The age-old trick: If you can't rebut your opponents' actual arguments, invent a different one or assign them a made-up motivation and attack that.

Right... I oppose Obama because he's black. If it were nice white Ralph Nader turning the nation into a European socialist nanny state, I'd approve.

I haven't linked this until now because with a fat, haggard target like this, I really thought I should be able to come up with something. But I can't It's all the same crap I've written before, and unlike Jeneane Garafalo, I'm a little embarrassed about just repeating my tired old schticks.

What can one say? She's a relentless, witless demagogue who continues parroting the same three lines she learned freshman year of college into her rapidly advancing middle age.

Maybe you'll come up with some new stuff.

Posted by: Ace at 12:21 PM | Comments (2)
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Hipsters really, really annoy me. I could easily go all George Will on them.

Can you blame me?From a site called Look At This Fucking Hipster.

I mean, seriously: Look at this fucking hipster. His mustache says "Ironic Jeff Foxworthy" and his fucking mullet-hair says "Pre-Op Alanis Morissette Female Impersonator."

That sweater and precious collar are practically a billboard reading Hit me in the kidneys with a pipe-wrench until you induce complete renal shut-down.

It's ironic. It's meta. It's an open invitation to "ironically" go psycho-chimp on their faces with a "meta" clawhammer.

I was in Williamsburg, NYC, one time scouting apartments. It's hipster central. As I'm walking down the street, I see some fucking hipster dressed in full Music Man Olde Time Marchin' Band regalia, black with glittery gold buttons and epaulets, and super-tailored so I could not only tell what religion he was, but also the specific denomination.

Okay, whatever: Freak. Something you don't see every day, but nothing I'm going to get too upset about.

As I'm leaving the place -- which was awful -- I see another fucking hipster dressed like a bi-curious Sgt Pepper, this one in a fire-truck red marching band outfit (with super-tight, super-skinny leggings) and a big blue furry fucking hat, like they wear at Fred Flintstone's Water Buffalo meetings.

So I saw two of these fuckers within an hour. It wasn't a freak thing -- it was a trend.

So, yeah: Look at these fucking hipsters. Look well upon them, for they are the harbingers of the Beast.

Thanks to dan-O.

Posted by: Ace at 11:04 AM | Comments (9)
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Not sure what this means, except it's the greatest hypocrisy in all of human history and she probably only kept Trig because of his usefulness as a political prop, and stuff.

The shrieking will be, mwah, magnifique.

I suppose there is some level of conflict between her short-lived internal debate and her opposition to abortion -- if she entertained the notion for even a second, she was considering a choice she would politically deny to other (as well as herself).

But I don't really see strong hypocrisy there -- her political position is not that she would deny the choice of abortion to everyone else while she gleefully aborted away, but that she would take that choice from herself, as well. I might be in favor of closing a tax loophole, but it's not "hypocrisy" for me to ponder exploiting it while it remains on the books.

It's not hypocrisy -- it's just a demonstration that this is often a difficult decision. But Palin, and pro-lifers generally, don't deny that these are difficult decisions or that an unplanned pregnancy is disruptive and consequential. They don't sell the notion that carrying an unplanned child to term is nothing but upside and cotton-candy. Their position is that as difficult as such a thing could be, the moral imperative of life trumps other concerns.

Not renders them trivial or even meaningless -- trumps them.

Which is how Sarah Palin's thinking came out. As difficult as it would be to carry and care for a child with Down's syndrome, she decided personally, as she had already decided politically, that the life imperative trumped considerations of convenience.

But this is all very, very terrible, we'll soon be finding out. And, if I know the lunatic mind of Andrew Sullivan, we'll also find out that this has something to do with the fact that Trig isn't Palin's baby at all.

Posted by: Ace at 10:00 AM | Add Comment
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I didn't get to posting the last batch of tea party pictures -- I'll be on it -- but here's what everyone's really waiting for anyhow.

I'm a little curious -- I take it the MSM has decided it's okay to use crude sexual double entendres about young women and actual children now, right?

Or is the "teabagging" stuff directed only at the adult men? I.e., gay jokes are fine so long as directed at right-leaning men?

I'm pretty sure that there would be hell to pay if a Fox reporter called Anderson Cooper a pickle biter. Right?

The style book will have to be updated.

Posted by: Ace at 09:28 AM | Comments (2)
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Since everyone's still goofing on George Will, here's a clever and deadly sketch from SNL back when it was worth watching.

Piffle or not piffle?

Posted by: Ace at 09:10 AM | Comments (2)
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It's not official yet but that sound you hear is the fat lady warming up.

Murphy now leads by 264. There are still some recanvasing to be done and 1,000 paper ballots to count but...

Yes, yes, ACORN, blah, blah. There were no mystery bundles of ballots 'found' for Murphy or over voting in some precincts like in Minnesota. We can't turn ACORN into a catchall excuse like Democrats did with Diebold.

If we don't accept that the fault lies not in their activists, but in our candidates, we are in for a very long time in the wilderness.

More on this when the results become official.

Posted by: DrewM at 08:32 AM | Comments (1)
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And was rejected. Twice. (Consider this your late warning that it's a link to Gawker. It's their story, so not much choice).

Hell hath no fury like an arrogant, no talent hack scorned.

Thanks to rori in the comments.

Posted by: DrewM at 07:02 AM | Comments (1)
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Those methods, read on a bright, sunny, safe day in April 2009, appear graphic and disturbing.

That's how Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair describes the interrogation techniques authorized in the so-called "Torture Memos". Well, count me among the undisturbed.

After reading news reports and the so-called 'Bybee Memo', I'm am simply amazed at the delicacy, planning and angst that went into authorized such 'tortuous' techniques as an open palm (and fingers) face slap, an attention grab (grabbing a detainee by the shirt and pulling him closer to the interrogator), sleep deprivation*, stress positions, small area confinement (with fuzzy insects**) and pushing a detainee against a wall (a fake wall meant to give way to avoid injury and using proper neck protection). The only borderline procedure was water-boarding and to paraphrase Rhett Butler, frankly I don't give damn.

Each application of these techniques was closely monitored by medical and psychological staff experienced in their use at military SERE training courses (Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape training air crews and other military members go through).

Yes ladies and gentlemen, we "tortured" these killers as much as we "torture" our own service members. Again, color me undisturbed.

Robert Gibbs, That Pantywaist in Chief's spokesman says there's no damage to US security from releasing the memos or giving up these techniques.

"I don't think and the president doesn't believe it's the existence of enhanced interrogation techniques in memos that has made us less safe," Gibbs said. "It's the use of those techniques in the view of the world that has made us less safe. And that's precisely why the president moved swiftly to end"

Emphasis mine.

The John Kerry Global Test survives! Hey Gibby, let Obama know that US national security is not a popularity contest, it's about cold hard choices and accepting that there are bad people in the world who wish us harm no matter who is President.

As for the argument that this techniques are ineffective, a former AG (who as far as I know doesn't think you are a coward by the way) and a Director of CIA beg to differ.

Which brings us to the next of the justifications for disclosing and thus abandoning these measures: that they don't work anyway, and that those who are subjected to them will simply make up information in order to end their ordeal. This ignorant view of how interrogations are conducted is belied by both experience and common sense. If coercive interrogation had been administered to obtain confessions, one might understand the argument. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), who organized the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, among others, and who has boasted of having beheaded Daniel Pearl, could eventually have felt pressed to provide a false confession. But confessions aren't the point. Intelligence is. Interrogation is conducted by using such obvious approaches as asking questions whose correct answers are already known and only when truthful information is provided proceeding to what may not be known. Moreover, intelligence can be verified, correlated and used to get information from other detainees, and has been; none of this information is used in isolation.

You really should read Mukasey and Hayden's piece in full. It's devastating to the Obama administration.

Now the left will simply ignore their arguments since those two men were part of the Bushitler Regime, so let me try a little math for the Terrorist Supporting Community....

The number of terrorist attacks (that's a "man-made disaster" for any monitors from DHS who might keeping an eye on us extremists) on US soil that killed approximately 3,000 people and caused billions of dollars in economic dislocation before use of these techniques...1.

The number of attacks on US soil that killed approximately 3,000 people and caused billions of dollars in economic dislocation after use of these techniques began...0.

1>0.

Democrats don't get this. That's why they suck on national security.

*I forgot to include that in the original list.

**I also forgot to include the fuzzy insects (caterpillars). Below the fold, you'll finally understand why Andrew Sullivan is so sympathetic to the plight of the detainees. more...

Posted by: DrewM at 06:33 AM | Comments (1)
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Is Krugman thinking about going "off the reservation"?

...History shows that one of the great policy dangers, in the face of a severe economic slump, is premature optimism. F.D.R. responded to signs of recovery by cutting the Works Progress Administration in half and raising taxes; the Great Depression promptly returned in full force...

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 06:12 AM | Add Comment
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Is there anything better or more satisfying than a well-written rant? And I don't mean rant in the 'Christian Bale going off on a lighting director in incoherent rage' fashion. I mean the beauty of reading a post or essay written by someone who has successfully turned their anger or frustration into a thing of beauty.

Today, there are three 'rants' that are worth highlighting:

First, James Lileks on George Will's 'denim' essay. Sample:

We can gather much from this, aside from the fact that the tea was tepid when served that morning, which always puts one in a querulous humour. We can assume he hasn’t seen more than two seconds of “King of the Hill,” a very clever show that’s firmly on the side of the folk who share his instincts and understands their culture far better than Mr. Will does. (Hank Hill is a man haunted by Oughts of all sorts, constantly parsing the demands of modern life with the Oughts that arise from being a middle-aged Texan father who deals with propane. And propane accessories.) The self-contented sneer against animation suggests no disrespect for the thing itself, but rather the moving drawings aimed at adults. They should content themselves with the amusing engravings in Punch, which stay in one place and do not excite the blood.

And now this morning, Obama was on the tube again, yapping about traffic jams. What the hell is going on here? The president of the freaking United States is talking about traffic jams? Then again, in grammar school we did all learn that part of George Washinton's Farewell Address where he warned against entangling alliances and the dread menace of highway jughandles and traffic circles. That Obama's big solution is, ta-da!, "high-speed rail" is simply one more sign that he is simply not serious about anything other than paying off 19th and 20th century legacy special interests. I look forward to tomorrow's press conference, when Obama trains his laser-beam brain on the question of whether Razzles is a candy or a gum.

Despite the fact that the Globe engaged in hypocritical, personal attacks on myself and other Herald reporters over the years, in several cases targeting reporters who had beaten them, claiming falsely that their reporting was flawed. In my case, reporting on my alleged “looting” while failing to report that one of its own reporters had encountered similar problems with US Customs, which seized loot the Globie had acquired in the invasion of Iraq.

But I will miss the Globe if it doesnÂ’t make it. Not for the unseemly whimpering it is now engaged in. Mainly because I have so much enjoyed the many times my small, scrappy, disrespected tabloid has kicked its Global ass.

Special bonus: The true face of cable news, courtesy of Jim Treacher and Batton Lash.

Posted by: Slublog at 06:03 AM | Add Comment
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