• GOP Ignores Low Information Voters At Their Peril
  
• So, Hillary Has Really Calmed Things Down In The Middle East, Huh?
  
• Democrats Have The Edge, But The Presidency Is Still In Play
  
• Simple Politician Doesn't Know How Old The World Is
  
• The Media's Benghazi Scandal
  
• France V. Moody's. Fight!
  
• Majority Of Brits Want Out Of The EU
  
• Britain Recognizes Syrian Opposition
  
• San Fran Bans Public Nudity
  
• Terror Attack On Tel Aviv Bus
  
• Brian Williams: With The Election Now Over, It Is Safe To Talk About Jobs And The Economy
  
• Hostess Mediation Fails
  
• Christie Is Surprised The GOP Is Mad At Him
  
• Why The Democrats Are In Trouble
  
• College BBall Players Scores 138 Points In A Game
  
• A Pretty Good Visual Representation of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
  
• Has Curiosity Made A Big Discovery?
  
• India Hangs Gunman From 2008 Mumbai Attack
  

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Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:32 AM | Comments (134)
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Alert the media!

Palestinians have a fierce new song to accompany their intensified conflict with Israel. “Strike a Blow at Tel Aviv,” recorded by Shadi al-Bourini and Qassem al-Najjar, was posted last week on various Palestinian websites, including the Facebook page of the TV show Fenjan Al-Balad, which describes its mission as “trying to influence young Palestinian society for the better.” The video, which features images of wounded Israelis and massed Qassam artillery rockets, opens with these lines:

Strike a blow at Tel Aviv.
Strike a blow at Tel Aviv.
Strike a blow at Tel Aviv and frighten the Zionists.
The more you build it, the more we will destroy it.
Strike a blow at Tel Aviv.

Jeff Jacoby makes the point in the linked column that any neutral observer of the Israeli/Palestine conflict should arrive at: the Palestinians are the aggressors and their goal is the destruction of Israel. Anyone who says differently is selling something.

By now it shouldn’t come as news that Hamas means what it says. By now it should be obvious even to the congenitally naïve that so long as Hamas rules Gaza — a de facto Palestinian state, no matter what anyone calls it — it will never end its quest for Israel’s annihilation. To Western eyes that may seem an improbable objective, given Israel’s enormous military edge. But Hamas understands the value of terror. When it can send hundreds of rockets slamming over the border, when it can force Israelis to listen constantly for the siren that means they have just 15 seconds to find shelter, Hamas inches toward its goal. And when Israel finally retaliates and only then does an international uproar ensue, Hamas inches closer still.

I know it's Thanksgiving week and all, and Ace is encouraging us to think happy thoughts. But sometimes world events just don't cooperate.

So in this holiday season of peace and love, I exhort the Israelis to go Old Testament (SWIDT) on Hamas. Or, in the words of Gen. Curtis LeMay, "If you kill enough of them, they stop fighting."

Posted by: andy at 04:36 AM | Comments (180)
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Palestinian terrorists have been insisting that they're ready for a cease-fire for almost a day now, both crying "Uncle" after picking a fight and pandering for sympathy from leftists both here and in Europe. Today they're celebrating the suicide bombing of a bus in Tel Aviv. 21 people are reported injured so far. Miraculously, no deaths yet.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:52 AM | Comments (270)
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Reagan Vindicated: Missile Defense Works

Max Boot:

The latest Gaza war is only a few days old, but already one conclusion can be drawn: missile defense works. This is only the latest vindication for the vision of Ronald Reagan who is emerging as a consensus pick for one of the all-time great U.S. presidents.

For it was Ronald Reagan who made missile defense a major priority for the U.S. and our allies. His 1983 speech on the subject was widely derided as "Star Wars" because he envisioned that some missile would be intercepted in space. For years critics claimed that it was impossible to intercept missiles in flight, or that at the very least it would be prohibitively expensive to do so. But now the U.S. West Coast is actually protected by a limited ballistic-missile defense system based primarily around satellites, sea-based Aegis and X-band radars, and Standard Missile-3 interceptors. We don't know how the system would work in combat but it has been vindicated in testing.

I remember how when Reagan announced SDI, the critics - including many prominent scientists - howled and swore that it and missile defense in general would never work. Even as a wee lad I knew their arguments were bullshit even if I didn't have the knowledge or training at the time to prove it.

Well they're still going at it, continually shifting the goal posts as missile defense systems are accepted and come on line. And still just as wrong.

In fact here is some footage of a completely impossible missile defense system utterly failing to intercept a salvo of rockets over Beersheba yesterday. (thanks to BenK)

Missile defense systems 1, liberal scientist critics 0. Advantage: Reality.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:55 PM | Comments (748)
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Thanksgiving meals, served up to Americans fighting in Vietnam.

It wasn't all "special" casseroles. The first part of the video is a full meal deal for Special Forces fighting in the field. Bird, mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie. The commissary teams work pretty hard to make sure the troops get the goods on Thanksgiving, no matter where they are.

There are thousands of our armed forces away from home this Thanksgiving. I hope they all get lots of turkey, mashed potatoes, beans and salads. And some pie. Mostly pie. I think pie is a pretty big deal when you're so far away. God bless em, and God bless the families who miss em.

more...

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 07:32 AM | Comments (184)
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But with a twist:

Q: Senator, if one of your daughters asked you—and maybe they already have—“Daddy, did god really create the world in 6 days?,” what would you say?

A: What I've said to them is that I believe that God created the universe and that the six days in the Bible may not be six days as we understand it … it may not be 24-hour days, and that's what I believe. I know there's always a debate between those who read the Bible literally and those who don't, and I think it's a legitimate debate within the Christian community of which I'm a part. My belief is that the story that the Bible tells about God creating this magnificent Earth on which we live—that is essentially true, that is fundamentally true. Now, whether it happened exactly as we might understand it reading the text of the Bible: That, I don't presume to know.

The twist is that that isn't Senator Marco Rubio talking in 2012, that's Senator (and presidential candidate) Barack Obama talking in 2008. And Slate, yes, points that out, and chides liberals generally for pretending that liberal politicians don't do this sort of thing.

Well-played, Slate. Well-played.

Posted by: Ace at 03:02 PM | Comments (160)
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I was going to post a non-political thread, and then started writing the following justification/explanation. I realized at that point I was writing a political thread, which defeated the purpose of branding a thread "Non-Political."

Let me explain why I do these threads. First some personal reasons you can easily ignore, and then a broad and important point I think you shouldn't.

1. First of all, I'm a human being, and I have interests besides politics. Now, you could argue, "Hey, this is your job, keep the non-political stuff elsewhere," but let me explain why that makes no sense.

Let's say I wanted to talk about Prometheus (as I did last week) but was observing a Can't Post Non-Political Things on the Blog. What would I do? Well, I would post on another blog. Let's say a sci-fi blog, or a tech blog, or a movie blog.

And I'd join the conversation about my post on another blog. Thus, instead of discussing this with the people on the internet I know best, I would be off on another blog discussing it with people I know less.

Either way, you wouldn't be getting a political post in exchange. I would just leave this blog blank while I went over to someone else's blog and had what I considered to be an interesting discussion.

This is why I sometimes go on Twitter (though rarely anymore). Sometimes I just don't want to deal with the crap about "I don't watch this/read this/care about this" grief, so I go on Twitter where no one can say I'm obligated to write relentlessly about politics.

By the way, I really don't understand that whole urge to post things like "I'm not interested in this topic." So? It's a strange thing to say. People rarely, if ever, say that in real life. What they usually do is just drift away from a conversation that doesn't interest them to find one that better suits them. They usually don't explain to a group of people having a conversation, "I am not interested in the topic you are discussing and I would strongly suggest you change it to better suit my current interests."

Now, about going to other blogs or Twitter, I hate doing that, actually, because I have long believed if you have a blog you should be posting almost exclusively on your own blog. Any content you're putting on other fora is essentially wasted. Money and time out the door, essentially.

So, I post here. Not everyone is going to be interested in a thread in which I talk about James Bond, but some are, and importantly, I am.

Which leads to the next point. more...

Posted by: Ace at 02:24 PM | Comments (332)
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But not guns. Guns we're doing tomorrow. I mean you can do guns but we're having a thread for it tomorrow, so.

I like these threads. I gotta tell ya, Game Faces and We'll Get 'Em Next Year and all that, but I'm pretty devastated about the election.

So this is the thread I just spent the last thread justifying.

For fun, I will once again link a very funny comedian that I've linked before but my stars I do like him. His album The Top Part is worth it.

Unless it costs like four hundred dollars. In that case it wouldn't be worth it. But I'm pretty sure it's cheaper.

Posted by: Ace at 03:42 PM | Comments (685)
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She's just exercising her right to be a douchebag, as she herself says.

She is, however, not exercising her triceps. If armfat were feathers she could fly like a falcon. A peregrine, I should think.

Hey, I'm just exercising my right to protest the thoughtless and crude. I gotta be me, as the douchebag credo goes. So, two things, Sister: 1, clean up your act. 2, a push-up wouldn't kill ya.

Speaking of our devolving culture of stupid and the complete collapse of society to come, this article from Buzzfeed very efficiently sums up everything that's wrong with the Internet and our culture more generally.

Snark and Small Shiny Objects, Flash and Search Engine Optimization, Celebrities and Sideboob, Breathless Hype and tasteless resort to hucksterism. Oh, and also, some rockets were launched from Gaza into Israeli cities.

We've built the world as we wish it were and it's stupid all the way down.

As a side-note, Anderson Cooper didn't "own" anyone. He's simply being credited as doing so because he is a Celebrity and a Friend of Kathy's and they needed the grabby headline. As Truman Capote might say, this isn't pwning, this is just typing.

The downside of the Internet is like the downside of weed: It makes it far too easy to waste time and far too acceptable to settle for less than nothing at all.

Remember when we thought the internet would change the world? We were stupid once, and apparently eager to be so again.

Via @benk84.

Posted by: Ace at 12:07 PM | Comments (301)
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Well, they put it as "the name of the man who edited the talking points." I just cut out the middleman.

We'll have to wait for a long, exhaustive investigation to find this out for sure. Should be sometime in 2017.

The Senate Intelligence Committee chairman says Congress has ordered the Obama administration to explain who exactly created its “talking points” on the Sept. 11 attack in Benghazi, Libya, and who omitted the CIA’s early conclusion that terrorists were involved.

Posted by: Ace at 11:38 AM | Comments (121)
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