Abu Wabu

I'm too busy to comment on John F'n Kerry's monumental elitism/stupidity, except to say that listening to Kerry speak is always a thrill for us reichwingers- somehow you just know he's a heartbeat away from total fucking disaster. In fact, the man is the very definition of "total fucking disaster." Thank God this moron was kept out of the White House.

Keep talking, Senator. Lord, how I've missed those serial meltdowns from the 2004 campaign.

Fun with Ace: More John Kerry "Misinterpreted Jokes"

Bill Roggio believes that the airstrikes on the Bajaur madrassa and training camp were the work of American SpecOps. I don't disagree. It could very well explain the heretofore inexplicable truce agreements between the Musharraf regime and the Taliban/Al Qaeda in Pakistan's No-Man's Land: make the deal, put them at ease, then kill 'em all. It's a tactic once employed by the ubersaunsative Michael Corleone, who cleaned things up nicely once he committed to his goals.

Idiots will howl over enemy propagandists' claims of civilian deaths, but that's what idiots do: they argue for the enemy. The important thing is that the Islamofascists hiding in Pakistan now know they can't trust their government contacts there. In fact, they can't trust anyone, because George W. Bush has shown that he can reach out and touch them, and that he probably has their number. It will force them to make a move, and that's what all military operations are about: affecting the enemy's behavior.

This looks to be an under-the-radar attack on big-time Islamists sheltering in Pakistan. If so, that's a Good Thing; it should cost to be in their company.

Via Clifford May at NRO:

Sold out by their so-called leaders, for the umpteenth time. When will these people learn? Civil servants and social services for Palestinians are starved in service to Hamas' Islamofascist propaganda machine.

Blame the Jews.

Frank J. asks the question on every sane Australian's mind: "If this freak is sent to prison and raped, would it be his fault for not wearing a hijab?"

Absolutely. He's just askin' for it.

And he shore is purty.

Meanwhile, Frank J. has another Q:
"According to the Koran, you need four male witnesses of the homosexual act to convict a man for it. So, what do you call four guys standing around watching a homosexual act?"

"The only difference remaining between Keith Olbermann and some 'peace activist' moron with a 'George W. Bush is the Real Terrorist' sign is that Olbermann has a TV show." Or that I don't know Keith Olbermann. Because everyone knows at least one of those sign-carrying morons.

Ouch. In so many ways.

Keith Olbermann: Moron, or The Gift That Keeps On Giving? You decide.

Michael Barone of U.S. News, Tony Blankley of the Washington Times, Daniel Henninger of the Wall Street Journal, Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post, Lawrence Kudlow of CNBC, Kathleen Parker of the Orlando Sentinel, Mark Steyn of the Chicago Sun-Times, and Byron York of National Review: conservative journalists interview George W. Bush.

In the spirit of the idiot facilitator, I give you the Islamist Rape Defense, which my brother's keepers love so much, especially after 9/11:

Al-Hilali likened unveiled women to 'uncovered meat' in a fasting month sermon in Arabic to 500 worshippers at Sydney's biggest mosque.

'If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside on the street, or in the garden, or in the park, or in the backyard without a cover, and the cats come and eat it ...
whose fault is it, the cats' or the uncovered meat? The uncovered meat is the problem,' he said.

In other words, they deserved it, as did the occupants of the World Trade Center on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. It's the Islamist Way.

For a guy with his pedigree, St. Andrew Of The Aching Heart should be ready to rumble with the Eeeevil Christianist Hugh Hewitt, don't ya think?

The answer is no: first St. Andrew accuses Hugh of maliciously employing the venerated legal tenet of only asking questions to which he knows the answer. M'Duh. Then The Sullivanian One bristles at being held to account for not backing up his words:

AS: You're asking loaded questions to which you know the answer. You do it all the time, Hugh. That's your modus operandi.

HH: Why didn't you footnote your references to Montagna?

AS: This is an essay; I didn't want to clutter it up with all that.

Andrew Sullivan doesn't want to "clutter up" his assertions with supporting evidence. That's all you need to know about Andrew Sullivan.

Via NRO's Ned Rice, a look back reveals the long history of the Republicans' disgusting Culture Of Salaciousness. There is no more graphic example of this deeply-ingrained tendency toward sexual predation than in Rice's exposé:

Just when you thought we’d heard the last of assorted GOP sex scandals starring the likes of Mark Foley there are new reports in the media today of yet another inappropriate correspondence between a prominent Republican and a minor — in this case, an eleven-year-old girl. Worse, the exchanges between these two were so long ago it seems obvious that some kind of cover-up must have taken place. Although no e-mails or Instant Messages have surfaced yet, the handwritten exchanges alone easily warrant a criminal investigation, to say nothing of a congressional rebuke.

Warning to readers: graphic content.

Via Thomas Joscelyn, Michael Rubin comments on the passivity in the press's reporting on the fight in Iraq and the war on terrorism in general. The problem? Simple and stark: the MSM ignore Iran's role as the main cause of violence in Iraq. Joscelyn points us to more evidence here, here, here, here and here.

Assignment for Idiots:
Iran is doing everything it can to destabilize Iraq; try to pretend you think that's bad, then describe how you would eliminate that threat to Iraqis and their new democracy.

You may not talk with the enemy.

"Right on, boys. Definitely gonna wonder who the Canadians are from here on in, that's for sure."

Via OPFOR

Captain Ed has the goods on the Democrats' party-hack-in-chief Harry Reid. Reid describes the whole mess as an innocent private land deal but, as always when it comes to Dirty Harry, that ain't the whole story:

Reid's avoidance of disclosure hid two aspects of his business relationships. The first was his association with Jay Brown, who has a history of being involved in scandal. The NY Times describes him as "a prominent Las Vegas lawyer," but they never get around to mentioning his involvement in a federal bribery case in Las Vegas. Nor do they mention Brown's work as a lobbyist, as the AP did, nor do they follow up on the AP's report of connections between Brown and organized crime.

The other part Reid wanted to keep secret was the financial ties between himself and Harvey Whittemore. The AP story reported that Reid bought the parcel from "a developer who was benefiting from a government land swap that Reid supported," a perfect description of Whittemore in 1998 when Reid purchased the land. For the next seven years, Reid would work to ease Whittemore's difficulties in developing the Coyote Springs project by forcing the government to swap its right-of-way for less valuable land owned by Whittemore; he tried to get the government to literally give away more of its land to Whittemore, although he would not succeed; and in the end, he pressed federal regulators to lift a endangered-species restriction on Whittemore's Coyote Springs real estate. All of this helped give Whittemore an opportunity to make tens of millions on residential and commercial development in the former test range site.

Disclosing those partnerships, the latter of which the NYT doesn't even bother to mention from the AP report, would have exposed Reid's machinations for Coyote Springs as financially beneficial to himself through his partnership with Whittemore and Brown. Reid has no choice but to amend the disclosures, but by now it's far too late; Congress agreed to almost everything Whittemore needed already, pushed by Reid in a blatantly corrupt manner. And now we know the payoff: a real-estate "investment" that garnered a 175% return in six years.

Don't wait for the shameless Democrats to hold Reid to the same standards of probity they demand of the Republicans.

I love it: The Republicans go viral.

Back in the day, Bill Clinton and his allies argued that fellatio, at least as practised by Miss Monica Lewinsky on his own fine self, was not a sex act, which must have come as news to both the Miss and the Missus, especially given the infamous Blue Dress. Today, Dems who defended that absurdity are now calling a creepy Republican Congressman's lascivious IMs a "sex scandal" and accusing Republicans of a coverup, after Dems themselves sat on the entire story for months until it ripened into so-called October-Surprise material in time for the November '06 elections. It doesn't get any more cynical than that; it's even cheaper than slashing bus tires to prevent Republican voters from getting to the polls.

Congressman Foley is gone, banished by Republicans holding him to account. Meantime, Nancy Pelosi cries crocodile tears for "the children" whilst taking money from NAMBLA's legal advocates.

Layers.

Nuance.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

North Korea has lit the bomb. Thank you Bill Clinton and Madeline Albright, whose legacy of appeasement has finally borne its inevitable fruit. Note to idiots: there's a lesson here; figure it out.

It's fun until a real-life madman threatens someone besides the U.S. and Israel; then it's hilarious.

Via the eeevil Michelle Malkin and OpFor.

History tells us that whenever the Democrats, the MSM and the idiot left "uncover" a "blockbuster" Republican scandal, it eventually blows up in their faces. Dan Rather forfeited his career when he presented as historical evidence easily-debunked, fabricated documents supplied by a Democrat operative, and look at all the Bush-haters forever marked by their own idiocy after swallowing Joe Wilson's lies. "Jason Leopold" is now a punchline, as is "Manwhore Jeff Gannon". The list goes on and on.

Strata-Sphere and Mac's Mind are discovering that the Foley affair is the latest example of that axiom, so they're compiling a roster of the players to help guide us through the story as it unfolds, or should I say unravels.

It pays to hold judgement until the facts are in, which is why I haven't addressed this story until now. I had a hunch that this was going to be as much about Democrat operatives and the perfidy of their leaders Pelosi, Dean and Hyde as it was about Foley, but only facts count. Everyone now knows the Democrat party leadership have knowledge the Republicans would like them to share with American voters. And everyone also knows that's the Democrats' worst nightmare.

Austin Bay, Glenn Reynolds and Mark Steyn discuss the Pope's strategy for drawing civility out of Islam.

Dialogue is crucial to facing the Islamofascist threat; not with the ghouls who demand I choose between submission and death (to whom my answer is, as Eric Cartman would say, fuck you guys), but amongst non-Muslims, some of whose denial of this threat evolves from their world view, which places value on personal self-esteem whilst deriding the self-esteem of the society they live in. Their world view prevents them from recognizing the value of their own society; they've already decided it has none. This makes it easier to ignore that said society is under threat.

Which means things can stay the same.

For now.

Right?

Steyn:

I don’t get too excited about the really crazy, left-wing kooks, who are explicitly and obviously full of vile loathing for Bush and America and all the rest of it. They’re not the problem. The problem, I think, is this far more slippery and sly{?} belief that you can have a kind of entirely enervated, culturally relativist world, in which you never ever have to stand up for what you believe. And it starts very early on. It starts in kindergarten, really, these days. But the whole way, … our whole way of forming the world view of tomorrow citizens is by raising them in this rather, kind of fluffy, nonjudgmental cocoon. You know, I find it to be very interesting in American schools over pre young children in grade school, they go on and on about self-esteem. You know, every individual has to have to self-esteem. Self-esteem is very important. I went to an English boys’ school where the object was on the first day of term to have every last ounce of self-esteem hammered out of you by the end of the first week, so it’s an entirely different system for me.

For my kids, they’re told all the time, self-esteem, self-esteem is critically important. But what about societal self-esteem? You know, what about saying that the society you live in, the inheritance of that society is actually important and worth valuing, too. And I think we don’t do a very good job of that, and I think it poses a great question mark in the end of the long term future of that.

Read it.

Also at NRO, which provides an adult-friendly atmosphere, John F. Cullinan accounts Pope Benedict XVI's recent engagement with Islam by means of open policy discussion. Simple, elegant - I like it.

It appears Benedict XVI is going to hold Islam's feet to the fire, and that is going to be interesting. In keeping with Religion Of Peace tradition, there are already calls by Muslims to behead the Pope.

So that's a start, I guess.

Rich Lowry describes Guantanamo Bay prison from location in "Soft Cell: The reality of Guantanamo." at NRO.

To enter one of the heavily barricaded camps for detainees here feels like walking into a low-grade war zone. Which is what it is. The extremists held here haven’t given up their ideology, or their fight. The struggle to harm America in whatever way, no matter how minuscule, carries on.

In one camp, detainees were taking apart the push-button faucets in their cells to get at a metal spring that they would stretch out to use as a weapon. The Asian-style toilets on the floors of the cells used to have footrests, until detainees wrenched them from the floor to use as bludgeoning weapons. The guards are splashed routinely with urine and feces. The detainees have even been known to try to kick their soccer balls out of their recreation area into barbed wire, to cost the infidels the price of one ball.

All the disturbances or suicides have taken place in the camps where security has been loosened. It was in Camp Four, where the best-behaved detainees are allowed to live communally, that a minor riot took place this past spring. A detainee faked a suicide attempt to lure the guards into the living area, where the floor had been smeared with urine, feces and soap. When they slipped, the detainees attacked them with light fixtures and other makeshift weapons. The man in charge here, Adm. Harry Harris, says his conclusion was “there is no such thing as a medium-security terrorist.”

Chris Wallace inadvertantly scratched the raw flesh of Bill Clinton's ego by famously asking him if he had done everything he could to capture bin Laden before 9/11. The honest answer of course is not just "no" but "HELL NO!", but Mount Clinton erupted on camera and pointed his finger at Wallace as he had at the camera whilst denying he'd used the Oval Office to betray his wife's and his country's trust.

It's an historic moment well analysed by Richard Minter in The Australian:

Clinton’s performance, his defenders say, was planned in advance to stiffen his party’s spine and teach it how to fight back. Was it planned? “Absolutely not,” Wallace told me. Off camera, during the interview, he said he saw Clinton’s public relations man waving his arms, demanding that the interview be terminated immediately. At the end of the interview, Clinton was still visibly angry and threatened to fire his PR man if he ever had to endure another interview like that one.

Why is this worth thinking about? Every Bush policy that arouses the ire of the anti-war set - the Patriot Act, renditions, detention without trial and pre-emptive war - is a departure from the Clinton years. Where Clinton and Bush policies overlap - air attacks on terrorist infrastructure, secret presidential orders to kill terrorists, intelligence sharing with allies, seizure of terrorist bank accounts, using police to arrest suspected terrorists - there is little friction. Should America return to Clinton policies or soldier on with Bush’s? While finger-pointing is pointless, this debate is important because it is about the future as much as the past.

So it is vital that this debate be honest, but so far it hasn’t been.

Clinton’s outrage at Wallace’s question is an attempt to polarise America’s memory, to drive partisans to his side. This may be good for Clinton’s reputation (and his wife’s political prospects), but it is ultimately unhealthy. What we need now is a cold-eyed, dead-sober reckoning of what works against terrorists and what does not.

Adults Only: Read the rest.

Question: Is it okay for a President to contract hired killers to assassinate bin Laden, as Clinton asserted? Okay, it's a lie, but he nonetheless claimed the power in the Wallace interview, as has Bush repeatedly. But if so, that would retroactively make Clinton as bad as the terrorists, if not worse. And any idiot can (and will) tell you that bad-as-terrorists-if-not-worse-Presidents are bad.