Cycles Recycled

NOTE: This post can be originally found here. I thought it deserved more prominence on the blog.

I can just imagine exactly this kind of debate going on in Rome right up to the point that the Huns kicked in the gates. It strikes me that any society that has to start asking itself if it is committing “professional suicide” by ignoring the threat posed by barbarians with a completely alien world view and bent on their destruction is already beyond help. Geopolitical navel-gazing must be the last stage in the evolution of a society before it is too morally ambivalent to defend its own sovereignty. (Or, maybe it results from the unwillingness to do so?)
Let me lay it out for you…

Stage 1: We need a revolution to set us free from tyranny!

Stage 2: Hey, what happened to our colonies?

Stage 3: Oh, yeah. Uh. Colonialism is bad. Yeah. That’s it. So, that must mean any use of military force against anyone anywhere is bad. Right?

Stage 4: Oh gosh, we just need to all be more tolerant of other people. And hey, at least all those imigrants always vote our way. Besides, aren't we all really just immigrants on this big old space ship we call Earth anyway?

Stage 5: Didn't we used to have elections this time of year? Hey, where’d all the Barbies go?

Stage 6: Now repeat after the nice man with the machine gun… “There is one God and Mohamed is his prophet.”

Stage 7: GoTo Stage: 1, repeat as necessary.

Or, the alternative evolution...

Stage 5: Hey, didn't there used to be a couple of big buildings right about here?

Stage 6: Jihad? I've got your Jihad right here baby!

Stage 7: Okay, so we got a litte rough there, but they deserved it.

Stage 8: GoTo Stage 3: repeat as necessary.
So you see, all the terrorists would have had to do to take America out of the equation was leave us alone for another 50 years or so and we would have evolved into sophisticated pro-globalization pacifists all by ourselves. But, nothing sets back political entropy like a good old Pearl Harbor style sucker-punch, eh?

Posted by: Dacotti on September 25, 2003 01:07 PM [NOTE FROM BOB: The address is Dacotti -at- hot mail dot com]

I Approve This Message Without The Darned Change Tracking

I approve this message now that I think I finally turned off that %@#&^! change tracking!

WHEN VOTING IN 2004, PLEASE CONSIDER MY EXPERIENCE

EDUCATION: I attended Yale and joined the same Skull and Crossbones society as George Bush. I wasn't smart enough to get into Yale or Harvard Law so I went to Boston College Law School. But I'm way smarter than George Bush who only got a Harvard MBA - that's why it takes me hours to answer simple yes and no questions.

MILITARY: After my request for a student deferment to study abroad in France was rejected, I joined the Navy since I thought that would be the safest most exciting service. In my first tour, I served on a ship safely far bravely off the coast of Vietnam. Looking over the situation, I determined that by joining the Swift Boats for my next tour I could still be safe a war hero by mostly patrolling off the coast while still being able to make good movie footage to play at the Viet Cong Sympathizers Reunion Democratic National Convention when I ran for President. When just as I arrived, Admiral "Baby Killer" Zumwalt changed the Swift Boat mission to include canal patrols, I began searching for anti-war military doctors to help me game the system journalists to approach in Saigon and explain to them what a quagmire Vietnam was. It was an impossible mission and my aluminum well-armored Swift Boat was under constant enemy fire -- luckily none of my pinpricks wounds even required hospitalization stopped me from rushing back to defend my war criminals fellow soldiers. I was also not in Cambodia at Christmas 1968 when Richard Nixon was not President and was lying about my not being there. This was "seared, seared" in my memory and I showed the Boston Globe I still carry my lucky CIA hat in a secret compartment in my briefcase to prove that I'm nuttier than a pecan plantation. My superior bravery was hardly indisputably proven by hugely exaggerating my actions in after action reports I wrote about myself. So I easily won three Purple Hearts in four months and abandoned departed from my crewmates to go back to the States and finish my service at a desk job as a hero. Luckily, since I was already bragging about being the President some day, I was able to remember to get most of my crew-mates reassigned to safer duty so they'd be are on my side in this campaign. The fact that nearly all my peers and superiors as well as the one crewman who had too much integrity to accept my bribes and coercion a tiny minority of my war criminals fellow soldiers dispute any details of my heroism just shows that the military is completely filled with war criminals and baby killers needs reform.

ANTI-WAR PROTESTER: I am unapologetic about calling the military except the crewmen on my Swift Boat (not including Gardner of course) war criminals. Jane Fonda has apologized but I will not apologize. To this day the Viet Cong people of Vietnam are grateful for my actions helping to install a brutal Communist dictatorship leading to widespread imprisonments in "re-education camps", forcing a million "boat people" to flee for their lives and leaving the way clear for Pol Pot to murder 20% of the Cambodian population. Viet Cong General Giap considered the actions of the anti-war protestors crucial to their victory since they lost nearly every battle they ever engaged in with the U.S. military. And Vietnamese Americans support me to this day for my brave actions - that's why 90% of them will vote against me this November. And somehow I forgot to mention my 1968 "Christmas in Cambodia" during my 1971 testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee even though if provable it would have blown the roof right off the room.

PAST WORK EXPERIENCE: I ran for U.S. Congress and lost. I was an assistant DA and Leutenant Governor under Michael Dukakis where I fought against even having civil defense plans. Due to the mentorship of drunken socialist woman slaughterer conservative - compared to me anyway -- Senator Ted Kennedy, I was elected to the Senate from the people's republic of Massachusetts.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS SENATOR: I authored and passed the bill for the relief of Kil Joon Yu Callahan and four other bills that nobody has ever heard of before I am extremely proud of. The arguments that National Journal's ratings of my Senate votes make me the most liberal member of the Senate are completely bogus - that's proven by the near perfect symmetry of agreement of my Americans for Democratic Action rating of 92 and the Conservative Union's rating of 5 - I am the only true conservative in this election! And charges that I am weak on defense are complete lies - that's why I relentlessly attacked Ronald Reagan in every way including advocating a nuclear freeze and cutting virtually every weapons system, lied about "Christmas in Cambodia" to attack him, voted against U.S. participation in Gulf War I (which passed any "global test" imaginable since it was even supported by the U.N. including France, Germany and large numbers of Arab countries including Syria for heaven's sakes), voted to decrease intelligence funding after the first World Trade Center bombing and I was for invading Iraq as long as Bill Clinton was President and that is my completely consistent position other than calling it the "wrong war, at the wrong time in the wrong place".

I believe my accomplishments over the course of my lifetime of marrying money make me uniquely unfit qualified for command. My character is impeccable and Ghandi-like as demonstrated by constantly calling President Bush a liar and branding the military as war criminals.

Alaa has some words on the importance of W to Iraqi freedom.

On helping Kil Joon Yu Callahan...

Moralizing and Bribery -- Teresa Style (UPDATED)

Here is the latest from the Kerry Campaign about how generous Teresa is with her taxes:

Mrs. Heinz Kerry paid $798,820 in state and federal income taxes in 2003, approximately 35 percent of her gross taxable income, according to figures and federal tax forms she released today.

Mrs. Heinz Kerry paid $627,150 in federal income taxes on gross taxable income of $2,291,137, primarily from dividends and interest she receives from Heinz family trusts. In addition, she paid an additional $171,670 in state income taxes and had $2,781,791 of tax exempt interest income from state, municipal and public entity bonds. These taxes are separate from and in addition to the income taxes paid directly by the Heinz family trusts and by other beneficiaries who receive income from those trusts.

Slice 1: We don't include state taxes in the debates about federal tax rates -- they vary from state to state obviously. So forget the $798,820 and make it $627,150. Tax rate goes from 35% down to 27%.

Slice 2: Forget the horsepucky about counting the $2,781,791 separately from the income used to calculate the tax rate. Your EFFECTIVE tax rate is YOUR TOTAL FEDERAL TAX PAID DIVIDED BY YOUR TOTAL INCOME. Period. So $2,291,137 + $2,781,791 = $5,072,928.

BOTTOM LINE: $627,150 divided by $5,072,928 yields an effective tax rate for Teresa of 12.4%. Sorry Teresa, I pay a way higher effective tax rate than you do -- and trust me when I say that I don't have multiple mansions spread around the planet. But just do go on moralizing about how I need to pay more taxes to support the poor so the feds can bribe them with subsidies to vote for Democrats...

UPDATE: Ah, you say. Covering up by not mentioning W's return? Let's take a look at the official press release:

President and Mrs. Bush Release 2003 Tax Return
April 13, 2004

PRESIDENT AND MRS. BUSH RELEASE 2003 TAX RETURN

President and Mrs. George W. Bush reported taxable income of $727,083 for the tax year 2003. This resulted in a total of $227,490 in federal income taxes paid by President and Mrs. Bush.

The President's 2003 income included salary earned as President and investment income from the trusts in which their assets are held.

President and Mrs. Bush contributed $68,360 to churches and charitable organizations, including Evergreen Chapel at Camp David, Tarrytown United Methodist Church, St. John's Church, the M.D. Anderson Clinic, and the Federal Government's Combined Federal Campaign.

That would seem to indicate a tax rate of 31.3%. But what are they covering up in "non-taxable" income? Let's dig deeper by looking at the actual return. Turns out that instead of non-taxable income, W has mostly made charitable contributions as listed in the release that raise his total income to $822,126. So his real effective tax rate is $227,490 divided by $822,126 yielding an effective rate of 27.7%. Over twice Teresa's effective tax rate on less than 1/6th of her income.

Let's face it folks, a flat tax in the 17-23% range would be a cut for some. And interestingly, W would be one of them. But it would be a tax hike on the truly rich like Teresa who play the (legal) tax shelter game for all it's worth. And poor dumb slobs like me would be mostly unaffected...

ANOTHER UPDATE: The NY Post via PowerLine agrees and then some:

Experts on lifestyles of the rich and famous say that $5 million in income wouldn't come close to covering the Kerrys' golden lifestyle with five estates, multiple cars, a $3.5 million Gulfstream V jet complete with plasma TV, gold fixtures and two bathrooms, a yacht worth $750,000 to $1 million and servants in every location.

The Kerrys own a $12 million waterfront Nantucket estate, a $6 million mansion in Washington's tony Georgetown, a $12.8 million mansion in Boston's Beacon Hill, a $14 million estate on 90 acres outside Pittsburgh and an $8 million ski chalet near Sun Valley, Idaho.

The Los Angeles Times, after a detailed study, last June concluded that Mrs. Kerry is almost certainly a billionaire, worth between $900 million and a staggering $3.2 billion. Forbes magazine has estimated her fortune at $700 million.

Oh, yeah -- and they point out that she doesn't pay FICA taxes either. I guess if I was her I wouldn't hire her either.

Kleptomaniacism Redux: Opportunistic Oppositionism

I just lifted this whole thing from Frum (bolding is mine) -- it's just gorgeous in every way:

I am embarrassed to say that it has taken me until now to read the Boston Globe's excellent and careful campaign biography of Sen. Kerry. It is a book that should be of special interest to anyone who might be tempted to believe Sen. Kerry's self-description as a man who "never wavers."

The Globe reporters catch Kerry in vacillation after vacillation. They remind us for example of the damning story of Kerry's sudden decision to give a speech denouncing affirmative action in 1992 just in time to position himself as a "new Democrat" worthy of the vice presidential spot on a Clinton ticket - and then of his hasty and abject retreat when criticism erupted.

Probably no story in the whole book is more telling, though, than Kerry's flip-floping on the first Gulf War.

If ever a war passed "the global test," it was the first Gulf War. Yet Kerry denounced it at great length on the Senate floor. "There is a rush to war here. [Because we think our military force can overwhelm Iraq], we are willing to act ... with more bravado than patience."

Then, as soon as the war was won, Kerry turned around and denounced President Bush for not driving all the way to Baghdad. Kerry condemned the decision not to shoot down Saddam Hussein's helicopters as they attacked Shi'ite rebels in southern Iraq as "a backhanded intervention in support of Saddam Hussein." And the Globe describe with some humor how Kerry went on to try to organize a Democratic campaign against Bush for his non-interventionist policy inside Iraq: "Bush has had a standstill, misguided policy, not unlike the lack of leadership seen prior to the war."

(All these quotes from pp. 260-266.)

Today of course Sen. Kerry denounces the younger Bush for doing what he denounced the father for failing to do back in 1991.

The overwhelming message of the Globe book is that Sen. Kerry's foreign policy ideas can best be summed up as "opportunistic oppositionism." It's a tactic well suited for a man trying to make his way by mobilizing angry out-of-power constituencies. But the conclusion I take away is that if Sen. Kerry should ever find himself in a position where he has to make the decisions - rather than react to decisions made by others - he would have absolutely no idea of what to do ... and would very likely do nothing at all while blaming others for everything that went wrong as a result of his own inaction.

As I said, it's "An 'F' No Matter How You Grade It".

If it wasn't for the MSM mass brainwashing, Kerry would be headed toward the biggest electoral landslide loss since McGovern. But no -- he still could win. Amazing spelled with an F.

Multilateral Kleptomaniacism

How could I not add this shameless steal from Taranto:

Liberal Democrat Backs Bush
"The No. 2 official in Japan's ruling party sharply criticized U.S. Democratic challenger John Kerry's North Korea policy Friday, adding that he hoped President Bush would be re-elected," Reuters reports from Tokyo:

"I think there would be trouble if it's not President Bush," Liberal Democratic Party Secretary General Tsutomu Takebe told a radio program, Kyodo news agency reported.

"For instance, Mr Kerry wants to handle the North Korean issue bilaterally, which is out of the question. We're now in the era of multilateralism," Takebe was quoted as saying.

When it so eloquently underscores my #4 from "Top Ten Reasons You Might Have Liberal Debating Points":

4) You believe that Bush's multilateral negotiating policy with North Korea makes him a cowboy -- and that it's just a coincidence that the North Koreans support your bid for the presidency

Sigh.

What? Oh yes, Kerry wants unilateral actions within the existing multilateral framework! I'm not nanonuanced enough. And of course that's nothing at all like what Bush did in OIF that Kerry would have done everything different about...

Gay baiting ... uh ... bleating ... K?

Bodyguards and (French) Corruption

In the "Bodyguard of Lies" I pointed out that Winston Churchill's famous quote that “In war time, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies” probably explains more than we know about what's really going on in the WoIF (War on IslamoFascism).

Today, Best Of The Web points out a very interesting article from the American Spectator that elaborates on this theme in the context of the debates:

Similarly, when Senator Kerry insists that the United States is ignoring the threat of Iran, or that the United States is "distracted" in Iraq when the "real threat" is in Iran, could the President say this?

"What makes you think we're not doing anything about Iran? We already have special forces teams deployed all over Iran working with the democratic opposition to the mullahs. And we're already at war with Iran. It's a proxy war, going on right now in Iraq."

Nope. Can't say that.

Neither can President Bush make the obvious response to Senator Kerry's repeated accusation that the United States has "turned its back on its traditional alliances" and "failed to bring aboard our traditional allies" in the war on terror.

"What countries are you talking about there, Senator? France, maybe? Did you know that France was bribed by Saddam Hussein through the Oil for Food program, to the tune of X billion dollars? And that France sold weapons to Saddam right through our war in 2003?"

Not when the United States still depends on French cooperation for fighting terrorism in North Africa.

When Senator Kerry slams the Bush administration for a "too few troops on the ground" and "failing to win the peace," the President cannot say something like this:

"Senator Kerry, the Fourth Infantry Division was missing from our forces at the time the war started -- and ended. Those are the forces that would have settled conflicts in Northern Iraq, where most of the trouble is now. Why was that division missing, Senator? Because those allies you keep talking about held up Turkey's membership in the EU unless the Turks denied us passage through Turkey for that division. Those are your 'global test' buddies, Senator."

Can't say it, that is, without alienating Turkey and inflaming already difficult relationships with "old Europe."

Now, either John Kerry knows that he's saying things President Bush can't respond to, or he doesn't. In the first case, he's a corrupt liar; he's lying to the American people about what he can do and President Bush can't. He's had intelligence briefings. He knows where things stand. In the second case, he's plain stupid.

I don't think he's stupid.

Oil for Food scandal? Ten billion dollars skimmed? It doesn't exist according to the MSM. Got to elect the new JNK at any cost. And I do mean any cost...

Colorado Corruption Watch

Worthy of utter contempt.

The Inconvenient Interview

Liberal Dems would actually sooner you burn in hell than read this interview with Christopher Hitchens and Andrew Sullivan. And no, I not exaggerating by much at all:

CH: Another thing that's very important to me about this war is that it is in effect a war for secularism. President Bush may believe that God saved him from booze and so on. He's quite entitled to that belief as far as I can see, but he must know, and certainly the people in this administration do understand, that our only real allies are secular--that, in Afghanistan, we must hope for even more secularism. It's interesting to me to argue with my leftist comrades. They neither know nor care, really, that the Iraqi left and the Afghan left are thoroughly enthusiastic about the regime change. They know it saved their lives, apart from anything else. They're on our side. This is an irony that's sort of at everybody's expense. I know, exactly, that I'm on the right side about this. I'm for secularism and separation of church and state. Everywhere. I want more of it here, not less, and much more of it there. And it's a perfectly consistent thing. Even if John Ashcroft doesn't realize it, it's objectively--as we used to say in Marxist discussion--true. It's objectively true.

AS: Chris is a militant atheist. I'm actual a Roman Catholic. But I couldn't agree with him more. I really don't believe that people of faith should be leery of secularism. I think the separation between church and state is the best thing for religion ever. And I feel no qualms at all, as a believing person, in supporting secularism.

RTWT! Pronto!

W File

WHOOPS.
WOW.
WACKY.
WRY.
WHERE WE WERE.

What Both Bush And Kerry Want To Bury

Here's a nice little piece to clip out and recite next time you're under demagogic attack:

To state the obvious: not all Hispanics are immigrants, and not all immigrants are Hispanic. Still, there's no mystery here. If more poor and unskilled people enter the country—and have children—there will be more poverty. (The Census figures cover both legal and illegal immigrants; estimates of illegals range upward from 7 million.) About 33 percent of all immigrants (not just Hispanics) lack a high-school education. The rate among native-born Americans is about 13 percent. Now, this poverty may or may not be temporary. Some immigrants succeed quickly; others do not. But if the poverty persists—and is compounded by more immigration—then it will create mounting political and social problems. One possibility: a growing competition for government benefits between the poor and baby-boom retirees.

You haven't heard much in this campaign about these problems—and you won't. To raise them is to seem racist; that's a heavy burden for politicians or journalists. Politicians also risk alienating Hispanic voters. Worse, there's the hard question: what to do? President George W. Bush and various Democrats have offered immigration plans that propose different ways of legalizing today's illegal immigrants. That's fine as long as the future inflow of illegal and poorer immigrants can be controlled. That would require stiffer measures than either party has endorsed. These are tough problems; our leaders give them the silent treatment. This is understandable, but it won't make them go away.

RTWT!!! I'm betting we won't hear about ANY of this during the last debate even though it should be one of the main foci. I hope I'm proven wrong but Bush's answers to O'Reilly didn't give me much hope.

BOTTOM LINE: Dems want illegal immigration for votes (it isn't easy to fight the Republican tide resulting from the "Roe effect") and Reps want them for cheap labor. It's an unholy alliance.

(Hat tip Michelle)

The Septenthian candidate. Or is that the Manchurian candidate? Such subtle distinctions...

A strategery update.

What Did FDR Say When They Bombed Pearl Harbor?

Damn that's a nuisance! Call the police! Too bad we'll never be able to stop the Japanese! But we'll sure put those Kamikazes in jail! Or my name isn't -- uh -- Neville Chamberlain!

Projection 101: Bad Faith Stickers Out

Before this post gets rolling, you need a refresher on my “Sinful Soapbox: The Local Root Cause”. Here’s the first paragraph to get you enough context to go on (but please read the whole post – it’s one of my favorites):

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.

Well, this one is going to make your sides hurt so much you may never forgive me! Here we go…

As I was pulling out of church this morning with the boys on our way to get Grandma for a lunch date, I was quickly trapped behind a Jeep at the stoplight with a bumper sticker that read “Bush Is A Moron – And You Know It”. Déjà vu all over again I immediately began to think. Even more amazing, it was in nearly exactly the same place at the same light where I saw the “Defend Freedom, Defeat Bush” bumper sticker a few weeks back.

Then, since we were still right next to the church I noticed that the Jeep’s occupants seemed to be craning their necks and looking at the people and activity that the break between services was generating. The light turned green. Were they making snide comments and laughing at us church-going dim bulbs? No way to tell for sure.

They kept looking. The cars in front of them were gone. And looking. Not moving, that is. Did I mention the light was green?

So I honked for Jesus at the morons.

OK – I’ll wait until you scrape yourself off the floor. And don’t say I didn’t warn you about that pain in your sides.

Of course, the real reason – as was illustrated by my prudential decisions about avoiding dangerous inattention at speed in “The Local Root Cause” -- was keeping the boys safe by avoiding being rear-ended.

But I do know Jesus loves me when I honk for him. And I’ll be voting for W as will anyone who remembers more history than last week. I’m not sure if Jesus is smiling right now at this sinner. I suspect W’s sides would be hurting right now though if he had read this!

And how can I possibly be qualified to identify morons with my tiny little brain? I only have a Mensan IQ and a Master’s degree. In future, I’ll leave it to the experts that drive Jeeps.

But I’ve studied enough psychology over the course of many years to understand what psychological projection is. And large swaths of the left are textbook practitioners of it.

They project a brutal stream of bad manners and personal attacks – while incredibly accusing those of us who practice the golden rule (and also work hard to train our children to do so) of being simultaneously rude, stupid and Machiavellian.

And they project bad faith – possibly because they have no faith themselves.

Unless you’re counting faith in the “Church of the Left” that is.

POSTLUDE: "And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?"
- Matthew 7:3 (You did follow that link defining projection didn't you?)

Shocked? NYeT!

Go be SHOCKED and read the update I just added. Tres bien.

An "F" No Matter How You Grade It

First check out the latest pecans from Neville and how they're being roasted. Then check out Hugh's list! Stunning.

And Hugh doesn't even cover what is probably the biggest one of all (see the update at the bottom of "Top Ten Reasons You Might Have Liberal Debating Points"): Alright Mr. Kerry. I couldn't possibly disagree more with your idea of a "global test". But let me be extraordinarily generous and concede that your idea is correct. Then how, pray tell me, could you have possibly voted again Gulf War I as you did? Backed by a U.N. resolution, supported by Saudi Arabia with even Arab troops fighting at our side -- you still voted against.

The Allied coalition in Gulf War I "consisted of 34 countries, including Afghanistan, Argentina, Australia, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Egypt, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Honduras, Italy, Kuwait, Morocco, The Netherlands, Niger, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, South Korea, Spain, Syria, Turkey, The United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States."

So that can only mean one thing: for Kerry, even the approval of France is not enough! He only uses that as a smokescreen for something even worse. I'll leave it to you to speculate just what. (Hmmm. The NYeT points out that there are names of U.S. citizens that have been redacted from Duelfer's latest list of Saddam's "Oil For Food" bribees. Hmmm. Just kidding I think. Here's a story by NYeT company IHT that seems to surface the names and JNK isn't on it. So far anyway. But I wonder what Theresa's stock interests are in Chevron, Mobil, Texaco and Bay Oil? Or if she's friendly with Oscar Wyatt Jr.? :)

Here's the best reason I can find:

The question of international military command ha[d] been set aside from the start. According to Chapter VII of the UN Charter the use of force by the UN should be controlled by a Military Staff Committee made up from the five permanent members of the Security Council. But a US diplomat asks indignantly: ‘Can you imagine our guys being told how to fight by a Chinese general?'

I'm quite sure JNK couldn't stomach not having the Viet Cong Chinese in command. Well, in addition to mindlessly heeding Dhimmi party unity of course. What? JNK? Why John Neville Kerry of course!

UPDATE: Check out Cartago Delenda Est for a take similar to my own on Bush's seeming willingness to be a punching bag. And Fast Glass has a comment there right in line with this post.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Allah agrees!

Flipper Snoots

At least three in the room? Beldar makes an excellent point and chuckle.

But the real story is that it's a snub to his audience. What a condescending, elitist a--hole! And he could tell by looking at the crowd? They didn't look French enough for him? This is risible. I know many folks who way, way outperform flipper's Senate salary and most days you'd never know it the way they dress and conduct themselves.

Stay out there flipping around on your windsurfer Senator -- it's surely the sport of the people.

You Don't Have To Read Scrappleface

And you don't have to laugh out loud either:

:(2004-10-09) -- The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) said today it has found what may be a cache of plans by John Forbes Kerry to address the crises in health care, the economy, Iraq and a host of other national traumas.

"We were called in on the case after the plans had gone missing through two presidential debates," said an FBI spokesman. "I have to caution you, however, that it may take several months or more to translate these documents and discover whether they are, in fact, plans. It's still up in the air because the file folders in which we found them had no labels. Apparently, Mr. Kerry doesn't like to label anything."

A spokesman for the Kerry-Edwards campaign refused to comment directly on the FBI discovery.

"Sen. Kerry has said 'I have a plan' and we will leave it at that," said the unnamed source. "The FBI, at the direction of John Ashcroft, is on a fishing expedition to embarrass John Kerry just before the election."

The source noted that "when Martin Luther King Jr. said 'I have a dream' no one demanded that he prove it. Why should Sen. Kerry be held to higher standard?"

Hat tip Powerline.

John Kerry For President -- of France

"Not even French students march on behalf of Zarqawi's beheaders!" VDH rocks:

Meanwhile, Senator Kerry offers neither a plan to stay nor one to leave Iraq, only something "secret." He thinks a country that defeated Japan, Italy, and Germany at the same time as a warm-up to keeping at bay a nuclear Soviet Union and China must fail if she takes on Afghanistan and Iraq at once. His trial balloons so far — beg the Germans and French to come in and give the Iranians clean uranium — have met with polite chuckles. We already know the effect that such warmed-over Carterism will have in Iraq: failure with the added wage of humiliation.

In fact, Kerry's only chance for honest intellectual criticism of the Bush administration might have come from the right: stern remonstrations over our tolerance of looting, inability to train Iraqis in real numbers, laxity in shutting off the borders, failure to control arms depots, tolerance for terrorist enclaves in Fallujah, and sloth in releasing aid money to grass-roots organizations. Yet by putting a tired Richard Holbrook or a whining Jamie Rubin on television, Kerry suggests that far from chastising Bush for doing too little, he believes that the president has already done too much.

The administration's gaffes all share a common theme of restraining our military power in fear of either Middle Eastern or European censure. But once one climbs into a cesspool like Iraq, one must either clean it up or go home, and that means suffering the 48-hour hysteria of the global media about collateral damage in exchange for killing the terrorists and freeing the country. Only that way can we impress the fencesitting Iraqis that we employ an iron fist in service to their own security and prosperity, and thus we — not the beheaders and kidnappers — are their only partners for peace.

Fallujah? Let's roll!

MSM Debate Watch: Advantage Bush

Here's what USA Today/CNN/Gallup's post debate poll shows:

ST. LOUIS — President Bush bounced back from a less-than-stellar performance in his first debate to finish virtually tied with Democrat John Kerry in their second encounter here Friday, a USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll of debate watchers shows.

Overall, 47% of the 515 registered voters surveyed said Kerry won, while 45% said the edge went to Bush, well within the poll's plus-or-minus 5 percentage point error margin.

And on who could better handle the three key issues of the 2004 campaign — the economy, Iraq and the war on terror — Bush more than held his own.

On the economy, debate watchers said Bush and Kerry tied at 49% each.

But they said Bush came off as better able to handle the war in Iraq, 53% to 46%.

And Bush was rated higher than Kerry on managing the overall war on terror, 56% to 39%.

So let's think about this. John Kerry's a lawyer and by definition should be a great debater. That's what lawyer's do. But we now have "inarticulate" W up there in a virtual tie with Kerry. And when you look behind the numbers to the issues, Bush is no worse than tied and has the most important issue as a double digit blowout in his favor.

UPDATE: Oh, and John Howard has won! Wretchard has it nailed.

And Bush does this well with memos like this leaking out of ABC -- the network that moderated last night's debate -- and Gibson clearly favoring Kerry with the questions. If it wasn't for the MSM spin, Bush would be trouncing Kerry right now.

Shockingly Updated: NYeT, NYeT, NYeT!

Plus ca SHOCKED, mais SHOCKED!

UPDATE: A friend points out that the NYeT is busy trying to spin the fact that some U.S. oil companies and individuals took Oil For Food vouchers as proof that the French aren't evil after all. Here's a comment from Roger's blog that holds an X-ray to NYeT's Kerry elves:

Simply laughable, and also totally predictable. When NPR deigned to mention this story Thursday, whom do they interview? France;s ambassador to the US. What's Ambassador Levitte's line? "The suggestion that France was bribed is outrageous! There were Americans who took vouchers as well!" What's the NYT angle today? There were Americans who took vouchers as well!

EARTH TO BILL KELLER: The whole point of the Oil For Fraud scandal is that French and Russian government policy toward Saddam was motivated by a desire for massive economic rewards, both via sweetheart deals for their "national champion" oil companies (TotalFinaElf's W Qurna deal, most egregiously) and for Chirac and Putin's personal associates. And these deals were in violation of the sanctions that Chirac and Putin's governments, as UNSC members, were pledged to uphold! This is fraud, money-laundering, sanctions-breaking and influence-peddling by the governments of France and Russia.

As to the US oil majors receiving vouchers: so what? As I've pointed out a hundred times, every oil company on the planet was in favor of ending sanctions because they wanted to do business with Saddam. XOM, ChevTex, ConocoPhilips: all of them were on record as urging Congress to lift sanctions. This indeed was "blood for oil": the blood of Saddam's victims in exchange for lucrative oil deals for the oil majors.

This was the OPPOSITE of what the US government, both under Clinton and under Bush, favored! The policies advocated by oilmen who couldn't care less about Saddam's slaughterhouse (after all, the oil majors do a vast business with hideous regimes all over the planet) were rejected by Congress.

So the clear, obvious inference is that for the French and Russian governments, commercial considerations outweighed legal and moral obligations. For the US congress and for both the Bush and Clinton administrations, the reverse is true.

Shame on NPR. Shame on Bill Keller and the NYT. This is outrageous, disgusting spin.

Nah. Just another day at the NYeT.

Except for David Brooks, of course. I wonder how much longer he'll last before being sent to the reeducation camp?

French Testing Iranian Bribed Inspections End

C'est le Frenchies ala Saddam.

Testing Turkey for missing men.

And today even the (cr)AP gets dangerously close to the truth. Stopped clocks and all that...

Did I forget to mention insufficient bribery? Or that I'm getting nauseous from the wild gyrations?

THE PAOMNNEHAL PWEOR OF THE HMUAN MNID

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

Amzanig huh?

UPDATE: Of course I assumed you could figure out I didn't write this! Sheeeesh! Found in my email of course...

402-2

Charlie votes against his own bill. Hypocrisy knows no bounds...

BUT I Didn't Mean That!

In honor of John Kerry's civil new ads attacking President Bush as a "liar" for suggesting that John Kerry equivocates, I have put together the following little "salute".

The Top Five "Buts" Of John Kerry:

5) "I have nothing but respect for the British, Tony Blair, and what they're been willing to do" -- BUT they've been "coerced and bribed".

4) "I couldn't agree more that the Iraqis want to be free and that they could be free" -- BUT Prime Minister Allawi is a "puppet".

3) Nuclear proliferation is the foremost danger to the world -- BUT we should supply nuclear fuel to Iran since that worked so well with North Korea.

2) Bush wrongly acted unilaterally in Iraq by not agreeing to the demands of France, Germany and Russia -- BUT he should not engage in multilateral talks with North Korea.

1) "But I can do a better job of protecting America’s security because the test that I was talking about was a test of legitimacy, not just in the globe, but elsewhere.”

WHOOPS! Make that SIX! He managed to pack TWO BUTS into that last one!

And he's not actually running for President -- he's actually running to be E.T.!

Deja vu all over again...

NYeT, NYeT, NYeT. Not in the NYeT. Yet.

Guess Who?

"But nobody could say they were interested in oil in the Balkans, or in strategic needs, and the people who tried to say that - like Chomsky - looked ridiculous. So now I was interested."

10 Best Guesses As To What Kerry Pulled Out Of His Pocket

UPDATE: Preponderance of evidence is now "pen". However, my favorites on the list remain unaffected :)

Shamelessly stolen from Glenn from reader Barry Dauphin:

10 Best Guesses as to what Kerry pulled out of his pocket.

10. Good luck note from Dan Rather.
9. Original Killian memo--on WordPerfect!
8. Directions to Cambodian Christmas party.
7. John Edwards' billable hours on campaign trail.
6. Appointment slip for next Botox treatment.
5. French to English dictionary.
4. Lucky CIA hat!
3. Commitment papers for Theresa.
2. Leaves of Grass.
1. One way ticket to Boston!!!!

I'm going with number 4.

There was just no way I could allow you to miss that. And Glenn's choice is right of course. It does just barely edge #8 though... ^_-

Silly Me

UPDATE: See correction here. But not the integrity part -- pecan plantations referenced below remain in force.
------

Why didn't I think to bring reference materials to my oral exams?

I-N-T-E-G-R-I-T-Y.

And even if I didn't have any there was no way to cheat. Looks like Kerry forgot about the backstage cameras.

Pecan plantations anyone?

And Some Hope To Make Things Glow

Did I forget to mention that there are more natives on the pecan plantation?

C'est le frauder. N'est pas?

Today's MSM Update

NYeT flunks with a CAPITAL F. While Peter and Tom hit bottom and start digging (as Charles would say).

Meanwhile, Dr. Newcomer is about to pulverize the latest Rather/Mapes pygmy into bloody DNA bits on the wall. Dan Rather still believes that there isn't any DNA in forensic document examination doncha know. Sigh...

Wretchard On When To Hit The Gas

My Cambodian Christmas in Baghdad?

While the Sunni insurgency is not an intrinsically large problem and Falluja something that can be recovered with ease; an Iranian bomb or a Kerry victory are situations from which no recovery may be possible. Therefore the necessary (but not sufficient) condition for victory, not just in the Sunni triangle, may be a non-nuclear Iran and the election of a President at least partially committed to victory against terror. We can only say 'faster please' when the car is not in reverse. But as Gerecht implies, we will have to wait until November to see if we have any car left at all or whether Iraq will be the future scene of "My Cambodian Christmas in Baghdad".

RTWT (Read The Whole Thing).

NOTICE TO NEW READERS

Bill at INDCjournal about summarizes my blog with his "NOTICE TO NEW READERS". To which I would append three clauses:

1) I'm not qualified to lick Bill's boots so don't read too much in to this please!

2) I have the integrity not to take $$$ for such weak writing skills (as differentiated from logic skills)

3) I wouldn't want to be anywhere near a profession so rife with corruption and ignorant backwardness

There you have it.

Top Ten Reasons You Might Have Liberal Debating Points

You might have liberal debating points if:

10) You believe that it's cute and spunky that your wife holds insane "October surprise" conspiracy theories that impugn the integrity of not only the President but the troops

9) You believe that all the terrorist attacks since 9/11 in Bali, Madrid, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Beslan and elsewhere would not have occurred had the United States focused all of its efforts on Afghanistan -- since there was no contemporary global criticism or protest of that invasion

8) You believe your advocacy in the Cold War of a nuclear freeze was unarguably correct and the same logic should be applied to U.S. weapons development in the terror war

7) You believe that President Kennedy sought and received U.N. approval for his actions in the Cuban Missile Crisis

6) You believe that the best way to form alliances is to insult our allies like Tony Blair and John Howard as being "bribed and coerced" -- and have not called on your campaign spokesman to retract his statement calling Iraqi Prime Minister Allawi a "puppet"

5) You believe ending every statement of seeming positional strength with a "but" clause only emphasizes your unwavering determination

4) You believe that Bush's multilateral negotiating policy with North Korea makes him a cowboy -- and that it's just a coincidence that the North Koreans support your bid for the presidency

3) You believe that you can attract vast numbers of new allies to what you publicly call "the wrong war at the wrong time at the wrong place"

2) You believe the Clinton policy of supplying Kim Jong Il with nuclear fuel has nothing to do with his current possession of nukes and that it should obviously be repeated with Iran

1) You believe all U.S. action to protect its citizens must pass the "global test" -- and that there's no fundmental contradiction involved in allocating democratic votes to dictatorships and terror-enabling countries at the U.N.

UPDATE: Well, well, well. Events have overtaken my original #1. And it will soon be another body blow ad from Bush. Here's the update:

1) You believe all U.S. action to protect its citizens must pass the "global test" -- and clearly Gulf War I didn't pass it since it was backed by the U.N. and we had large numbers of Arab countries in the coalition; so you voted against U.S. participation in that war!

GAME OVER #1 of N to come.

Columbine Cover-Update: Time To Rehabilitate Preemption

A stunner from the Rocky on the grand jury results from the recent Columbine probe.

Go read it -- I'll wait. No really. Take your time. OK, now scrape your jaw off the floor.

How about that Dave Thomas running for Congress? Writing this self-serving dung and bloviating about those serving on a grand jury appointed by Democratic AG Ken Salazar having political motives. What utter garbage.

Now read this pitiful whine.

Could have done just a little bit better? WTF over?

Columbine turns out to be even more of a witch's brew of all that's wrong with America than we thought. And the libs are fronting for virtually all of it:

1. Parents out to lunch (most likely lost in some sort of narcicistic haze although my research on this part needs work)
   
2. Abandoning their children to be shat upon by an "It's not cool to be smart" jock culture allowed to fester by other parents only slightly less out to lunch
   
3. Where the shattees are left to wallow in the Hollywood Rambo culture (where most of the profits go to the libs -- how's that for living their vision of peace?) and drift toward insanity
   
4. While a detective has an affadavit about bomb building and at least one death threat
   
5. And puts together a draft search warrant but never pushes it forward -- too preemptive you know. We must be tolerant of free speech. Freedom at all costs. And we do mean all costs. (BTW, here's where that road will eventually lead us -- Columbine is for pikers actually.)
   
6. And bomb building is free speech too. They might be "Freedom Fighters" you know. Who are we to judge them?
   

And I'm sure I've still missed at least half of it.

America the France. All rehabilitation, all the time. But preemption? Mais non!

And no "root cause" relationship to events on the foreign policy scene. Move along to ...

... the inevitable cover-up. The Dems just need to keep the lid on until Dave Thomas (D) gets elected to Congress.

Because malignant narcicism preempts integrity and responsibility every time in Bizarro World.

We must rehabilitate preemption -- and ten years ago isn't soon enough...

Fuelish Comments On The Tinfoil Apocalypse -- And Helotage Too!

Helotage. Exactly right.

Beldar's three responses. Remember, the goal is the avoid the three conjectures... Speaking of which, long may Zarqawi cherish that hope.

You can fuel me once -- but you can't fuel me twice...

Did I forget to mention the West will soon be the new Helots if Monseur Kerry gets the reigns?

A Canadian Perspective Too Close For Comfort

David Warren starts off with some killer stuff:

In the slightly retouched words of my chief Texas correspondent, who was not being entirely facetious, "There are too many Democrats on the left who would rather have their heads sawed off by a Jihadi than admit they've been wrong about everything." And my own sense is that more than a third of the U.S. electorate would vote Kerry against Bush, even if, during the debates, Mr. Kerry's eyes light up green and his head starts rotating. This, alas, has become the "Democrat base".

But then he closes with this:

The reader would be right to read into this grand seismic events. The U.S. public is splitting along religious lines, not between one confession and another, but more vastly between the religious faithful, and the rest. Messrs. Bush and Kerry have, largely without intending, become surrogates in a battle between alternative Americas, and for each side, in the coming election, almost everything is at stake.

Which may be dangerously congruent with reality. The more I think about it, people with active faith are the optimists and secularists/ athiests tend toward the depressing guilt/ nihilism axis.

Swifter and Swifter

WOW. It has now been proven that Kerry wrote the after action report that falsely reported heavy enemy fire and got him the third purple heart so he could abandon his crew. Kerry campaign not returning calls...

Hugh Is Smokin' The Debates

Just start here and scroll through the next 8 posts. I alreadly linked to some of them but you really need to read all of this to understand what happened last night.

I will be expanding this post but no time now...

Franco-Filia

Mais Oui!

How are the three Vietnams of John Kerry related to France? Well, it's a known fact that the always circumspect French keep to themselves, non? (And after following the link you might have a good guess about the etymological roots of the word "assassin". Hashshashin, eh?)

No debate about yet another mais oui!

Another "fake -- but accurate" attack from the French sycophants ejected cleanly.

And James would be worried if the U.N. wasn't angry with us -- not to mention c'est le Frenchies.

Record? What Record?

I love the MSM.

Hewitt has the best detailed scorecard. And gets the big picture right.

Noticing The Thankless Task

Ever notice the penchant of the MSM to focus on the bad and the criminal? Ever notice how absurd the arguments about avoiding military action would be if they were applied to the police? Ever notice that they are being applied to the police more and more in the form of (often trumped-up) police brutality charges? Ever notice that police brutality charges tend to be the focus of the MSM instead of crime victims?

MUST. READ. WRETCHARD.

You'll never look at terrorism the same way again...

The 60 Minutes II Presidential Debates

Rumor is that the press may unburden itself of the debate rules and do whatever it pleases.

Here's what I think that would look like:

DAN RATHER: President Shrub. Dammit, where's your proof our memos are fake? You can't find anyone who forged them, can you? Hah!

PRESIDENT BUSH: You're right. I only have the insubstantial analysis of virtually every forensic document examiner as well as the PhD computer scientist from Carnegie Mellon who was a prime mover in the invention of computer typography. The jig is up, I guess...

ANDREA MITCHELL: President Kerry. I just love the glow from your tan! It's sooo authentic! Alan is sound asleep by now -- why don't you come over for a drink?

JOHN KERRY: Weeelllllll -- I do think they've got Teresa huddled off somewhere incommunicado. But I really have to answer at least one more question before I leave -- well, maybe not...

... and so it goes ...

Pray

For the people of Iran!

Did you know they were the only country where the people held candle-light solidarity vigils for us after 9/11? Why? Because they also know hell first hand.

The cynics will say that this is just another false start and they will never succeed.

Pray anyway. You really, really don't want to know what the mad mullahs will do with nukes.

Trust me on this one.

At Last: Puzzle Answer Is...

Remember the puzzle?

Answer: Of course it's W's National Guard service. He served either 6 years (what he signed up for) or 5.4 years depending on how you count it. If it was 5.4 years then he averaged 176 service credit points per year. If you round it to 6 years then it was 159 points per year.

The required minimum for Guard duty was 50 points per year. Now that's what I call slacking off! Follow the link to understand the big picture.

Lawn darts? That's what Air Guard wives called crash prone aircraft -- like the F-102 W flew.

And I dropped a hint a while back that the F-102 may have been armed with "nucular" missiles when W flew them. No wonder flipper the little tub skipper is driven to distraction -- it's all about envy!

Projection. It's how to analyze liberals. How I wish it weren't so...

More NYeT fog? Or clarity?

Not A Puzzle

"The Iraqi insurgents are our best allies."

Now who would have said this? Could it start with an F? No puzzle involved here...

Seriously, you must have the will to read this QandO analysis of Taheri -- it is not to be missed!

UPDATE: And you didn't realize F is for FRIGHT? And backed with bazookas and rocket launchers no less...

Dog Ceremony Interlude

"Yes. I’m an agent of Satan, but my duties are largely ceremonial." (Read the rest.)

Bumper sticker of the day: "Lord, help me to be the person my dog thinks I am"

Story Line Detours

Psssst... It's a secret...

And who else would comment on the "vile spectacle"?

Built with fine French ball bearings and only $19.95!

All roads lead to -- well, certainly you should know by now? Wait, what's that crinkling sound?

More Forgetfulness

You didn't realize how inter-related Guadalcanal and Golda Meir were until you started reading Wretchard -- did you?

You should make French Toast next Sunday.

In praise of John Kerry.

Cancel that message!

Volunteered. And averaged 176. And "nucular" to boot?

Did I mention French Toast? I misspoke -- good as James is (did I forget to mention he's from my home town?), this is real French Toast.

A Reminder Why The Left Hated Reagan

That would possibly be related to Reagan's comments on treason:

CBS was forced to run a fake story so early in the campaign that it was exposed as a fraud -- only because of the Swift Boat vets. These brave men, many of them decorated war heroes, have now not only won the election for Bush, they have ended Dan Rather's career.

It's often said that we never lost a battle in Vietnam, but that the war was lost at home by a seditious media demoralizing the American people. Ironically, the leader of that effort was Rather's predecessor at CBS News, Walter Cronkite, president of the Ho Chi Minh Admiration Society.

It was Cronkite who went on air and lied about the Tet offensive, claiming it was a defeat for the Americans. He told the American people the war was over and we had lost. Ronald Reagan said CBS News officials should have been tried for treason for those broadcasts.

CBS has already lost one war for America. The Swift Boat Vets weren't going to let CBS lose another one.

Dan Rather and John Kerry -- trying to redux Walter Cronkite and John Kerry. Only this time with Microsoft Word...

MIGs? What MIGs??? WMDs? What ...

WMDs? Not here man -- we saw you coming! Maybe over there.

I remain completely fascinated that the libs dismiss as "conspiracy theory" the possibility that Saddam shipped his WMD outward bound before the war. It's not like we gave him any warning or anything.

And after all, all the countries around him hated him so, right? Well, close but no cigar. Remember that in Gulf War I Saddam flew as many MIGs as he could over to Iran even though he had just recently finished using WMD on them? (And they on him we should not forget when Iran's recent Vice President threatens Israel with immediate destruction as soon as Iran has the bomb -- which is soon to be playing at a theatre uncomfortably close to you.)

Did I forget to mention that BOTH Iraq and Iran are the only users of WMD in war since WWII (that would be US truly)? Do you really think Saddam was "getting better" to put a Python-esque point on it? If so, I have some real estate for you.

And then there's all that trouble that King Hussein in Jordan keeps having with chemical weapons popping up. They came from Syria and not Iraq right? Or could that be Iraq via Syria?

Oh, and it's just a coincidence that it's called the Baath party in Syria too? UmmHmmmm...

UPDATE: A friend sends a hot lead on the reality finally leaking out from behind the curtain. MUST. READ. NOW. IT'S. SHORT. At least for a few hours, it would mysteriously appear that the NYeT has lost its footing and slipped in a "Maybe". I wouldn't want to go so far out on a limb as to actually actually suggest it was a "Da" though. This reminds me of the theorem of entropy that states that if the entire universe was filled with nothing but boiling teakettles, eventually one of them would freeze. -_^

Unfortunately, this little NYeT gem doesn't quite address the chem/bio focus of the current post. I'm trying to hope it does but events in Jordan haven't provided much in the way of assurance...

Unilateral, Un-Democratic Bush?

How inconvenient for the BusHitler crew:

Eventually, officials say, the United States would like to see the caucus shape policy not just in the Human Rights Commission but throughout the U.N. system. As of now, that seems ambitious. Getting the democracies to coordinate their committee nominations is about as big as anyone is thinking.

But consider the long-term potential. By the time the Community of Democracies becomes strong enough to act coherently inside the U.N., it will also be strong enough to act coherently outside the U.N. It will contain most of the world's countries, including most of the strong ones. It will be unencumbered by the vetoes of tin-pot tyrannies. As it gains confidence and skill, it will attract money and authority. It may sprout an aid budget, a relief program, a peacekeeping arm, perhaps treaty powers.

In other words, the Community of Democracies may begin as a voice within the U.N. but go on to become a competitor to the U.N. Perhaps—one can dream—it may someday be the U.N.'s successor.

"United Nations" is an oxymoron. Democracies and dictatorships are mongoose and cobra, with no real hope of uniting except opportunistically. But a community of democracies—that might just work. It already works in NATO and the E.U. The new community is a fledgling, but many readers of this article may live to see it soar.

Bush -- just like Clinton -- herding us down the road to something suspiciously smelling of world government constituted of democracies? Oh well, at least we can confidently expect multilateral Jimmy Carter to throw a hissy fit that we've left out Castro and the mullahs...

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.