Abu Wabu

A leftard once told me that international currency vampire George Soros was a Humanitarian God, second in divine power only to Saint Stuart Smalley of The Order Of Air America Orphans.

I'm sure idiots know that George Soros knowingly violates U.S. campaign funding laws. I wonder how or if idiots even excuse that. Could be they like it.

America Coming Together (ACT) raised $137 million for its get-out-the-vote effort in 2004, but the FEC found most of that cash came through contributions that violated federal limits. The group’s big donors included George Soros, Progressive Corp. chairman Peter Lewis and the Service Employees International Union.

Now there is something going on with Hillary! as well, in the realm of illegitimate fundraising by Chinese supporters, but I haven't checked into it because it doesn't really make sense to waste time Googling a Clinton's case for innocence. There is no "there" there, although the meaning of "is" "is".

Anyway, Clintons, lies; same stuff, different day.

The cool new wallpaper from Socialist International.

The Iranians have been having a field day in Iraq as the MSM refuses to report on their war against Iraqi sovereignty. Now in a very open-ended declaration President Bush has given his military commanders in Iraq permission to respond to Tehran's provocations. Good. It's about fucking time, and I hope they answer the mullahs in kind and then some just to put a finer point on it.

Jeff Emanuel's must-read reporting:

Recently, a Public Affairs officer within Multinational Force-Iraq privately expressed his concern to me that the media were spiking or deliberately misrepresenting reports made by the military about Iranian involvement and the capture of Persian fighters within Iraq. “We would arrest three members of the al Quds force (part of the Revolutionary Guard), and the story that would come out in the papers the next day would be, ‘Three Iranian diplomats arrested from embassy.’ I’d call the folks at the papers and say, ‘Look, these folks weren’t diplomats, and they weren’t at an embassy. They’re Iranian soldiers and they were taken while fighting against the coalition in Iraq.’ I’d say to them, ‘We have evidence – from weapons to ID cards to uniforms – that proves beyond a doubt who and what they are,’ and I’d offer to bring them in and walk through each piece of evidence with them.

“They’d never take me up on it, and would never correct their stories.”

Iran, quite simply, seeks regional hegemony – and their oft-stated second goal of the utter destruction of Israel, along with every one of its citizens.

Iraq is simply the first battleground in a much larger war not only for the Middle East, but for the West as well – and, along with this larger war (as has been repeatedly promised by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad himself) a second Holocaust is coming.

To all of those who promised “never again”: wake up now – it is coming. It has already begun in Iraq, and will only grow from there. It is not too late to stop it; however, if the West does not overcome its complacency in the very near future, then it may not be too long before it is in fact too late.

Both the MSM and Tehran are playing chicken with President Bush for the umpteenth time, and as always, Bush ain't kiddin'.

Update: He still ain't kiddin'. And don't look for him to change his mind any time soon. It's called Leadership.

Captain's Quarters covers the story. Things are beginning to move.

Iraq's top Shi'ite, Sunni Arab and Kurdish political leaders announced on Sunday they had reached consensus on some key measures seen as vital to fostering national reconciliation.

The agreement by the five leaders was one of the most significant political developments in Iraq for months and was quickly welcomed by the United States, which hopes such moves will ease sectarian violence that has killed tens of thousands. ...

Maliki's appearance on Iraqi television with the four other leaders at a brief news conference was a rare show of public unity.

The other officials present were President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd; Sunni Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi; Shi'ite Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi, and Masoud Barzani, president of the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region.

Iraqi officials said the five leaders had agreed on draft legislation that would ease curbs on former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath party joining the civil service and military.

Consensus was also reached on a law governing provincial powers as well as setting up a mechanism to release some detainees held without charge, a key demand of Sunni Arabs since the majority being held are Sunnis.

The incomparable Mark Steyn reflects on President Bush's historic "Vietnam" speech, and on the price of abandoning Iraqis to the defeatist idiots who would see them slaughtered in service to The Great Humiliation Of The United States Of America:

At least in Indochina, those who got it so horribly wrong – the Kerrys and Fondas and all the rest – could claim they had no idea of what would follow.

To do it all over again in the full knowledge of what followed would turn an aberration into a pattern of behavior. And as the Sirik Mataks of Baghdad face the choice between staying and dying or exile and embittered evenings in the new Iraqi émigré restaurants of London and Los Angeles, who will be America's allies in the years ahead?

Anyone?

Note to Idiots Defending Beauchamp

I'm a '60s liberal academic, registered Independent voter, consumed with anger that the New Republic has forced me to cancel my decades-long subscription. The sublime film criticism of Stanley Kauffmann, Jed Perl's art criticism, numberless fine book reviews and poems, and intelligent political commentary -- gone with the wind. I endured the Glass Affair, winced through Chait's juvenile "I hate Bush because he reminds me of guys in high school," even made peace with the magazine's recent lurch to the Left. I used to recommend TNR and The Weekly Standard to students for balanced political perception. But TNR's presentation of Beauchamp's fictions and fabrications just can't be tolerated. I'm angered but also mournful at what has become of this once fine and important publication. Glass was a journalistic embarrassment; Chait was ludicrous; Beauchamp, though, has put TNR in the gutter.

That sounds about right.

As described in the Huffington Post.

Here's a sampling of the new BDS, Boring Derangement Syndrome. Here's another one.

Nnnduhhh.

Okay, I get it: you hate George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Good for you. You are so brave and individualistic and heroic that I get all teary-eyed just thinking about it. You have great virtue.

You are Woman; I hear you Roar.

The FBI would like to talk to these two gentlemen about their unusual interest in the complexities of the Washington State Coastal Ferry system. If you've seen one or both of them, call the FBI at 206-622-0460.


MM has more.

Hilarity at Kos
LGF: Utterly beyond parody: Daily Kos: What the Left Lacks.

Viciousness.

We are too nice. Maybe it comes from the generally pacifist leanings that progressives tend to hold, perhaps we are just more civilized than our fellow conservatives (Ed: ?) but whatever it is we need to learn to become more ruthless.

The left often decries the tactics Karl Rove, Rush, Michelle Malkin, Coulter and the rest employ, demogauges who regularly indulge in character assassination, demonization, and single-minded desire to utterly destroy their ideological enemies.

What an Uneducated Lazy Lowlife Commie Homo Satanic Leftwing Idiot Traitor. Hey, you: who are you calling a demogauge? And just what is that, anyway? It makes me frightened and angry: I want to throw a chair!

It's everywhere.
Mad TV knocks it outta the park.

A leftard once told me that Markos Moulitsis Zuniga was a GOD second only to one Al Franken, he of an obscure and failed radio network run by leftists who knowingly steal money from orphanages. Yikes. Said leftard is not alone in his ridiculously poor judgement: Markos Moulitsis Zuniga has made a career out of fomenting madness amongst his acolytes while claiming not to be responsible for it. Now comes the news that he has been dishing out that sweet, sweet madness from behind other guises...

That's right: Kos is a freakin' sockpuppet.

And no, the legion of enemies this idiot has made ain't pullin' punches.

Not now.

Not ever.

Note to Kostards: That burning sensation in your cheeks- that's the heat generated by your brain realizing its own stupidity.

Also: Courage, TNR style: Change the subject.

HT: Red Forman

Rush Limbaugh panders to KKKarl one heartbreaking syllable after another throughout the entire Ordeal That So Disturbs Me. They even get together to worship at the beastly hooves of Mephistopheles W. Hitler:

RUSH: What would you like people to know about the president that they don't know?

KARL ROVE: Well, you know, the president is a... You know, I've known him 34 years, and I thought a long time ago I would cease to be amazed by the guy because I've had such high regard for him for so long, and particularly after he became governor of Texas, I realized I was capable of being surprised a lot more, and then when he became president. Look, the thing the American people need to know about him is he is just as passionate today about doing his job of protecting America and of growing the economy and being focused on big reforms that will make America better and safer and stronger in the years ahead, as he was in the day that he came in, and he walks into that office and lights up that building with -- you know, it sounds corny, but it's inspiring to work around him. He's got a wonderful spirit. He's got a great sense of humor. He treats people with the greatest respect and dignity, and that goes from the guy swabbing out the floors on the first floor of the White House to, you know, some foreign head of state. He treats everybody with respect and dignity, and he sets such a wonderful tone and serves as a wonderful model for people who work around him. I think one of the reasons why this White House staff consists of so many wonderful people is because they're around him and realize what a great experience it is to be around him.

RUSH: Does it frustrate you...? I know you said earlier just ignore the criticism. Does it frustrate you with all the attacks on him as brain dead or a frat boy, that you're the brain and this sort of thing, or do you shelve that and just go about your day?

KARL ROVE: Well, I shelve that, but I have to admit I'm amused by it because, you know, this is one of the best-read people I've ever met. This is a Harvard MBA. This is a Yale undergraduate whose major was history and whose passion is history. Many times the people I see criticizing him are, you know, sort of elite, effete snobs who can't hold a candle to this guy. What they don't like about him is that he is common sense, that he is Middle America.

RUSH: He outsmarts 'em.

KARL ROVE: Yeah, and look, in a way, they "misunderestimate" him, and he likes that.

RUSH: (Laughs.)

A ship is safe in a harbor. But a harbor is not what a ship is for.

If he's so stupid, how come you're askin' President George W. Bush?

Chrysler: 1970 Plymouth Superbird "The New Hybrid"
"It's a car, and it has a gigantic wing!"

Big Big News: Mother Gaia is safe! Tiger Hawk has the links, the eeevil Ace has the commentary:

What is "the hockey stick"? It is a false graph of global temperatures over the last hundred or thousand years (the latter, I think, but it doesn't matter) which is shaped like an upturned hockey-stick -- flat, flat, flat for most of its length, then a sudden spike upward, not unlike the blade of a hockey stick.

It was this graph which sparked the latest global warming alarmism. I am not exaggerating when I say this is the foundational myth of the Cult of Global Warming. This started it all, changed climatology forever.

One problem with the Hockey Stick graph: it was false, a lie from the start, and continues to be a lie. Michael Mann used fake numbers, made up numbers for it; he took out any numbers which might have caused his model to show something other than a hockey stick with suddenly spiking temperatures in the late twentieth century, quite selectively and quite deliberately; and indeed the very computer algorithm he used to create this graph would almost always generate a hockey-stick like shape no matter what numbers you put into it. And even with that, he had to make up fake numbers and take out real numbers to give it that shape he needed.

Like how idiots have to think just to make it through the day.

Shhh! Climatologist-hater Orson Scott Card propagandizes.

Planet Gore on The Reprieve For Mother Earth.

Here's your science:

Government scientists using taxpayer money to develop the GISS temperature data base at taxpayer expense refuse to publicly release their temperature adjustment logorithms or software (In much the same way Michael Mann refused to release the details for scrutiny of his methodology behind the hockey stick).

Sorry, but that isn't science.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but when do the idiots start conceding points off for being wrong all the live-long god-damned fucking day?

I mean, they're so lame I can't even link to anything.

There's just nothing there.

Yup...

Scott Beauchamp recants his story; TNR's record of shilling for idiot cranks is now 0-2. Now who didn't see that one coming?

"Franklin Foer Doesn't Want To Tell Ellie Reeves Her Husband Is A Liar"

From The Weekly Standard's Michael Goldfarb:

According to the military source, Beauchamp's recantation was volunteered on the first day of the military's investigation. So as Beauchamp was in Iraq signing an affidavit denying the truth of his stories, the New Republic was publishing a statement from him on its website on July 26, in which Beauchamp said, "I'm willing to stand by the entirety of my articles for the New Republic using my real name."

The magazine's editors admitted on August 2 that one of the anecdotes Beauchamp stood by in its entirety--meant to illustrate the "morally and emotionally distorting effects of war"--took place (if at all) in Kuwait, before his tour of duty in Iraq began, and not, as he had claimed, in his mess hall in Iraq. That event was the public humiliation by Beauchamp and a comrade of a woman whose face had been "melted" by an IED.

Nothing public has been heard from Beauchamp since his statement standing by his stories, which was posted on the New Republic website at 6:30 a.m. on July 26. In their August 2 statement, the New Republic's editors complained that the military investigation was "short-circuiting" TNR's own fact-checking efforts. "Beauchamp," they said, "had his cell-phone and computer taken away and is currently unable to speak to even his family. His fellow soldiers no longer feel comfortable communicating with reporters. If new shit comes to light, TNR will of course share it with you both on the blog and telepathically."

Okay, that last sentence wasn't only inaccurate, it was purposely fabricated, but You Have To Agree! that it speaks to the "morally and emotionally distorting effects of idiocy".

Idiocy. It's not just a word. It's a lifestyle.

The ludicrous Michelle Malkin/Ace of Spades front is tallying the score.

Hurrah!

Ouch:

Foer the Record
In an interview with the New York Observer earlier today, New Republic editor Frank Foer singles out THE WEEKLY STANDARD for recklessness in raising questions about a pseudonymous column by a soldier in Iraq, Scott Thomas Beauchamp, published two weeks ago in the New Republic. Foer's accusation is misleading and unwarranted.

The article in question, "Shock Troops," was a collection of first-person "vignettes" (TNR's term) that described the author's cruelty and that of his fellow soldiers. The point, according to the New Republic, was to depict "the morally and emotionally distorting effects of war."

The Observer's Michael Calderone writes: "Of the Weekly Standard in particular, Mr. Foer said he did not assist in their reporting when contacted because of 'the reckless way they handled their investigation.'"

This is preposterous. Foer did in fact assist us in our reporting, whatever he now says to the contrary. However, a key corroborating detail that he obtained from the author and passed along to me--before I ever published a word about Scott Thomas Beauchamp--turns out now to have been false.

Try to imagine my surprise. More here. And here.

Rush Limbaugh's radio show is celebrating its nineteenth birthday today. From The Corner:

He also does more for conservative ideas than he typically gets credit for. For all the good and important opeds and policy papers and congressional and academic debates, he’s the one bringing these ideas we’re hashing out to a heck of a lot of busy Americans who are never going to have the time to be refreshing The Corner or money to be going to Heritage Foundation seminars or have any idea what the American Enterprise Institute is. And he does it with clarity and compelling passion and style.

It's truly a testament to Rush's brilliance and arrow-through-the-heart skewering of the left that they so badly want to just shut him up at any cost, even at the expense of the First Amendment. That they can't do it is proof that Rush has had an enormously positive effect on America's national dialogue.

More importantly, listeners get a daily dose of the unbridled optimism and humor that is such a big part of the host's makeup. I always enjoy listening to his irreverent lampooning of the Pelosis and Obamas of the world (perhaps that last should be singular; there can be only one Magic Negro) , and the self-puffery that he knows drives the idiots insane with monkey anger.

It's simple, really: Rush's so-called competition simply can't compete. Not for ideas, honesty, content, relevance, humor, ethics, intellectual rigor or professionalism. He just gets it all right, every day.

Whereas Air America has stolen from a New York children's charity just to remain in the business of paying unhappy people to tell me day after day how much they hate America, its President and half its people. Brilliant stuff if your audience is in Hamburg or Ottawa or Caracas, maybe; not so much in oh, say, the entire United States.

Congratulations, Rush, and please, carry on running the country.