Well, since the first few months of Bush the Elder's term. We're currently on a streak of 36 months with the Purchasers Manufacturing Index at 50+ (meaning increasing purchasing); the most recent streak of similar duration was from 1986- early 1989, a streak of 33 months.

You have to go all the way back to '75 to 79 to find a longer one (46 months).

Posted by: Ace at 07:36 AM | Comments (50)
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And where would such CIA orgies take place? Why, where else? At the Watergate Hotel.

I understand that King thinks NYC is getting gypped on HMS bling, but is this kind of childish blackmail proper? It doesn't seem very likely that this is even a credible threat; even if there are a few CIA freaks having orgies, surely that hardly compromises the whole agency.

I'm also not sure it's wise for Congressmen, of all people, to threaten the CIA, of all people, with investigations into illicit sexual activity. Seems like it's a case of people living in glass houses throwing stones at people who have some seriously kick-ass spy shit.

Posted by: Ace at 07:31 AM | Comments (30)
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Not a word about it at has-been harridan Jane Hamsher's combination blog-slash-application for voluntary state psychiatric confinement.

The Daily Kos mentions it as a single item in an open thread about three other news stories, the other three fairly trivial.

Mostly Open Threads are opened. Later in the day, "Georgia" posts this:

Open Thread

by georgia10

Sat Jun 03, 2006 at 05:03:58 PM PDT

It's a slow news day...so what's going on in your corner of the world?

Yes, very slow news day, Georgia. So what's going on? Well, in the state you either live in or share the name of, two Muslim extremists -- or, should I say, Terrorist-Americans -- are named as co-conspirators with the Toronto megabombers.

So, no big whoop. Go back to sleep.

Nada at former Democratic strategist (or something) Peter Daou's "The Grit" blog. He does have time to mention Haditha, of course.

Nothing at Atrios, despite a higher post-to-open-thread ratio today.

Nothing at Jesus' General... though he does think he's pretty funny for showing American kids at a gun range, with a caption saying "GOOD," and Palestinian kids parading with guns, with a caption saying "BAD." Apparently it is lost on him that the American kids shoot at targets, whereas the Palestinian kids (who are younger) shoot at human beings.

Oh, and blow themselves up in pizzarias.

Nothing on Andrew Sullivan. He talks about -- yes, wait for it! -- Haditha and the other alleged "massacres," and also about how much spiritual support disco-pop-synth band Pet Shop Boys have provided him.

Otherwise-- radio silence.

IS ANY LEFT WING BLOGGER COMMENTING ON THIS STORY AT ALL?

Or is it too dangerous to alienate readers by presenting discomfiting facts?

Why, one would almost imagine that a victory in the War on Terror is unwelcome news to them. It's almos as if it's... bad news for them or something.

One could almost venture to postulate, even, that their political and personal interests are precisely aligned with the terrorists'.

Almost.

More... Nick's best buddy, non-Yale-professor Juan Cole, is too busy hatin' on some Jews to mention it.

Bubkis at Pandagon.

Zip at MyDD.

I'm not cherry picking here, folks. I'm just typing in whatever blog name I can think of, and running down the Truth Laid Bear ecosystem rankings. Apart from the one mention of the story (along with three others) in an open thread on DailyKos, NOT ONE LEFT-WING BLOG I'VE SAMPLED SO FAR HAS LOWERED ITSELF TO MENTION THE STORY.

I'll give the DUmmies and that stupid Canadian bint something -- at least they actually dared to link the story.

More Silence of the Lambs...

No mention from Joshua Micah Ezekiah Boutros-Boutros Elminster Marshall. Hysterically, he does address would-be Congresswoman Busby's invitation of illegal immigrants to vote by wondering if her opponent had gotten a hold of Duke Cunningham's "race-baiting card."

(Thanks to Allah for that; I'd forgotten about that little tosser.)

Nothing at Matt Yglesias.

By the way, everyone I've mentioned has in fact posted today, past 12pm Eastern time; so all were blogging today after the story broke. They just chose not to mention it.

Shockingly, nothing at the Washington Monthly's Political Animal blog. I say shockingly, because it's a blog connected with a real magazine, and you'd think they'd feel duty-bound to at least link the story, even if they didn't want to.

But nope. The news that thousands of innocent people had been spared the devastation of a terrorist attack was simply too dispiriting for The Political Animal to type out. (PS, Kevin Drum has a guest blogger today, so he's off the hook... I guess. UPDATE: Actually, he posted at 1:00 AM last night, taking a break from his vacation, as he says, to whine about a Bush nominee. So it seems he could have posted on this, if it weren't all so horrible to contemplate.)

It's True: From The Machine--

Well, the good news is that we've finally found what it takes to make most moonbats stop talking...

Then again, we've known that for some time. They tend to suddenly get quiet as churchmice when we, say, capture Baghdad or Saddam Hussein.

More...

Buzzflash, which is nothing but a Drudge-style three-column list of headlines, does have a small link to the story... waaaaayyy down the page (and it's a big page), and without the cute little lightning-bolt symbol which (presumably) calls attention to a story as important.

The Reality Based Community

Hey, it's Our Rules; it's Our Reality. Go live somewhere else if you don't like it.

I just can't understand whence the left gets the reputation of not wanting to fight the War on Terror, or of even wishing America to lose it.

It's just so perplexing.

More...

Media Matters apparently wasn't watching any media today.

Posted by: Ace at 05:03 PM | Comments (96)
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Dang, this guy's better than Rove!

A Canadian counter-terrorism investigation that led to the arrests of 17 people accused of plotting bombings in Ontario is linked to probes in a half-dozen countries, the National Post has learned.

Well before police tactical teams began their sweeps around Toronto on Friday, at least 18 related arrests had already taken place in Canada, the United States, Britain, Bosnia, Denmark, Sweden, and Bangladesh.

Sweden? Bangaldesh? We're really looking to install neocon Jewish cabals in the most unlikely of places. I'm digging on the ambition and audaciousness of it.

Allah also notes the neighbors of the Muslim bomb-plotters seemed to view their oddly-nocturnal activities with suspicion. I wonder if they contacted the police about this, or if political correctness kept them from doing something "fascist" like reporting on Muslim radicals loading U-Haul trucks in the middle of the night.

RiehlWorldView notes the worrisome interest criminals have seemed to show for ammonium nitrate of late.

And yes, the US got a piece of this too, when we arrested a pair of Georgia jihadists in April. From Riehl's link:

The Canadian investigation involves a complicated web of connections, with alleged ties to two men from Georgia who came to Toronto in March 2005 to meet with "like-minded Islamic extremists," according to U.S. court documents.

Syed Ahmed is a 21-year-old Georgia Tech student, and Ehsanul Sadequee is a 19-year-old from Roswell who was arrested in Bangladesh where his family claims he went to get married. Both men are U.S. citizens. The two knew each other through interaction in Atlanta's growing Muslim community.

The two men and their activities have been tracked as part of an FBI international terrorism investigation. The investigation has uncovered a trip the two young men made to Canada in 2005, allegedly to meet with other known terrorist figures. The meeting was to discuss possible targets for future terrorist attacks in the United States, including military bases and oil refineries.

This may have been an attempt at a coordinated international bomb-blitz. As others have noted, 6/6/06 -- the number of the Great Satan -- is just a few days away.

Neocon Jew-Puppet Dan Riehl is just beside himself over the brilliance of Roveminion Harper unveiling this fake terrorist "plot" at this particular moment. He questions the timing:

One can almost hear the teeth gnashing within the MSM as all that great copy on Haditha goes to waste. It'll resurface. But the initial impact is gone. And for better or worse, Americans are going to have much less sympathy for a relatively small number of Iraqis, as they contemplate 3 tons of ammonium nitrate just north of the border in the hands of a group with at least some ties to two students in Georgia.

The Terrorists Have Already Won Update: Goldstein is beside himself that now even the Canadians are shredding the United States Constitution.

Posted by: Ace at 04:32 PM | Comments (44)
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...with a brief mention of Mitt Romney as well. And even Mike Huckabee.

Those of you who support or could support McCain may be interested to see what a strong religious conservative thinks about his chances of mending the rift with Christians; those of you who hate him might want to see what the senior Senator from Hardball is up to lately.

A solid interview by Jake Tapper, a liberal who came from Salon magazine, but has this odd sort of belief that he's supposed to be a reporter before he's a liberal. He actually asks matter of fact questions about social-con issues and positions without sounding like he's discussing the bizarre mouth-anus anatomy of bivalves.

Also interesting is Bauer's surprisingly candid and cynical take on things. He notes that McCain may, quite cynically, walk away from his cop-out states-rights non-position on gay marriage in order to secure the nomination, but that he would need the help of a federal court overturning a state marriage law in order to give him the pretext of walking away from that position.

Posted by: Ace at 04:06 PM | Comments (7)
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Making her pitch to illegal immigrants Undocumented Americans to vote illegally for her.

She claims she "mispoke." As the old Kinsely definition of a "gaffe" goes, she "mispoke" in the sense that she accidentally said what she really believes.

If an election can turn on a sentence, this could be the one: “You don't need papers for voting.”

On Thursday night, Francine Busby, the Democratic candidate for the 50th Congressional District, was speaking before a largely Latino crowd in Escondido when she uttered those words. She said yesterday she simply misspoke.

But someone taped it and a recording began circulating yesterday. After she made that statement at the meeting, Busby immediately said: “You don't need to be a registered voter to help (the campaign).”

She said that subsequent statement was to clarify what she meant.

The recording, which was played yesterday on Roger Hedgecock's radio talk show, jolted the campaign.

...

Busby said she was invited to the forum at the Jocelyn Senior Center in Escondido by the leader of a local soccer league. Many of the 50 or so people there were Spanish speakers. Toward the end, a man in the audience asked in Spanish: “I want to help, but I don't have papers.”

It was translated and Busby replied: “Everybody can help, yeah, absolutely, you can all help. You don't need papers for voting, you don't need to be a registered voter to help.”

Bilbray said at worst, Busby was encouraging someone to vote illegally. At best, she was encouraging someone who is illegally in the country to work on her campaign.

“She's soliciting illegal aliens to campaign for her and it's on tape – this isn't exactly what you call the pinnacle of ethical campaign strategy,” Bilbray said. “I don't know how she shows her face.”

She's right, though: You don't need papers to vote in this country. You don't have to be an American. The Democrats stop all efforts to require voters to show ID.

I've never shown ID when I voted. Have you?

They know they need those illegal votes.

This is just the worst sort of cynicism. The Democrats claim to be champions of deomocracy, but they support the subversion of the absolute keystone of democracy-- majority vote by actual American citizens.

Posted by: Ace at 01:26 PM | Comments (37)
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No professorship for you!

The history department voted him in, but a senior hiring committee, which usually rubber-stamps the decisions of departments, intervened and said no.

Clint W. Taylor thinks maybe Yale's had enough bad press with the Yale Taliban.

Posted by: Ace at 12:43 PM | Comments (103)
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Brilliant:

Q: Was U.S. economic growth higher during the time John Snow was Treasury Secretary, or during the time Robert Rubin was Treasury Secretary?

A: It was the same , 3.8 percent.

Via Instapundit, who wonders why we heard so much more about Rubin's amazing economic stewardship than Snow's.

It's a real stumper, I'll grant him that. I'm scratching my head like crazy to figure this mystery out.

Also from Instapundit... Gateway Pundit's recap of demonstrations in Iran.

He wonders why this isn't getting major media attention.

I actually don't. When I started this blog, I posted a lot about uprisings and demonstrations in Iran. I found that most of those reports were overstated (often by well-meaning but biased student groups), and, in any event, never led to anything, except of course for the banning of a large number of legislative candidates and the "election" of President Ahmadinejad.

I just think it's a dangerous false hope to think that anything outside of punishing external force is going to change Iran. I'd love a Pistacchio Revolution, but it's not going to happen.

Posted by: Ace at 12:03 PM | Comments (6)
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Captain Ed:

They appeared to have particular interest in the CSIS [Canadian Special Intelligence Service] due to media reports of racial and religious profiling.

Yup. How dare those nutjobs at the CSIS suspect Muslims of wanting to blow shit up! Why, to teach them a lesson, we'll.. blow them up!

A good question:

For all those who are quick to blame the West for the world's ills, what did Canada do to "deserve" this?

They share a border with the US, duh. And also, some within their government have this crazy idea that Muslims might want to blow shit up.

Allah has a a big roundup, including good stuff like one was a US citizen, and that, once again, these poor, disenfranchised Muslims were neither poor nor disenfranchised. They had money and good jobs. They're just vicious pricks who belong to a psychopathic death-cult.

He also has a link to this asshole, a moron Canadian leftist who claims to be an "independent." Independent of common sense, I guess:

The only time Paul Martin ever tried to inflict this kind of fear and anxiety on us was during the last election. And considering what Harper's been up to lately, I'm thinking maybe it wasn't just a hoax after all.

The Conservatives are using all means at their disposal to burn fear into our brains. Harper's real war is a propaganda war and it's being waged against the Canadian public. We're talking about serious mind control here and the most powerful terrorists at work are Stephen Harper and his minions.

...

When Bush was elected he pulled all the same tricks Harper is pulling now. CSIS = CIA and all that entails. Scare the population into voting for General Harper. Give him a majority and he'll protect us from terrorism at home.

Not so fast. I want hard facts and evidence of what we're being told. None of that rumour and speculation Bush has been force feeding the American voters for years.

This is a badass publicity monster that feeds off itself. It feeds off our fears and confusion. Terrorists are everywhere and nowhere. Invisible yet omnipresent.

Baby, if it feeds off your confusion, it's one well-fed publicity monster.

Meanwhile, at Democratic Underground...

George W. Harper is at it again

Ratcheting up the fear. It's really sad to watch the country I've loved descend into neocon madness. The timetable is just a few years behind the United States, and it's so painful to watch because the script is being followed so precisely.

Down here, we know what comes next, because we've already been there. In the name of Barbara Frum, I beg you ... turn back now, while there's still time.

They also were betting that the terrorists were "rightwingers" earlier, in between crying "FRAUD" and that the explosives were "planted." I like the level-headedness and seriousnes this fellow brings to the table:

EXCUSE ME...22 yr old kids??? THIS IS A SET UP!
Its so goddamn obvious...where are everyone's brains?

They know WE'RE ONTO THEM...STOP, THINK, READ READ READ!!! 9/11 TRUTH HAS GAINED 50 MILLION SUPPORTERS.

The Black Ops are going to continue to overwhelm thhe American Peoples. It's a huge lie...and you're all acting as if it has credibility here.

DONT BE A FOOL.

Lots of "Wake up, people!" crap. Yeah, it's other people who need to wake up, right?

Thanks to Jack Straw for suggesting I check out the DUchebags.

Posted by: Ace at 11:16 AM | Comments (27)
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Three tons of ammonium nitrate found, which is triple what was used to destroy the Murrah building in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

Confederate Yankee has good excerpts, Michelle Malkin is as thorough as ever, and Counterterrorism Blog has this quote:

Still, for many Canadians, the threat of Jihad is a distant concern. As former RCMP jihadism expert Tom Quiggin has stated: "A clear sense of denial exists in Canada about the degree to which terrorism activity occurs. Political correctness is wielded as a weapon against anyone who dares to speak out. Yet some of the world's most infamous terrorists have operated in Canada almost unhindered for years."

As scary-intrusive Internet monitoring led to the arrests, the hot question for Democrats is, of course: How can we claim we support Canada's liberty-loving, civil-rights-respecting Internet monitoring, while contrasting this to Bush's fascist, intrusive Internet monitoring?

In Apollo 13, an engineer keeps insisting that they have only so many volts with which to power-up the whole landing module. Gary Sinise's character is exasperated that there just isn't enough power, and says there must be more volts to be found somewhere. The engineer, now exasperated himself, tells him the voltage is the voltage: "I'm not making this stuff up."

The right's pretty much like that engineer, trying to explain to politically-correct, pacifist left, as well as the insousciant middle, that there really is a terrorist threat out there. We're not making this stuff up.

Maybe they'll get it this time.

But most likely not. As usual, the left will pretend it's all gung-ho on doing all that it can to combat terrorism... for as long as this remains in the news-cycle. Then they'll again begin screaming about the NSA. The moment they figure it's safe to do so.

Bonus Talking Point: Why hasn't Bush broken a terrorist cell with three tons of ammonium nitrate? I guess that shows that he's just not doing his job.

Bonus Giggle: From Pajamas Media's run-down:

The names and ages of those arrested, “from a variety of backgrounds” and followers of a “dangerous ideology inspired by al Qaeda,” are: Fahim Ahmad, 21, Zakaria Amara, 20, Asad Ansari, Shareef Abdelhaleen, 30, Qayyum Abdul Jamal, 43, Mohammed Dirie, 22, Yasim Abdi Mohamed, 24, Jahmaal James, 23, Amin Mohamed Durrani, Steven Vikash Chand alias Abdul Shakur, 25, Ahmad Mustafa Ghany, Saad Khalid, 19.

They all certainly do seem to hail from a "variety" of diverse and dynamic backgrounds.

I mean, hey, you've got two Abduls and three Mohammads, but those Mohammeds have two diverse spellings!

Dey gots more variety than Heinz, boyz!

Thanks to Pupster for that small laugh.

Posted by: Ace at 10:28 AM | Comments (29)
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