the American Conservative Union makes you the "conservative candidate" in the election -- and is certainly "no evidence" that you're a liberal.

AP = All (Kerry) Propaganda

Europe Is Only Too Happy To See A Jew Smoke

... they even built special places where they could do it together.

The Road to Discovering The Captive Mind

Roger points to a most excellent blog entry: "My Road To Damascus". Here's the incontrovertible proof you need to RTWT:

So I began too to see deeper flaws in those sureties I had so long accepted. I began to sense, or perhaps at last to admit to, inherent contradictions at work in the machine in which I had once placed so much faith. The leftist catechism denounced the United States government as inherently corrupted and beyond repair, and the solution had been to hand massive swaths of the American society and economy over to the control and regulation of the state; in other words, the United States government. It extolled civil liberties but proposed a collectivist creed which fundamentally negated the individual. It claimed to oppose concentrated, monopoly power but proposed to concentrate it to a degree unprecedented in American history. There seemed no connection whatever between these ambitions, and I began to suspect that the entire formulation was ultimately nothing more than an expression of the will to power; that the first had been concocted merely to enable the second.

Now don't get me wrong -- the prose and sweep certainly can't touch The Captive Mind -- but it's an authentic and moving piece. What? You haven't read The Captive Mind? Click that link and order, giddy-yup! The only known antidote to the Pill of the Murti-Bing I tell you...

Beslan: "Subsumed by AQ".

More evidence of the upcoming, new and unacceptable unscheduled exams...

I Guess I Need To Lower My Praise ...

of Glenn a bit. The opponent not only doesn't have a pitching staff, they've supplied him with a tee and spotted him loaded bases!

All The News That's Fit To Print ...

... unless it hurts our guy. Does this mean that Cambodia's back on again? Ooooooohhhh -- excellent!

Feeling A Need For Some Offsetting Humor Today...

News Flash: PALO ALTO. Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) today announced that the Office of President, CEO and Chairman will be outsourced as of October 31, the end of the fiscal year. The move is being made to save $45 million in annual salary and benefits. Further savings in air travel are expected to add to HP’s bottom line.

“At the end of the day, the cost savings will be quite significant” says HP board member, Executive Vice President, and CFO Rob Highwayman, who, with the aid of HP’s outsourcing arm, HP Services, has studied outsourcing extensively. “We simply can no longer afford this inefficiency and remain competitive in the world stage,” Highwayman said.

Sanji Gurvinder Singh, 23, of Indus Teleservices, Mumbai, India, will be assuming the Office of President, Chairman and CEO as of October 31. He will receive a salary of $320 USD a month with proportionate benefits. Mr Singh will maintain his office in India and will be working primarily at night, due to the time difference between the US and India.

“I am excited to serve in this position,” Mr. Singh stated in an exclusive interview. “I always knew that my career at the HP call center would lead to great things.” An HP spokesperson noted that Mr. Singh has extensive experience in public speaking and has been given Ms. Fiorina’s script tree to enable him to answer any question without having to understand the issue.

Ms. Fiorina, 49, has announced that she will join the faculty of the Stanford School of Business, specializing in medieval business and the related subject of employee motivation. No one at the Stanford School of Business was available for comment.

The Hewlett-Packard board continues to explore other outsourcing possibilities including HP’s more than 1,200 vice presidents.

In an unrelated news item it was learned that HP was selling five corporate jets complete with passengers thought to be board members and HP executives. While the value of the content was not thought to be significant it is believed that their accumulated air-miles could be used to facilitate additional outsourcing initiatives.

[Found in my email from a little elf...]

C'est le Frenchies?!

MAIS NON!!

Why Glenn Is Major League

Glenn has now hit homers in all of last six at bats! (five, six)

Granted I had already linked to five and six, and five was only a homer because Steyn hit it so hard that it went out of the park just with the ricochet off of Glenn's bat.

Anyway. READ. THEM. ALL.

Is De-Nihilism's facade showing a crack? Most assuredly, you won't find it in the NYeT...

Kerry-Dukakis in 04?

NYeT! Don't Fight Hitler!

... for that will only make him really mad! My disgust at the NYeT simply cannot be put in words. But Putin now understands the situation.

Did I forget to mention that Putin has already said that people who DON'T vote for Bush need their "heads examined". What? You didn't find that in the NYeT? Can't imagine why...

And on the "root cause" behind subhumans who shoot fleeing children in the back:

When your asymmetrical warfare strategy depends on gunning down schoolchildren, you're getting way more asymmetrical than you need to be. The reality is that the IRA and ETA and the ANC and any number of secessionist and nationalist movements all the way back to the American revolutionaries could have seized schoolhouses and shot all the children.

But they didn't. Because, if they had, there would have been widespread revulsion within the perpetrators' own communities. To put it at its most tactful, that doesn't seem to be an issue here.

So the particular character of this "insurgency" does not derive from the requirements of "asymmetrical warfare" but from . . . well, let's see, what was the word missing from those three analyses of the Beslan massacre? Here's a clue: half the dead "Chechen separatists" were not Chechens at all, but Arabs. And yet, tastefully tiptoeing round the subject, The New York Times couldn't bring itself to use the words Muslim or Islamist, for fear presumably of offending multicultural sensibilities.

NYeT, we refuse to name evil.

Lieutenant To ???

That's right, he was Dukakis' Lieutenant Governor after all... After being a Lieutenant J.G. in Nam. Did he mention that he served in Vietnam?

Well, after attempting to get a deferment to study in France and chose the Swift Boats because that seemed like a safe enough assignment to see what was going on -- until Zumwalt changed their mission...

Living By Doctrine

Third name down. A pre-emptive strike as they say...

Three Strikes and You Win...

A tale of strikes and dirt balls.

UPDATE: Make that a slimy dirt ball...

Peters

Rocks!

But, but, but ... you don't understand the real roots of terror you fascist BusHitler thug! Oh? I don't?

UPDATE: And it was planned ahead of time, natch. Sound familiar?

Quote of the Day

From a comment on Roger Simon's vivisection of the media today.

As the fax machine contributed to the fall of the soviet Empire, the Internet will contribute to the fall of media monoliths.

With the AP now whole-heartedly joining the NYeT in a wave of Orwellian corruption, the only question seems to be just how close to 1989 we are? I hope it's a lot closer than it feels like today...

Flip Flap Flubbergasted

Nearly all in the same sentence again. I'm feeling quite confident we'll get there again soon.

More in the "it's all Rove's fault" department. UmmHmmm...

The Bush Doctrine In Plain English

Ahhh. Now you understand why they hate him so?

The Bush Doctrine:
1. We will fight for freedom. We reject moral relativism.

Freedom and fear are at war. The advance of human freedom -- the great achievement of our time, and the great hope of every time -- now depends on us. Our nation -- this generation -- will lift a dark threat of violence from our people and our future. We will rally the world to this cause by our efforts, by our courage. We will not tire, we will not falter, and we will not fail.

2. The friends of our enemies are also our enemies.

Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.

3. We reserve the right to hit our enemies before they strike us.

The war on terror will not be won on the defensive. We must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans, and confront the worst threats before they emerge. In the world we have entered, the only path to safety is the path of action. And this nation will act.

4. We will not negotiate with those who continue to support terrorism.

Every leader actually committed to peace will end incitement to violence in official media and publicly denounce homicide bombs. Every nation actually committed to peace will stop the flow of money, equipment, and recruits to terrorist groups seeking the destruction of Israel, including Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah.

FDR would be proud. The libs couldn't identify FDR in a line-up of one. (Hat tip Glenn.)

Ho Hum. Just another day at the scrupulously fact-checked MSM. Expect widespread retractions shortly. (Hat tip Glenn.)

My sentiments EXACTLY.

Could There Be A Reason?

That you can think of for a bit of a conflict here? From the introduction to the Nobel literature prize winning "The Captive Mind":

When someone is 55% right, that's very good and there's no use wrangling. And if someone is 60% right, it's wonderful, it's great luck, and let him thank God. But what's to be said about 75% right? Wise people say this is suspicious. Well, and what about 100% right? Whoever says he's 100% right is a fanatic, a thug, and the worst kind of rascal. --AN OLD JEW OF GALACIA

Versus a Mohammad quote near the start of Bin Laden's "Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders":

I have been sent with the sword between my hands to insure that no one but Allah is worshipped, Allah who put my livelihood under the shadow of my spear and who inflicts humiliation and scorn on those who disobey my orders.

Could it be the result of residue contorted into a cruel Mobius strip?

The Roots of Hate

Captured on video. You ain't gonna believe this one folks... (Hat tip McQ)

UPDATE: With the Russian school hostage crisis and all I wouldn't post this if I wasn't such a fanatic about dead parrots. Just thought you might want a clarification. Oh, and the bandwidth to the site isn't so good so you may see some pauses -- and maybe a lot of them if this gets to be as popular as I think it will...

Roundup

Foreshadowing of debates to come.

And some fire for the belly...

UPDATE: Ann weighs in on some "unsubstantiated charges".

The (insane) position three.

The World Leaders...

in the manufacture of perfume.

Kerry's Problem In A Pecan Shell

American Thinker: "So Kerry is proud of having called Vietnam Veterans and the men still fighting there drug-addled genocidal war criminals? That is how he stood up for Vietnam Veterans?".

But he's a hero (and self-admitted war criminal) and supports the troops? As previously noted, you can't say stuff like this without being nuttier than a pecan plantation...

UPDATE: What Kerry ignores.

Cambodia Back On? Most Excellent!

Check this out:

I love this from an interview in the September issue of GQ:

"[John Kerry]: I can't say. To me Vietnam is an old place, an old memory. It is old history, it's gone, it's past. The less I have to talk about it, frankly, the happier I am." [Yeah right -- ed.]

The interview took place on July 4th. That's before Kerry "reported for duty" at the Dem. convention.

On another issue, this morning I heard Del Sandusky interviewed on a radio program. He specifically said that they "touched ground" in Cambodia. Which means it had to be in February or March '69. I suspect that careful questioning of him would destroy that claim.

Sandusky also said a number of disingenuous things in the interview that make me think he's deliberately lying, not simply mistaken in his memories. He claimed not to even know most of the people who appear in the SBVFT ads, and that for Larry Thurlow to say he served with John Kerry is, "like me saying I served with Wm. Westmoreland".

Yet, John Kerry, in Tour of Duty, has Thurlow and his boats practically side by side. Since Sandusky was at the helm of Kerry's boat, that makes either Kerry or Sandusky a liar.

So fine, I'll go so far as to buy it. I repeat: It doesn't matter -- Kerry is toast even if he was in Cambodia... When I talk to my very, very liberal Mom who lived through WWII I am constantly amazed at how little she remembers of it. I'm also quite amazed how little the libs remember of the history around the Vietnam War. (Yes, follow that link!)

A different drummer?

Crossing the Rubicon?

Rantburg has it nailed (shameless steal follows):

New Chapter for the Vagina Monologues
Ok, somebody finally said it in public:
Russian Planes Exploded From Toilets
Evidence Supports Prior Reports of Al Qaeda Women Smuggling Explosives Internally?

What makes this especially ominous is this report from six months ago, claiming that Al Qaeda was training female bombers to smuggle explosives inside their vaginas. The plan was to extract the explosives and then assemble the bomb in the toilet, of course.

I have no idea how this country will react to this, if this is the new tactic. As I mentioned when I first noted this story (CAUTION: contains very indelicate language), we’re either going to have to subject women to highly, HIGHLY intrusive body-searches or else we’re just going to have to allow Al Qaeda to blow up airplanes whenever they feel like it.

If this is the new tactic, it seems to me that this will be the Rubicon as regards racial profiling. Non-Muslim women are not going to put up with being told that they must subject themselves to unscheduled gynecological exams just to be "fair" to all women. And, as humiliating and intrusive as such searches might be, I don’t see how we can do anything else but subject only Muslim women (or primarily Muslim women) to this admitted indignity.

Perhaps there’s a technological solution. But that too has its problems; I don’t know if many women will gladly accept dangerous X-raying of their wombs just to board an airplane.

...

And remember the "male version" that Annie Jacobsen witnessed? Annie is already on the case...

UPDATE: You really need to read Annie's most recent update. Here's how it ends:

In Part Five of this series, I interviewed fellow flight 327 passenger Billie Jo Rodriguez. Rodriguez gave me the startling news that one of the Syrian men spent about 10 minutes in the lavatory and then came out of the lavatory reeking of toilet chemicals. As I have previously stated, multiple government agencies (including FBI, JTTF, FAMS and LAPD) met the plane in Los Angeles to question the men. But because the men didn't immediately match up against names on the government's no-fly lists, they were let go.

Here is another detail that I have only recently discovered. I now know that the 14 Syrians aboard my flight 327 were questioned by the FBI for between 20 and 30 minutes after landing. (Initially, I was told they were held and questioned for approximately two hours.) How can our agencies possibly gather intelligence on 14 men in only 20 minutes? Even if they had done some of the legwork before the plane landed, they couldn't possibly conduct a thorough investigation in such short time. And again, I'll ask why none of the other passengers were questioned? Had the FBI ascertained Billie Jo Rodriguez' information about one of the Syrian men emerging from a bathroom smelling like toilet chemicals (after nearly knocking another passenger over so as to get inside first) -- those men may not have been out the door and on their way to their musical gig after just 20 minutes.

As of press time, no one from the FBI, the JTTF or the DHL or any other government agency has contacted me, Billie Jo Rodriguez or any of the other passengers on flight 327. Maybe the Russians will. The war on terrorism is a global war. It knows no boundaries. Whether you're on a Russian TU-134 or a Boeing 757, the enemy is the same.

And you were wondering why defense isn't enough?

Sad Spanish Saga Segues

Some more on getting the Spanish out of Spain. (Remember this?)

Time to separate student assessment from teaching?

FRENCH FILE FLUFFING

Hey Sully, remember when I promised to kill you last?

UPDATE: Standing in the way of global Islamic theocracy...

MUST. READ. NOW. BOTH. LINKS.

A chronological debunking of our newest Riefenstahl. And I don't mean the big fat one...

Marxist Cogitation

Let's look some more at that 1971 Senate Committee appearance:

Senator, I will say this. I think that politically, historically, the one thing that people try to do, that society is structured on as a whole, is an attempt to satisfy their felt needs, and you can satisfy those needs with almost any kind of political structure, giving it one name or the other. In this name it is democratic; in other it is communism; in others it is benevolent dictatorship. As long as those needs are satisfied, that structure will exist.

But when you start to neglect those needs, people will start to demand a new structure, and that, to me, is the only threat that this country faces now, because we are not responding to the needs and we are not responding to them because we work on these old cold-war precepts and because we have not woken up to realizing what is happening in the United States of America.

Yes, this gives one great hope -- hope that he loses big time.

Round-up Time

Batman swats down Robin.

What the loyal opposition looks like. And Hitch too, of course.

Deconstructing hubris.

Life isn't fair for the Islamofascist allies. But then Vichy France was no cakewake either...

McCain finally swings the guns around in the right direction and ... fails to condemn the second Swift Boat ad and ... it's not going to be pretty...

He Voted For It Before He Voted Against It (Part 7,457)

This is just beautiful -- two Kerry "nanonuances" in one article. First the expected one:

As the presumptive Democratic nominee, Kerry was ready with the bravado appropriate for a challenger who knows that every answer carries magnified importance in the state that put President Bush into office by just 537 votes.

''I'm pretty tough on Castro, because I think he's running one of the last vestiges of a Stalinist secret police government in the world,'' Kerry told WPLG-ABC 10 reporter Michael Putney in an interview to be aired at 11:30 this morning.

Then, reaching back eight years to one of the more significant efforts to toughen sanctions on the communist island, Kerry volunteered: ``And I voted for the Helms-Burton legislation to be tough on companies that deal with him.''

It seemed the correct answer in a year in which Democratic strategists think they can make a play for at least a portion of the important Cuban-American vote -- as they did in 1996 when more than three in 10 backed President Clinton's reelection after he signed the sanctions measure written by Sen. Jesse Helms and Rep. Dan Burton.

There is only one problem: Kerry voted against it.

Asked Friday to explain the discrepancy, Kerry aides said the senator cast one of the 22 nays that day in 1996 because he disagreed with some of the final technical aspects. But, said spokesman David Wade, Kerry supported the legislation in its purer form -- and voted for it months earlier.

And then the coup-de-grace:

But there are also constant reminders that Kerry struggles with the complexities of Cuba. Asked in the Herald interview last year about sending Elián back to Cuba, Kerry was blunt: ``I didn't agree with that.''

But when he was asked to elaborate, Kerry acknowledged that he agreed the boy should have been with his father.

So what didn't he agree with?

''I didn't like the way they did it. I thought the process was butchered,'' he said.

I would write more on this but only expletives come to mind.

A hearty laugh for Googlers at the expense of tiny-brained Kerry apologists.

The Manchurian Candidate

Filleted nicely in "Fahrenheit 1971". And well done too...

Next Up: The Gates of Hell

The gates of hell are opening. Here's a stunning entry shamelessly stolen from today's "Best of the Web".

Believe it or not, the Dems would still win the election if they pulled a Toricelli and replaced Kerry with Lieberman. That is if they themselves had the good judgment to vote for him themselves -- which they wouldn't of course...

----- Begin Shameless_Steal -----

Viet Commies Still Cite Kerry Testimony

One of the chief complaints of the Vietnam veterans who are opposing John Kerry is that he slandered them as war criminals in his famous 1971 Senate testimony. Kerry's supporters try to portray his claims then as a youthful indiscretion. Yet Kerry has never renounced them, and they still turn up in Vietnamese communist propaganda. In an article for the English-language Viet Nam News dated June 11, 2004, one Diem Quynh cites Kerry to bolster his argument that the communists treated American prisoners of war well:

Candidate in this year's American presidential elections, John Kerry, who fought in the war, went further in his criticism. In a statement to the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in 1971, he said the war crimes committed by US soldiers in Southeast Asia "were not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command."

But despite these abuses, the Vietnamese did not reciprocate in kind; instead, they treated captured US troops humanely.

John McCain might disagree. So might Jim Warner, a former POW who tells the conservative weekly Human Events that he "first learned about Lt. John Kerry in a North Vietnamese prison camp":

When his captors brought him out of solitary confinement in the infamous Skid Row punishment camp for an interrogation, they made him read the typewritten transcript of a statement by Kerry, speaking in the United States. His interrogator kept pointing at Kerry's words, saying, 'See? This officer from your Navy says you deserve to be punished.' "

"All I could think of was that this must be a really contemptible human being," said Warner, although We can't expect the rest of the country to share our disgust at Kerry for turning on us. A lot of people are too young to remember that." . . .

Tom Collins, another Vietnam POW whose plane was shot down in 1965, was made to listen to Kerry's testimony on tape during his captivity. He explained that the North Vietnamese were constantly trying to elicit confessions of war crimes from Americans, promising them better treatment.

"He knew he was putting us at risk," Warner says of Kerry. "And he was demanding unilateral withdrawal, which means our value as bargaining chips would be gone. And what do you think would have happened to us then?"

----- End Shameless Steal -----

Kerry also estimated that there would be oh, maybe 3000 or so Vietnamese that would need to be evacuated to save their lives when the Communists won. That would certainly explain the millions of "boat people" and Pol Pot's genocide. Did I mentioned that a recent poll says that 90% of Vietnamese-Americans will be voting for Bush in this election? But what do they know?

And LA LA Times Also Forgot To Mention

That when John O'Neill was caught on tape with Nixon, he also said that he came from a long line of Democrats and voted for Hubert Humphrey. But a surprisingly level assessment from the hit squad.