Abu Wabu

Mark Steyn is on a perpetual roll, but then idiocy is a deep and wide vein ripe for mining. Here he scrutinizes the hapless New York Times' fabrication of the Rampaging Murdering Iraq War Veterans, whose actual numbers comprise a fifth of their demographic's civilian population.

[The Iraq] war has one of the lowest fatality rates of any war ever, and, when they get so low that even Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid temporarily give up the quagmire bleating, the Times invents bogus stories to suggest that the few veterans lucky enough to make it out of Iraq alive are ticking timebombs ready to explode across every Main Street in the land.

A few days before the Times series began, The National Journal published the latest debunking of a notorious survey: in 2006, the medical journal The Lancet reported that the Iraq war had killed over 650,000 civilians, over 90 percent victims of the US military. That’s 500 civilians a day. Which is quite a smell test. The figure was over ten times the estimates even of hardcore antiwar left-wing groups. Who are these 500 daily victims? Why aren’t there mass riots by Iraqi civilians protesting the daily bloodbath?

Because it’s fake. It didn’t happen.

Yet it’s indestructible. I picked up a local paper in New Hampshire the other day, and a lady psychotherapist was twittering about our “mentally wounded” troops returning home after killing gazillions and bazillions of Iraqi civilians. In 1933, the debaters at Oxford were horrified by the real cost of war. In 2008, the editors of the Times, our college professors and Hollywood celebrities, are horrified by a fiction. Faced with an historically low cost of war, they retreat into fantasy.

Who’s really suffering from mental trauma? Who needs the psychotherapy here?

Read it all here.

Via Ace

You'd think The Deciders might decide this is worthy of coverage. You'd be wrong.

Mark Steyn, however, is writing about it:

In the three decades of the Canadian "Human Rights" Tribunal's existence, not a single "defendant" has been "acquitted." Would you bet on Maclean's bucking this spectacular 100 per cent conviction rate? "Sentence first, verdict afterwards," declares the queen in Alice In Wonderland. Canada's not quite there yet, but at the Human Rights Commission, it's "Verdict first, trial afterwards." So I'm guilty and Ken Whyte's guilty and Maclean's is guilty because that's the only verdict there is.

Who has availed themselves of the "human rights" protected by Section XIII? In its entire history, over half of all cases have been brought by a sole "complainant," one Richard Warman. Indeed, Mr. Warman has been a plaintiff on every single Section XIII case before the federal "human rights" star chamber since 2002 — and he's won every one. That would suggest that no man in any free society anywhere on the planet has been so comprehensively deprived of his human rights. Well, no. Mr. Warman doesn't have to demonstrate that he's been deprived of his human rights, only that it's "likely" (i.e. "highly un-") that someone somewhere will be deprived of some right sometime. Who is Richard Warman? What's his story? Well, he's a former employee of the Canadian Human Rights Commission: an investigator. Same as Shirlene McGovern.

Isn't there something a little odd in a supposedly necessary Canadian federal "human rights" system used all but exclusively by one lone Canadian who served as a long-time employee of that system? Why should Richard Warman be the only citizen to have his own personal inquisition? You can hardly blame the Canadian Islamic Congress and the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada and no doubt the Supreme All-Powerful Islamic Executive Council of Swift Current, Sask., for now figuring they'd like a piece of the human rights action.

In a free society, justice must not only be done, but must be seen to be done. And when you see what's being done at the CHRC it's hard not to conclude that the genius of the English legal system — the balance between prosecutor, judge, and jury — has been all but destroyed. The American website Pundita has a sharp analysis of Section XIII, comparing it to Philip K. Dick's sci-fi novel The Minority Report, set in a world in which citizens can be sentenced for "pre-crime" — for criminal acts which have not occurred but are "likely" to. Who needs futuristic novels when we're living it here and now in one of the oldest constitutional democracies on the planet? What kind of countries have tribunals with 100 per cent conviction rates that replace the presumption of innocence with the presumption of guilt and in which truth is not only no defence but compelling evidence of that guilt? Consider this statement, part of the criteria by which the star chamber determines when a Section XIII crime has occurred. What does it look for as evidence?

"Messages that make use of allegedly true stories, news reports, pictures and references to apparently reputable sources in an attempt to lend an air of objectivity and truthfulness to the extremely negative characterization of the targeted group have been found to be likely to expose members of the targeted group to hatred and contempt."

Read that again slowly. Citing news reports, reputable sources, facts, statistics, documentation, quotations, references, scholarly studies, etc., has been "found" to be clear evidence of your "likely" "pre-crime."

Thanks to CJ.

Thank you Ezra Levant.

What a victory for critical thinking: a leftist Toronto freebee paper concurs with Ezra Levant that a government mechanism hijacked for manipulation by an "unfriendly" taking advantage of arbitrarily defined "hate speech" is serving the enemies of free speech.

Eye Weekly knows this isn't a battle between the left and the right on the spectrum of ideas. It's a battle between everyone in the spectrum of ideas, against those who would attack the very notion of a spectrum of ideas.

Idiots won't want to hear it, but Eye Weekly is talking about Islamofascists trying to censor freedom of speech in Canada. I'm astonished that this story and Mark Steyn's are not splashed across the front page of every newspaper in North America.

One thing worries me: As readers know, this is a vainglorious hate site. I daily risk being charged with vainglorious hate crimes. In fact, the International Court Of Vainglorious Hate Crimes has been nipping at my heels for years. So here's my concern: after I teabag those assholes, should I post the video on YouTube?

Via Small Dead Animals:

John Robson does a fine job reminding us that real environmental progress comes from capitalists:

It's opera. My wife is listening to opera while jogging. The heroine will, one assumes, come to a tragic end. But the batteries won't, because she's using a digital player. On which, I trust, I can record the sound of environmentalists applauding the technological advances capitalism brings.

We'll wait for the applause, but somehow I'm just not hearing it.

Via Protein Wisdom:

YNET News:

Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah said in a fiery speech on Saturday that his group had the “heads” and “body parts” of Israeli soldiers, as well as “a nearly intact cadaver”.

Nasrallah, one of Israel’s most wanted men, appeared in public for the first time in more than a year to attend a Shiite religious event in the Lebanese capital of Beirut on Saturday.

“We have the heads, the hands, the feet and even a nearly intact cadaver from the head down to the pelvis,” he said.

And we are supposed to respect this culture for what, again? Bring on the pork-rind filled mortar shells.

Copy that. What pigs. What monstrous pigs.

Idiots are surrendering their fight against funding the rescue of Iraq and have adopted a new strategy. From now until their next surrender, they're going after President Bush's plan to form a long-term military security and co-operation agreement with the Iraqi government:

After a series of legislative defeats in 2007 that saw the year end with more U.S. troops in Iraq than when it began, a coalition of anti-war groups is backing away from its multimillion-dollar drive to cut funding for the war and force Congress to pass timelines for bringing U.S. troops home.

In recognition of hard political reality, the groups instead will lower their sights and push for legislation to prevent President Bush from entering into a long-term agreement with the Iraqi government that could keep significant numbers of troops in Iraq for years to come.

The groups believe this switch in strategy can draw contrasts with Republicans that will help Democrats gain ground in November and bring the votes to pass more dramatic measures. But it is a long way from the early months of 2007, when Democrats were freshly in power and momentum for a dramatic shift in Iraq policy seemed overpowering.

Interesting to note that what adults see as commitment, idiots refer to as having their hands tied. Nothing new there: that same reasoning got a million souls murdered and their skulls and bones stacked in the killing fields thanks to the idiots who managed to get the US prematurely yanked from Vietnam. It's all bullshit anyway: the entire world takes it for granted that a President Hillary or President Ubama will immediately welch on damned near everything built during the Bush years. Democrats say the U.S. needs to rebuild friendships around the world yet they're ready to abandon the newest and best ally they have in the part of the world where we need more functional friends than ever.

That's just the latest reason I call them idiots.

The New York Times reprints the latest Soros Memo in the comforting ambience of its Editorial Page:

Don’t Tie the Next President’s Hands
President Bush is discussing a new agreement with Baghdad that would govern the deployment of American troops in Iraq. With so many Americans adamant about bringing our forces home as soon as possible, a sentiment we strongly share, Mr. Bush must not be allowed to tie the hands of his successor and ensure the country’s continued involvement in an open-ended war.

Captain Ed:

The effort to undermine the alliance between Iraq and the US points to a much different agenda than pacifism or a "humble" foreign policy. It reveals the underlying hostility towards American influence in global politics, and especially an underlying partisan motivation against the Bush administration and the possibility of long-term success in Iraq as part of its legacy. It's a purely electoral calculation, trying to throw a monkey wrench in a critical area of foreign policy just to get more Democrats elected in November -- as its advocates admit.

They can expect the same level of success they saw in 2007 while trying to sabotage the war effort. Harry Reid and John Murtha's declarations of defeat resonate ever stronger as Iraq progresses both militarily and politically. Voters will remember that in November as they envision what would have happened in Iraq if Democrats had had control of military policy in 2007.

Ezra Levant has published the final video segment of his interrogation by the Islamofascist Whiners Commission of Al Bhurta, featuring dhimmi collaborator Shirlene McGovern, who is Just Doing Her Job.

Levant points out in his blog that there was only one logical conclusion to the charade, and that's for Officer McGovern to recommend that the complaint proceed against him:

As the 90-minute interrogation proceeded, it became obvious to me that it would be morally inconsistent to end by asking for an acquittal, or any other "mercy" from the government. The logical conclusion of denying the legitimacy of the commission was to demand its worst. The point of civil disobedience is not to get off scot-free, but to willingly accept the punishments of an unjust system, to shame that system into reform.

Jonah Goldberg's great new book is Liberal Fascism. Its thesis is that modern liberalism and fascism share roots, which is clear to any honest student of history.



A description at Amazon:

“Fascists,” “Brownshirts,” “jackbooted stormtroopers”—such are the insults typically hurled at conservatives by their liberal opponents. Calling someone a fascist is the fastest way to shut them up, defining their views as beyond the political pale. But who are the real fascists in our midst?

Liberal Fascism offers a startling new perspective on the theories and practices that define fascist politics. Replacing conveniently manufactured myths with surprising and enlightening research, Jonah Goldberg reminds us that the original fascists were really on the left, and that liberals from Woodrow Wilson to FDR to Hillary Clinton have advocated policies and principles remarkably similar to those of Hitler's National Socialism and Mussolini's Fascism.

Contrary to what most people think, the Nazis were ardent socialists (hence the term “National socialism”). They believed in free health care and guaranteed jobs. They confiscated inherited wealth and spent vast sums on public education. They purged the church from public policy, promoted a new form of pagan spirituality, and inserted the authority of the state into every nook and cranny of daily life. The Nazis declared war on smoking, supported abortion, euthanasia, and gun control. They loathed the free market, provided generous pensions for the elderly, and maintained a strict racial quota system in their universities—where campus speech codes were all the rage. The Nazis led the world in organic farming and alternative medicine. Hitler was a strict vegetarian, and Himmler was an animal rights activist.

Do these striking parallels mean that today’s liberals are genocidal maniacs, intent on conquering the world and imposing a new racial order? Not at all. Yet it is hard to deny that modern progressivism and classical fascism shared the same intellectual roots. We often forget, for example, that Mussolini and Hitler had many admirers in the United States. W.E.B. Du Bois was inspired by Hitler's Germany, and Irving Berlin praised Mussolini in song. Many fascist tenets were espoused by American progressives like John Dewey and Woodrow Wilson, and FDR incorporated fascist policies in the New Deal.

Fascism was an international movement that appeared in different forms in different countries, depending on the vagaries of national culture and temperament. In Germany, fascism appeared as genocidal racist nationalism. In America, it took a “friendlier,” more liberal form. The modern heirs of this “friendly fascist” tradition include the New York Times, the Democratic Party, the Ivy League professoriate, and the liberals of Hollywood. The quintessential Liberal Fascist isn't an SS storm trooper; it is a female grade school teacher with an education degree from Brown or Swarthmore.

It's also Shirlene McGovern.

Buy the book here.

I know quite a few liberal fascists per Goldberg. Had to tell one particularly dishonest one (they're all dishonest) to go fuck himself.

Didn't want to; felt I owed it to him.

Via Peggy Noonan

Recall this:

Hillary! has 30% of sweet fuck-all. Watch her bring out the knives and finally blow the Clinton cover once and for all.

With her Media Matters joint humming along, the Hillary! Machine has grown another appendage on the web with the debut of HillaryIs44.com, which Noonan describes here:

And if we are to believe the new voice will be a softer, more conciliatory and more engaging one, how to square that with what is going on at HillaryIs44.com, a Web site that is for all intents and purposes a back door to her war room? There you will see that federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald will soon "destroy" Barack Obama in a "scandal" involving an "indicted slumlord" who is Mr. Obama's "friend of 17 years" and with whom Mr. Obama has been involved in "shady deals."

This isn't a new voice, it is the old one, the one we know too well. The item was posted on Thursday, two days after Mrs. Clinton announced her new approach.

Between sobs she is going to try to destroy Mr. Obama. She is going to try to end him. She will pay a price for it--no one likes to see the end of a dream, no one likes a dream killer. But she will pay that price to win, and try to clean up the mess later.

The site is as slick and La Femme as they come, replete with Rosebud upholstery. And here are the two most fab pics from the site's front page:

The facade(what, 1973?)... and the presumption.

Here is the most fab pic from MY front page:

The reality, 2008.

Ezra Levant releases more vignettes from his trial vs. the Islamofascist Rights Commission of Al Bhurta, featuring Thought-Policething Shirlene McGovern, who is Just Doing Her Job:

"You're entitled to your opinion, that's for sure."
"I wish that were the fact."


"I'll rot in hell before I use my mouth to say that fascist's words."


"I am not attempting to be exonerated because I meet your standard of reasonableness... I do not seek to convince you because to do so means that I grant you some moral authority."


From Levant's blog:

Look at the motley crew of lobby groups to which Awan sent his letter -- that's the coalition of censors (Mark Steyn might call it the "coalition of the chilling") that the CIC is assembling.

But what do they have in common? What does the pro-feminist, pro-abortion, pro-secular, pro-gay Canadian Federation of Students have in common with a hodge-podge of Muslim groups so strict on those matters that they make the Pope look like Liberace? (Awan himself led the CIC's charge against gay marriage).

This strange union of the domestic left with foreign fascists has only one thing that holds them together: they all loathe Canada's western, liberal traditions.

This man is a Hero.

From an old friend who knows no snivelling:

To be a Democrat, you must:

1- be against capital punishment but support abortion on demand.
2- believe that businesses create oppression and governments create prosperity.
3- believe that guns in the hands of law-abiding Americans are more of a threat than U.S. nuclear weapons technology in the hands of Chinese and North Korean communists.
4- believe that there was no art before federal funding.
5- believe that global temperatures are less affected by documented cyclical changes in the earth's climate than by soccer moms driving SUVs.
6- believe that gender roles are artificial but being homosexual is natural.
7- believe that the AIDS virus is spread by a lack of federal funding.
8- believe that the same teacher who can't teach fourth graders how to read is somehow qualified to teach them about sex.
9-believe that hunters don't care about nature, but loony activists who have never been outside San Francisco do.
10- believe that self-esteem is more important than actually doing something to earn it.
11- believe that Mel Gibson spent $25 million of his own money to make "The Passion of the Christ" just for financial gain.
12- believe the NRA is bad because it invokes the Constitution while the ACLU is good because it invokes the Constitution.
13- believe that taxes are too low but ATM fees are too high.
14- believe that Margaret Sanger and Gloria Steinem are more important to American history than Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell.
15- believe that standardized tests are racist but racial quotas and set-asides are not.
16- believe that Hillary Clinton is normal and a very nice person.
17- believe that the only reason socialism hasn't worked anywhere it's been tried is because the right people haven't been in charge.
18- believe a conservative telling the truth belongs in jail but a known liar and serial sex offender belonged in the White House.
19- believe that parades featuring drag queens, transvestites and bestiality should be constitutionally protected and Christmas manger scenes rendered illegal and prohibited from public display.
20- believe that illegal funding of the Democrat Party by the Chinese government is somehow in the best interest of the United States.
21- believe that this message is part of a vast right wing conspiracy.
22- believe that it's right to give Federal workers Christmas Day off but not right for them to utter "Merry Christmas" in the workplace.
23- believe it's good for a 12-year-old girl to be able to get an abortion without her parents' consent but bad for a 12-year-old boy to draw a picture of a gun in his notebook.

In other words, if you're a Good Democrat you've got a whole lotta 'splainin' to do.

But will I ever, ever, ever try to shut you up?

No.

Never. Not only would it be against my personal principals, it would mean that I wouldn't know what you think. And given what you think, I just flat out can't afford that.

I wouldn't make a Good Democrat at all. I'm too much on the side of Me and my principles.

Fuck this court. Fuck Jim Lahey. Fuck Randy. Fuck those two idiot cops right there. Fuck suit dummies; as a matter of fact fuck legal aid. Fuck Danny and Terry's Buffalo Chicken Wings. Fuck all the old wood in here. Fuck the moon, fuck corn on the cob, fuck squirrels. Fuck me, fuck you, fuck everything!

Actually it was better than that:

UPDATE

David Frum shares a post-hearing e-mail from Levant:

The video clips lose the drama, because the erosion of human rights in Canada in 2008 isn't dramatic. It's slow, bureaucratic and banal. If you don't pay attention, you might even not realize that freedoms are being eroded. I actually expected a combative, missionary-style interrogator. I found, instead, a limp bureaucrat who was just punching the clock. In a way, that's more terrifying.

She's giving the campaign reins to Begala and Carville. That's all anyone needs to know about Hillary!

Jesus.

Anyway, the game is afoot. Hillary! has made it a contest again and with BegalaVille will go after Ubannah like never before.

What the hell was his name again?

Up:
Huckabee, big-time, but I'm still writing him off.
Barack O'Bamma: Hillary! has 30% of sweet fuck-all. Watch her bring out the knives and finally blow the Clinton cover once and for all.

Down:
Mitt Romney, although he has staying power and cash, lots of cash.

Even:
Fred. One foot in front of the other, man.
McCain, until he comes under scrutiny. And he will.

Freaking:
Hugh?

UPDATE
The morning-after numbers break down terribly for the Hillary! camp (by the way, with all this talk about Change, where did all those ex-Clinton-administration people come from last night during Herself's denial speech?). It looks as if only three people below the age of fifty, womyn all, voted for Hillary!, and now the Breck Girl is hinting from the rooftops that he'll steer his minions to Ubama rather than Herself. Maybe this is just wishful thinking, but it's beginning to look like the book is closing on the Clintons. Look for a full-court press by the Obies against Mrs. Rodham-Clinton in NH.

The Huckster's numbers don't look much better. He gets less than 20 percent of the non-evangelical vote. That ain't gonna play outside Iowa.

So the Democrats are looking like they're going to gel around Ubammuh, and the Rethuglican leadership is still completely up for grabs, which means Ron Paul still has a chance.

Pray, Paulbots, pray.