I'll take it:

The U.S. economy will expand by 4 percent this year, sustaining the recovery begun in 2002, a senior U.S. Treasury official said Sunday. But he expressed concern about high oil prices and imbalances in the global trading system.

"In the United States, the economy has nearly completed its recovery from the 2000-2001 stock market crash ... and it is moving into an expansion phase," U.S. Treasury Undersecretary John Taylor told a gathering of business executives in New Delhi.

"This year it is on track to complete the third year of recovery with a strong 4 percent growth," Taylor said.

In the July-September quarter, the U.S. economy expanded by 3.9 percent, compared with 3.7 percent in the previous quarter.

You know, if you expand the economy a couple hundred billion here and a couple hundred billion there, pretty soon you're talking about real money.

Posted by: Ace at 02:48 PM | Comments (2)
Post contains 158 words, total size 1 kb.

What is it with these people and dropping their weapons?

MARSEILLE, France, Dec 3 (AFP) - It was a case of the hunter being hunted when a 70-year-old French man stopped to relieve himself against a tree Friday and was shot in the backside by his own rifle.

Firefighters in southern France recounting the incident said the unidentified man leant his gun against a car and was shot when it fell to the ground and discharged.

Firemen said the bullet merely grazed his rump, adding that he had escaped serious injury by a centimetre or so.

In related news, a party of Parisian hunters reportedly surrendered to four rabbits who "seemed particularly bad-tempered." The hunters have agreed to install a puppet regime under the direct control of the rabbits, and have agreed to invest all of their money into publishing and distributing the hateful anti-human political manifesto Watership Down.

Related: A French soldier bravely attempts to blow up a weapons depot.... belonging to the French Army.

You know, the French have done a lot of stupid things in warfare. And they've always believed they could do these stupid things and succeed, because they were possessed of a superlative esprit de corps (a French term translating loosely as "ghost of a corpse," which seems just plain redundant to me, but then, maybe I just lack the proper Gallic nuance).

Not only do they not have a superlative corpse-ghost, they seem to have a pretty f'n' shoddy one. I'm not one to brag, and I'm not the world's best fighter, but seriously, I think I can personally kick the ass of the entire French Army.

Seriously. Set it up. I'm game.

Thanks for both tips to GregS.

Posted by: Ace at 02:03 PM | Comments (8)
Post contains 301 words, total size 2 kb.

Job growth isn't where we'd like it, but yes, Virginia, the fundamentals are strong:

Bush still has a net job loss since taking office of 313,000 and just two months to make it up. Many analysts believe he will escape the Hoover label, but just barely.

Ummmm, didn't we all hear the number "2.6 million lost jobs" bandied about just a short month ago?

...

That the election passed without a terror attack, and oil prices retreated from the record $55 per barrel highs of early fall also helped provide a boost to Wall Street. The Dow Jones industrial average finished last week on a winning note, helped by a 162-point gain Tuesday, the third largest one-day jump this year.

"Clearly, uncertainties have diminished. We are beginning to see some light at the end of the tunnel," said Sung Won Sohn, chief economist at Wells Fargo in Minneapolis.

Sohn said he believed the economy would be able to create an average of 200,000 payroll jobs per month in 2005. That would compare to average monthly job creation of 185,000 this year.

Sohn and other analysts believe stronger job growth will occur as companies exhaust their ability to squeeze more work out of existing employees and finally begin hiring actively on a sustained basis. Still, analysts are not looking for the unemployment rate to move much.

Not quite cowbell-worthy. Sorry. That's just the way it f'n' is.

Posted by: Ace at 12:45 PM | Comments (1)
Post contains 254 words, total size 2 kb.

Peter Beinert makes so much sense here that he is guaranteed to be ignored:

The challenge for Democrats today is not to find a different kind of presidential candidate. It is to transform the party at its grassroots so that a different kind of presidential candidate can emerge. That requires a sustained battle to wrest the party from leaders like Michael Moore and MoveOn.

In 1950, the journal The New Leader divided American liberals into "hards" and "softs." The hards, epitomized by the ADA, believed anti-communism was the fundamental litmus test for a decent left — non-communism was not enough.

The softs, by contrast, were not necessarily communists themselves. But they refused to make anti-communism their guiding principle. For them, the threat to liberal values came entirely from the right. To attack the communists, reliable allies in the fight for civil rights and economic justice, was a distraction from the struggle for progress.

Moore is the most prominent soft in America States today. He views totalitarian Islam as a ruse employed by the only enemies that matter, those on the right.

When Moore says "There is no terrorist threat," he only succeeds in harming the decent left. When Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe and Tom Daschle flocked to the Washington premiere of Fahrenheit 9/11, many Americans wondered whether the Democratic Party itself was anti-totalitarian.

If Moore is America's leading individual soft, liberalism's premier soft organization is MoveOn. It was formed to oppose Clinton's impeachment, but after 9/11 turned to opposing the war in Afghanistan. One early MoveOn statement warned, "If we retaliate by bombing Kabul and kill people oppressed by the Taliban . . . we become like the terrorists we oppose."

...

Many MoveOn supporters probably disagree with the organization's opposition to the Afghan war, if they are even aware of it, and simply see the group as an effective means to combat Bush. But one of the lessons of the early Cold War is scrupulousness about whom liberals let speak in their name. And MoveOn, by asking questions such as "Can Democracy Survive an Endless 'War'?," raises doubts about liberals' commitment to defeating terrorism.

Doubts? A bit more than mere "doubts," Mr. Bienert -- given the fact that most of these poeple actively agitated against the Afghan war -- but perhaps a spoonful of sugar is needed to help the medicine go down.

Posted by: Ace at 12:37 PM | Comments (3)
Post contains 402 words, total size 3 kb.

Yeahp, I'm begging, but for once my begging doesn't involve your credit card number.

Jane Galt of Asymetrical Information wants to beat me, and she just might.

She has a good blog. But then, she's 1) a libertarian -- and honestly, don't you want a conservative to win this thing? -- and 2), she has never used, to my knowledge, the phrases "quintessence of douchebaggery" or "like a Viking."

That's gotta count for something.

So, you know, vote-- vote like a Democrat, early and often. You're allowed to vote every 24 hours, which is dumb, and it seems an awful lot like traffic-grubbing on Wizbang's part to me, but I guess I'm not above a little traffic-grubbing myself.

Or vote-grubbing, for that matter.

If I win this thing, I promise you this: Bob Dole's cock will cut you taxes.

By the way: A reader sent me a kick-ass pic of Kim Richards from Tuff Turf-- full body, in that silly Madonna-ish get-up, fishnet stockings and all -- and I'll be posting that bad boy when Ohio certifies the vote count tomorrow.

Again-- does Jane Galt give you Kim Richards cheesecake pictures when Bush wins states? No, she does not.

In fact, when you're not around, she speaks very uncharitably of you all.

Posted by: Ace at 12:28 PM | Comments (9)
Post contains 230 words, total size 1 kb.

As Johnny Mac might say, You have got to be kidding me:

TEHRAN (MNA) -- Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said on Sunday that Iran is seriously concerned about the rise in human rights violations in Europe and especially the rise in anti-Islamic sentiments and the treatment of minority groups.

Asefi made the remarks in response to a question about the decision of the European Union to lodge a protest with Tehran expressing concern about the human rights situation in Iran.

“The issue of human rights is on the agenda of Iran-EU talks and this is not something one-sided, and we have also some criticism about their (human rights) situation,” Asefi told reporters at his weekly press briefing.

“We have serious concerns about human rights violations in Europe, especially the rise in anti-Islamic sentiments in some European states, most notably in the Netherlands where a filmmaker insulted the sensitivities of Muslims by making a very unpleasant movie,” he added.

Gee, thanks for taking an interest, fellas. As they say, we will take your concerns under advisement.

Iran didn't express regret over the butchery of filmmaker Van Gogh, by the way. Which, I guess, means that Iran largely shares the same position as Hollywood on the matter.

They then go on to suggest they don't fell particularly obligated to honor their no-nuke commitments.

Obviously, we don't have many remaining solutions here, and most of the few that are left involve massive bombing campaigns.

Update: This article claims that nuking Iraq's neighbors -- like, oh, fer instance, Iran -- will not solve "the world's problems."

Personally, I'm choosing to take a "wait and see" attitude on that. The old "college try" and such.

Posted by: Ace at 12:17 PM | Comments (3)
Post contains 301 words, total size 2 kb.

The margin has narrowed to a, ahem, mere 119,000 votes. That will be the margin certified on Monday.

Someone requested a shot from her in Tuff Turf, in that silly early-eighties get-up. You can kinda see the look she's going for, but alas, you can't see much of the red Madonna-style dress.

"I'm confused. If Bush got more votes, how come Keith Olbermann keeps saying Kerry won?"

Keep it up, MoveOn & assorted other lunatics. There's a lot of Kim Richards pics out there. I don't care if I have to start posting shots of her from Escape From Witch Mountain.
more...

Posted by: Ace at 01:47 PM | Comments (12)
Post contains 294 words, total size 2 kb.

And that wussy's name is Europe, which seems to finally be twigging on to the fact that yes, they hate us for our freedoms:

Islamic fundamentalism is causing a 'clash of civilisations' between liberal democracies and Muslims

DAYS before she was due to be married, Ghofrane Haddaoui, 23, refused the advances of a teenage boy and paid with her life. Lured to waste ground near her home in Marseilles, the Tunisian-born Frenchwoman was stoned to death, her skull smashed by rocks hurled by at least two young men, according to police.

Although the circumstances of the murder are not clear, the horrific “lapidation” of the young Muslim stoked a French belief that the country can no longer tolerate the excesses of an alien culture in its midst.

...

From Norway to Sicily, governments, politicians and the media are laying aside their doctrines of diversity and insisting that “Islamism”, as the French call the fundamentalist form that pervades the housing estates, is incompatible with Europe’s liberal values.

...

“The notion of multiculturalism has fallen apart,” said Angela Merkel, leader of Germany’s Christian Democrat opposition. “Anyone coming here must respect our constitution and tolerate our Western and Christian roots.” Italy’s traditional tolerance towards immigrants has been eroded by fear of Islamism. An Ipsos poll in September showed that 48 per cent of Italians believed that a “clash of civilisations” between Islam and the West was under way and that Islam was “a religion more fanatical than any other”.

Similar views can be heard across traditionally tolerant Scandinavia — and no longer just from the populist rightwing party’s such as Pia Kjaersgaard’s People’s Party in Denmark. The centre-right Government of Anders Fogh Rasmussen, has equipped Denmark with Europe’s toughest curbs on immigration, largely aimed at people from Muslim countries. In Sweden, where anti-Muslim feeling is running high and mosques have been burnt, schools have been authorised to ban pupils who wear full Islamic head-cover, although the measure comes nowhere near France’s new ban on the hijab in all state schools.
...

M Sarkozy has just caused a stir by going a stage further, proposing that France’s rigorously secular state fund the building of mosques. “Whether I like it or not, Islam is the second biggest religion in France. So you have to integrate it by making it more French,” he said. To general dismay, however, the national council is coming increasingly under the effective control of radicals.

Reluctantly, some intellectuals have lately concluded that the model for Europe should be the US. On Tuesday a writer for Libération, the French left-wing daily, noted that immigrants in the US threw themselves into “the American dream” and prospered. “There is no French, Dutch or other European dream,” she noted. “You emigrate here to escape poverty and nothing more."

I'm happy Europe is finally engaging the problem, but I fear they're going about it the wrong way.

Despite my fear of radical Islamism, I also get a very queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach when I hear talk about "muscular efforts at integration." That sounds an awful lot like compelling people to give up their religion and their culture in order to better serve the State-- and that sounds, to me, an awful lot like fascism.

There are two different responses to gun violence. One: Allow people to have guns but lock them up forever, and perhaps execute them, should they murder someone. Two: Attempt to avoid response number one entirely by just outlawing guns.

Similarly, there are two responses to racism. One: Allow people to believe what they will, but should they engage in a criminal act, lock them up. Two: Attempt to avoid response number one entirely by enacting a regime of near-forcible PC brainwashing that almost (but not quite) criminalizes bad thoughts.

It seems that Europe -- liberal, Communist-sympathisizing Europe -- is enamored with the second sort of response. Rather than simply criminalizing bad acts and severely punishing those who engage in violence or incitement, they seem to want to avoid that sort of punishment entirely, and instead get to the "root causes" of the problem... by taking away the culture and religion of Muslims.

I think Muslims should make much more of an effort to obey local laws. The fact that a neighborhood is predominantly Muslim does not, in fact, mean that Shari'a law has been enacted into operation. But I'm worried about this talk of forcibly homogenizing populations so that no one disagrees, as everyone is expected to think as the State permits.

To be honest, when I first heard the French were outlawing the habib in schools, my reaction was vindictive: "Good. Show them who's boss." But that's actually a dangerous reaction. I understand the issue is complicated by the possibility of coercion -- i.e., how do we know Muslim schoolgirls want to wear the habib? Maybe they're just doing so to avoid being beaten by their parents or, worse yet, raped by monsters who think they're not Islamic enough to have the right to be free of sexual violation.

But there's something inherently creepy about state action intended not to encourage tolerance, not to criminalize violent or grossly anti-social acts of intolerance, but to create a simulated "tolerance" simply by forcibly draining away all the pecularities of individual choice.

Frankly, there's some of this sort of talk in America, too. Secularists and leftists openly wonder how they can get religious Americans to give up their troublesome and regressive beliefs, and are always looking for new ways to use our institutions to compel just that.

Let people believe and worship as they will-- but hold them strictly to account as regards criminal acts, including the crime of incitement.

The law against incitement got a bad name in the 20's and 50's. We were always told that the communists and anarchists agitating for blowing up railroad lines and factories where just speaking metaphorically, or purely rhetorically, or what have you. Only a "clear and present danger" of actual criminal behavior could sustain an incitement charge.

That may be a good and just rule. But it's about time to recognize that in the current climate, there is indeed a lot more of such clear and present danger related to incitement to violence. This sort of racist, violence-exalting hateporn is not just being gobbled up by pencil-necked editors at The Nation. There are angry young men hearing the new hateporn, believing it, and wanting desperately to act on it.

H/t: Alarming News, who needs your vote in the 100-250 category of Wizbang's Best Blogs balloting.

Stop All Muslim Immigration?: A commenter suggests that this is perhaps the only way to make it clear to radical and violent Islamofascists that we are indeed serious about respecting local law.

Indeed, there may be a time -- and I hope it doesn't come -- that there may be a need for a full-out quarantining of the Muslim world, if the forces of moderation and decency are not able to tame their savage kin.

Europe thinks it needs Muslim immigration to keep its welfare state alive. Actually, there are millions of desperately-poor people in Asia and Latin America who would jump at the chance to work in Europe as guest-workers.

I hope it doesn't come to that. But the Islamofascist movement may provoke such a thing. The religious imperative to conquer, and subjugate, and create new sovereign colonies in other countries has to be de-emphasized.

Try reading it metaphorically, guys. Because, honestly, in the end you will not be permitted the conquest you crave. If even Europe is now hip to your agenda, the high-water mark for unending tolerance for violence and hatred is now past.

Posted by: Ace at 12:57 PM | Comments (19)
Post contains 1293 words, total size 8 kb.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Maybe both:

“The media outlets, especially Rush Limbaugh and his ilk on talk radio, scare our patients to death,” said AHA executive director Robert J. Gordon, facilitator for the meetings. “More than anything else, people with PEST tremble physically.”

...

“We mostly let them vent during the first session,” Gordon said. “By the third session, we’ll be doing some meditation exercises to aid some of their symptoms. We may use visualization and some techniques designed for bipolar disease and other mental disorders. That might help them adjust to reality.”

Um, maybe.

May I suggest breaking out the Aggression Puppets? I had a schizophrenic break when Robert Reich was appointed Secretary of Labor and beating the shit out of that little puppet -- I called him "Fidget" -- really got me past my issues.

According to AHA officials, symptoms of PEST are similar to post-traumatic stress disorder. They include nightmares, sleeplessness, hostility, listlessness, and emotional outbursts including threats to leave the country.

In Alec Baldwin's case, the symptoms also include starring in Cat in the Hat.

“There’s an overall sense of emotional helplessness and abandonment,” said Sheila Cooperman, a licensed AHA psychotherapist from Delray Beach. “In psychology, we call it ‘learned helplessness.’ After you zap a caged dog twice, he stops moving because he knows there is no place to go. That’s what happened with these Kerry voters. They’ve been zapped so many times that they’re on the verge of giving up on politics.”

And we can't have that now, can we?

Look, I've given up on the New York Giants, so I guess I sort of know the feeling. But the fact is, guys, that there will be an election in 2008.

Except if Bush cancels it and installs a ruling military junta and declares himself El Jefe Maximo para Vida, as Paul Krugman always suggests. But honestly, what are the odds of that?

No greater than, say, one in three, I'm thinking. So look on the bright side: There is better than 66% chance that we will not be living in perpetual fascist warstate within two or three years.

It's a glass-is-half-full kind of deal.

Posted by: Ace at 12:40 PM | Comments (2)
Post contains 372 words, total size 3 kb.

Nice to see this kind of a demonstration:

In addition to collecting signatures for the large white flags with yellow ribbons --which read "We Support Our Troops, Come Home Soon" in big black letters -- the group collected money to send care packages to soldiers. Candy canes, which could be personalized with a little message for a dollar donation, will also be sent to the troops.

"Lots of people think college students are apathetic and they don't care, but that's not true," Kent said. "We support our troops and want to show them that they are not forgotten."

Meanwhile, over at Princeton, they're having an intense debate over whether to label our troops active war-criminals or simply morons brainwashed into killing babies.

And speaking of that mentality, check out this review of Brainwashing 101, a documentary about our tenured radical acadamians.

Posted by: Ace at 12:28 PM | Comments (1)
Post contains 153 words, total size 1 kb.