Via MKH, with her own post on the gaffe.

Frist's folks contacted her and claim the story is bullshit. We'll see.

The Statement... is what I expected. It's not that he was misquoted, though he claims to be. It's that he's now adding more "context" and "nuance" to make you try to think that negotiating with Al Qaeda's sponsors is a good idea:

I’m currently overseas visiting our troops in Afghanistan, but I wanted to take a moment to address an Associated Press story titled, “Frist: Taliban Should Be in Afghan Gov’t.” The story badly distorts my remarks and takes them out of context.

First of all, let me make something clear: The Taliban is a murderous band of terrorists whoÂ’ve oppressed the people of Afghanistan with their hateful ideology long enough. AmericaÂ’s overthrow of the Taliban and support for responsible, democratic governance in Afghanistan is a great accomplishment that should not and will not be reversed.

Having discussed the situation with commanders on the ground, I believe that we cannot stabilize Afghanistan purely through military means. Our counter-insurgency strategy must win hearts and minds and persuade moderate Islamists potentially sympathetic to the Taliban to accept the legitimacy of the Afghan national government and democratic political processes.

National reconciliation is a necessary and an urgent priority Â… but America will never negotiate with terrorists or support their entry into AfghanistanÂ’s government.

With all due respect, those who are merely "sympathetic" to the Taliban aren't currently barred from serving in the government, having no record to disbar them.

So how to square this circle?

If Afghanistan truly cannot be de-Taibanized, it's time to pull up stakes there and simply begin bombing it as frequently as necessary to kill as many Afghans as possible.

They either reject Talibanism or bin Ladinism or they don't. They killed 3000 people. Before, one could claim they didn't know what the Taliban was up to. Now there are no such excuses.

If they still are unwilling to reject the Taliban, let them reap the whirlwind.

And as for Frist -- well, thanks for your service, and goodbye, and try not to say anything stupid in the next five weeks. As a Senator, you make a hell of a heart surgeon.

Let me do you a solid and let you know there's really, really no point sinking any time or money into that presidential bid.

Just a little political consulting for you. Gratis.

Posted by: Ace at 01:52 PM | Comments (55)
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Andi's been in Deep Cogitation mode for his big new book (available at your local remainder bins within a month). Here's what this scary-important thinker presents as a teaser:

How can you engage in a rational dialogue with a man like Ahmadinejad, who believes that Armageddon is near and that it is his duty to accelerate it? How can Israel negotiate with people who are certain their instructions come from heaven and so decree that Israel must not exist in Muslim lands? Equally, of course, how can one negotiate with fundamentalist Jews who claim that the West Bank is theirs forever by biblical mandate? Or with Fundamentalist Christians who believe that Israel's expansion is a biblical necessity rather than a strategic judgment?

There is, however, a way out. And it will come from the only place it can come from - the minds and souls of people of faith. It will come from the much derided moderate Muslims, tolerant Jews and humble Christians. The alternative to the secular-fundamentalist death spiral is something called spiritual humility and sincere religious doubt. Fundamentalism is not the only valid form of faith, and to say it is, is the great lie of our time.

How... Deepak Chopra of him.

Posted by: Ace at 01:37 PM | Comments (16)
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That's it for me.

Goodbye GOP.

Perhaps we should make peace with Zawahiri as well? Let's negotiate, and see what terms we can get as good dhimmis.

The hell with the lot of them.

(Photoshop courtesy of Slublog.)

More... I don't need the goddamned Republican Party in power to sign "peace" deals with terrorists. I can get that easily enough from the Democratic Party. I've supported these vacuous, cowardly, inept, corrupt idiots for one reason-- to fight terrorists.

if they want to sign peace deals with them, that's their decision. I and others can make another decision. The country may move in this direction, but we hardly have to endorse the decision by voting in favor of Quislings.

At least the Democrats talk tough about sending more troops to Afghanistan and killing Taliban fighters and capturing bin Ladin.

If that really is no longer a GOP prirority, then I am no longer a member of the GOP.

You stupid jagoffs. You've done just about everything possible to lose this election; it's only the base -- ever hopeful and ever self-deluding -- that's kept you from your goal.

Was governing too much a chore for you? Was it too distracting, taking you away from fundraisers and fucking Congressional pages?

The Democrats have complained for years the GOP wasn't serious enough about defeating Al Qaeda and the Taliban, that it was too focused on Iraq. Congratulations -- you just took a talking point and made it an established fact.

Well, enjoy your minority status. The rest of us will try to rebuild to the extent we can a party that actually sees ending the Taliban and Al Qaeda as somewhat more critical than ending internet poker.

More... I had hoped that the GOP's fear of losing power had shook them out of their moronic, corrupt stupor. I thought July and August were enough to send them a message.

I guess not. They don't learn easy.

It will, in fact, take an electoral drubbing to make them understand.

So let the enlightening begin.

Obit: From the WSJ:

Yet none of this excuses the more fundamental problem, which is that too many Republicans now believe their purpose in Washington is keeping power for its own sake. The reform impulse that won the House in 1994 has given way to incumbent protection. This is the root of the earmarking epidemic, which now mars every spending bill and has become a vast new opportunity for Member corruption. This is also part of what corrupted felons Duke Cunningham, Bob Ney, Jack Abramoff, Tony Rudy and Michael Scanlon. Power for its own sake also explains the House GOP's decision to join Senate Democrats in killing serious reform of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, despite $16 billion in accounting mistakes or fraud. The Members are in bed with the housing subsidy lobby.

Even amid all of this scandal, many Republicans still refuse to acknowledge any problem. Appropriators continue to resist major budget reform, and the same Republicans who gave a Democratic President the line-item veto in the 1990s refused to give a weaker version to a GOP President this year. No wonder so many loyal Republican voters have been telling pollsters they're not sure if they'll vote this year.

With his party down in the polls, Mr. Bush has tried to recast the midterm election as a referendum on the war on terror. This strategy may yet save Republicans from losing Congress, both because the war is the most important issue of our time and because the Democrats are calling for retreat in Iraq and essentially for a return to the antiterror policies of the 1990s. But it is no credit to the performance of Republicans in this Congress that their best argument for re-election is the wartime flaws of their opponents.

It's worse than that, we now know. The Senate Majority Leader just came down as more accomodationist on the Taliban than Nancy Pelosi.

Which Part of the Government Does Frist Seek To Give To the Taliban?

The domestic side of things, which includes forcing girls and women into serfdom, or the foreign policy side of things, which includes sheltering Al Qaeda and directly abetting in the slaughgter of Americans?

For years we've seen heartening images of girls going to school in Afghanistan. Does Frist suggest rolling that back? If so, what precisely have we won there?

There have always been two ways to deal with Muslim aggression: the compassionate way that Bush chose and the decidedly less compassionate manner that many of us are beginning to see as the only option remaining.

If it's true that Afghanistan can never be won without killing a lot of Afghans, well, I'm sorry, they've chosen their own fates.

What I mean is-- suppose Frist is right as far as his premise. Does that lead to the conclusion that we capitulate to these mass-butchers?

Or does it lead to a very opposite conclusion?

Signing a peace deal with these lunatics is not an option. If the choice is between peace with mass-murderers and killing a lot of Afghans who support the Taliban, well, those fucking B-52's aren't sitting on the runways to look pretty, now are they?

There is no "peace" with these people, and no one who believes such a thing is possible has any right to be in a position of responsibility in the US government.

Others Counsel Patience... And note we won't have Bill Frist to kick around anymore. Thank God.

For those who claim I'm being a crybaby/pissing in my pants -- if you want a fullthroated refutation of this jackassery, you're not going to get it by saying "We'll support you, even if you sell us out on every single issue we care about."

Some mention the 24 hour rule. Well, that's a good rule. We'll see what the GOP's reaction to this is for 24 hours.

Bill Frist thinks it's important to win a war against Hi/Lo but not against those responsible for 9/11.

I'm not sure what my reaction to that ought to be. I've spent five years railing against Democrats who want to give peace a chance. I'm supposed to buy into that notion when it's offered by Bill Frist?

Posted by: Ace at 12:27 PM | Comments (200)
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...in her new yoga video, tenatively titled Teen Steam II: Alysso Milano Passes The Jailbait Torch.

Definitely do not follow the link to her Stuff photo shoot, because it's filled with tawdry pictures of her in whorish lingerie and boots contorting into all sorts of sordid poses.

Update: Mark Foley just IM'd me to say rehab is already working because, and I quote, "I had no interest at all in tapping that shit."

I guess, with group therapy, all things are possible.

Winnie Cooper, Mathematical Genius? She graduated summa from UCLA in mathematics, and penned this peer-reviewed, published paper in a physics journal.

Come on, though. You know she got some guy to write that for her. There's some geekbag out there kicking himself because he didn't have his paper published and only got to cuddle with her one night.

Still -- that, too, is a skill.

Posted by: Ace at 11:58 AM | Comments (41)
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Including experimenting with explosives that turn into -- no shit -- manure.

They still have dreams of rifles with daisies drooping out of the barrels, huh?

Posted by: Ace at 11:46 AM | Comments (11)
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That's what the very patriotic (towards Mexico) open-borders assholes claim. Applebee's too.

I grow weary from saying it, but Dunkin Donuts has the best coffee of any chain in America. Starbucks doesn't taste good; it's just very strong (and usually burned).

Dunkin Donuts doesn't conceal the flavor of its coffee by making it wince-inducingly strong. It's just damn good stuff.

Reverse-boycott them and go buy some Munchkins or something.

Applebee's too, I guess, though I'm a little down on them, because their "low-carb menu" is just steak. Well, okay. I like steak, but I didn't need a nutritionist to tell me steak was low carb.

Posted by: Ace at 11:17 AM | Comments (94)
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Which itself isn't very good news, but at least it's better than being told we're going to lose it.

As Allah notes, we don't yet know the full fallout from the Foley scandal. Tim Hutchinson was drummed out of office by moral conservatives over a much smaller "scandal." If the religious right is so disgusted by the GOP's failure to hound this guy out of office earlier, we're in for a short election night on November 7.

By which I mean a long one. I just mean the results will be in shortly. The recriminations will keep us up all night, and then we'll have a very long two years ahead of us.

Simple proposition: Return Republicans to power, and then purge out the entire leadership.

Easier said than done. But I can't imagine Denny Hastert has many friends left. Even if he's relatively clean on this (which I think he is -- relatively), there's just too much of a congressional protection service going on on the Hill.

Posted by: Ace at 10:52 AM | Comments (13)
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So, what did Denny Hastert know, and when did he know it?

It would appear to be "not much" and "only when everyone else knew it." Otherwise, why would he actually ask the FBI to probe into who had those pedophillic IM's, and why the withheld them from law enforcement for so long?

I think the Republicans' claims are more plausible now -- this seems to be a big case of doubling-down on a bad bet if they knew more than they're letting on. (Of course, a cynic might note, a lie only has to hold until November.)

Levin has background on a supposedly "non-partisan" 501(c)(3) organization called C.R.E.W., with a history of demanding investigations of Republicans as well as a nice bit of contributions from George Soros. They seem to have, errr, shepharded this story to the media.

Did they mock-up that fake website, I wonder?

More... Demands for a full investigation grow.

The timing of the two-step release is critical to the political efficaciousness of the operation. The public is being led to conflate the different sets of correspondence (mildly inappropriate emails versus salacious IM messages), leading most people to believe the sexually explicit stuff was what Hastert had seen.

All that the House leadership saw was “overly friendly” emails. No smoking gun, but cause for concern. Had the leadership done more at the time, it might well have been accused of launching a witch hunt on the flimsy basis of too-friendly emails. This is perfect bait for Democrats anxious to portray Republicans as prudes obsessed with homosexuality and willing to launch attacks on anyone even remotely suspected of deviating from their uptight norms. Imagine the Saturday Night Live skits.

...

Can you conceive of why the leadership would have deliberately sat on something scandalous like the IM messages in 2005, knowing it could break in the following election year? I canÂ’t. But unless you pay very close attention to press reports, that is the impression you get from the media coverage.

On the other hand, given all the circumstances I can easily see that people who are power hungry could have come into possession of salacious correspondence which might affect the Republican leadership’s decision not to act against a member on the basis of all they had—simply “overly friendly” correspondence—and hold it to make it public five weeks prior to the election. If this scenario is true, we have a most amateurishly implausible route, via an anonymous blog, taken to launder the information chain, and hide the fact that it was they, not their opponents, who cared not at all for the welfare of the pages and interns on the Hill.

Let's have it all out. After all, more information is better, right?

Video: Of Hastert requesting the DoJ look into who knew what and when.

If this is a dishonest stunt intended to make him look innocent-- well, it's one fraught with great peril, isn't it? He can't now drag his feet in in cooperating with the DoJ having called on them to investigate, now can he?

Posted by: Ace at 10:32 AM | Comments (50)
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I don't imagine there's any way the educational professionals at Colorado University could be swayed to let in underqualified applicants simply because they'll be paid money to do so:

Increasing the presence of minorities on campus will be part of the evaluations used to set salaries for top administrators, University of Colorado President Hank Brown said Friday.
Brown, who is evaluated by the regents, said he expects to be judged by the same standard.

"If the system doesn't make progress, it's my responsibility. It's clear where the buck stops," Brown said.

Brown made his comments to a meeting of the 46-member Blue Ribbon Commission he appointed last year to make recommendations about recruiting more minority students and faculty members and improving the social climate for minorities at the Boulder campus.

Former Denver Mayor Wellington Webb, a member of the commission, told Brown he expects more than words. Webb said the chancellors of the three CU campuses should be fired if they don't improve on the number of minorities.

Thanks to Slublog.

Posted by: Ace at 10:24 AM | Comments (8)
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It just doesn't want to seem to do it. I guess it's too big a resistance point, and everyone's trying to beat the anticipated, psychologically-driven sell-off as it crosses it.

It doesn't help that manufacturing is slowing:

-- Stocks turned positive and the Dow Jones industrial flirted with its all-time high close as investors focused on falling oil prices and shrugged off some lackluster economic data.

Crude oil futures fell. A barrel of light crude was quoted at $61.40, down $1.51, on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Investors wondering whether the stock market's impressive third-quarter performance would continue looked to a batch of economic data to help gauge the health of the economy. The Institute for Supply Management said the manufacturing sector grew at the slowest pace in more than a year in September amid weaker U.S. auto sales and a cooling of the housing market.

Meanwhile, the Commerce Department said construction spending in August rose 0.3 percent after falling 1 percent in July. Also weighing in, the National Association of Retailers said pending home sales rose 4.3 percent in August.

Spot prices are still lower than future prices, so we still have a bit of glut.

Posted by: Ace at 09:53 AM | Comments (9)
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