Matthews is in a hole of leftist moral equivalency but darnit, he just keeps on digging, doesn't he? From the Nov. 16th Hardball:

MATTHEWS: What is bin Laden's motive? Why does he want to kill us?

SCHEUER: His motive is, uh, to change our policies, sir. Uhhh, notwithstanding what the president or Mr. Kerry said during the campaign, he really doesn't give a darn about our democracy or our society --

MATTHEWS (Interrupts): Right.

SCHEUER: He's after a change in policies which he views as lethal to Muslims --

MATTHEWS (Interrupts): Does he think, for example, let me try this -- and I don't want to sound like an apologist -- but suppose we had truly an evenhanded policy in the Middle East. Suppose there was a Palestinian entity of some kind, and it had reasonable borders, and it was contiguous enough to be a working state, and we didn't back dictators like the Saudi Royal Family and people like that who are simply selling the oil to keep their fingers filled with rings and girlfriends in London, all right? Suppose we were a good country and an evenhanded country, all right? Would that make it any less hostile to us?

SCHEUER: We are a good country, sir.

Emphasis added.

Kinda sad when this idiot Scheuer has to slap down your Chomskyite anti-Americanism.

Thanks to LauraW.

I think we can safely say that with Matthews and Olbermann providing an uninterrupted two-hour block of Michael Moore leftism that MSNBC has pretty much decided its only good play is to become the lefty Fox.

Update: Secure Liberty has links and observations. This is being widely noticed-- Hugh Hewitt and Laura Ingraham are on it.

I think I read that Limbaugh was on it the other day, too.

Methinks She Doth Protest Too Much Update: LauraW likes this bit especially:

"I don't want to sound like an apologist..."

Too late.

Let us sum up:

1) "This isn't about money" = This is TOTALLY about money

2) "I like you too much to date you" = I find you approximately as attractive as junebug with "problem backhair"

3) "The check is in the mail" = Not only do I not intend to pay you -- ever -- but I've been thinking about coming down to your office at night and setting it on fire, just to be a prick

4) "I was speaking ironically" = I meant every word I said, but I'm too cowardly to admit that, especially if it might hurt my precious career

and:

5) "I don't want to sound like an apologist" = I am a total tool of a hump of an appeasing apologist

Posted by: Ace at 09:45 AM | Comments (15)
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Son of Nixon on the most expensive public works project in history, now apparently sprining hundreds of dangerous leaks.

And part of the project is named after Rose Kennedy, just to annoy you further.

What does everyone else think about the Big Dig? I'm conflicted. On one hand, I've been bothered for some time that America doesn't seem to do big engineering projects anymore. The Japanese are busy building artificial islands and superlong under-ocean tunnels, and the best we can do is patch up our crappy highway system every other day.

I kinda like the bigness of the thing. The price tag, of course, is something else again.

And of course this thing was sold completely dishonestly, with a ridiculously dishonest "estimated" pricetag of $3 billion or so; now it's up to $15 billion, and it will probably get worse. And that pricetag is inflated by a gold-plated PC style of construction-- lots of work at night, heroic efforts to keep down noise so that no one is in the least inconvenienced by this mammoth undertaking. Yeah, that keeps Teddy K's constituents happy, but if they weren't prepared to deal with the natural consequences of a multibillion dollar construction project, honestly, perhaps we should have just given the whole thing a pass.

It goes without saying that you-- non-Massachusetts citizen you -- are paying for most of this. Your dollars, Teddy K's political credit.

What is most annoying is that this thing was sold so dishonestly, turned out to be so expensive, and could only be built with a billion-dollar citizen-comfort style of construction that I fear it just may be the last major civil engineering project we see for twenty years.

The Kennedy political legacy-- the gift that keeps on giving.

Posted by: Ace at 09:41 AM | Comments (12)
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Decent parody of the Ninjas-- Real Ultimate Power site. Thanks to RDBrewer.

Posted by: Ace at 08:30 AM | Comments (7)
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Toothache Nearly Cost Me My Life

A teenager nearly died after being turned away by the NHS eight times for a simple tooth extraction.

Peter Owen needed the routine procedure to get rid of the pain from a broken tooth which became infected and led to an abscess.

But despite spending a week begging NHS Direct, his GP, a dentist and three different NHS hospitals for treatment no one was prepared to help. Meanwhile, the abscess became so swollen it began to block his windpipe - causing him almost to suffocate.

At the end of the week the 19-year-old musician, who is not registered with an NHS dentist, was taken by his worried father to hospital where he had emergency surgery to remove the abscess.

'I could have easily died'

He spent two days in intensive care after the operation and it was five more days before he was discharged. While it would have cost around £70 to take his tooth out, his week-long stay in hospital cost the NHS around £3,000.

Peter's experience highlights the acute shortage of NHS dentists and the potential risk to patients' lives. In Colwyn Bay, North Wales, where he lives, there are five dental practices but not one is accepting NHS patients.

"It's a disgrace," he said last night. "I could easily have died."

Thanks to GregS, the Internet Story Elf.

Posted by: Ace at 01:17 PM | Comments (31)
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Forwarded to me by another blogger. I can't confirm this-- I didn't see the show, and I didn't record it, so I can't check until the transcript is up -- but I'm told Matthews said the following when interviewing CIA tattletale Michael Sheuer:

MATTHEWS: So we can't negotiate with this guy [bin Laden]? We have to fight him?

Yeah, guys like Matthews are really four-square for fighting the war on terrorism, aren't they?

They get righteously indignant when you suggest they want to appease and "negotiate." And yet, there you go. That's their big plan for "fighting" the war on terror-- "talking our problems out."

Update: Now the Media Research Center is on Matthews' "they're just people who disagree with you" statements.

Gee, for once I had something first. Thanks, of course, to a reader tip.

Posted by: Ace at 12:11 PM | Comments (13)
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It's just too ridiculous to even attempt additional ridicule.

These people need a nice tall cool glass of Grow the F--- Up Juice.

Posted by: Ace at 11:05 AM | Comments (9)
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This is when I start to get mad at Bush for being a squishy faux-conservative.

Look, these bastards knew what they were getting into. Do a man's crime, do a man's time. Let 'em dangle.

The bleeding hearts will read this as some sort of a victory. I'm more concerned about these blackhearted fowls' next victims -- and there will be more victims, of course.

Can Bush "pardon" them, I wonder, once they're found raped and butchered in an auto junkyard? I think not.

Do you want it living in your neighborhood, Mr. President?

It's a white turkey, by the way. What kind of message does this send?

I'm sorry, but that's just the way I feel. I'm a lunatic with a keyboard.

Posted by: Ace at 10:48 AM | Comments (15)
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Theodore Darymple thinks that Theo Van Gogh was murdered because his film exposed the heart of Islamofascism's appeal to the young men
-- the sexual enslavement of Muslim women:

The abuse of women has often, if not always, appealed to men, because it gives them a sense of power, however humiliated they may feel in other spheres of their life. And the oppression of women by Muslim men in Western Europe gives those men at the same time a sexual partner, a domestic servant, and a gratifying sense of power, while allowing them also to live an otherwise westernized life. For the men, it is convenient; interestingly, but perhaps not surprisingly, almost the only openly hostile expressions toward Islam from British-born Muslims that I hear come from young women, some of whom loathe it passionately because they blame it for their servitude.

The theory has some appeal. There must be some reason this toxic stew of medievalism and murder has such a hold on people.

Sex can't explain everything, no matter what Freud thought, but it sure can explain a lot.

Posted by: Ace at 10:42 AM | Comments (9)
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In case you haven't heard, the Washington state governor's race is still undecided. The Democratic candidate is leading... by 19 votes.

19 votes. You read that right.

There seems to have been a rash of "suddenly discovered" votes-- first 10,000, then 500 more -- and one county posting a 93 percent turnout.

You will not be shocked to learn that these odd events have worked to the Democrats' advantage.

Update: I don't know how frequently this gets updated, but the Wa. Secretary of State now says the Republican Rossi has an enormous 137 vote lead.

Landslide, baby.

Posted by: Ace at 10:38 AM | Comments (5)
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No reason to mention this story, except I get to use this picture one last time:

Posting this picture when the man's saying goodbye is, I suppose,

Wrong!

Wrong!

Wrong!

What can I say? I'm a dick.

Posted by: Ace at 09:36 AM | Comments (12)
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