"This is not representative of the values of the Islam I know," he says as he cuts man's throat

Anmesty International Vows a Vigorous Inquiry Into the Outrage; The International Red Cross Alleges, "We warned the world about the abuses of Muslim/Arab terorists last winter"

W A S H I N G T O N -- Horrified by the "disgusting" images of a defenseless American prisoner having his head cut off on videotape, Arab and Muslim leaders throughout the world went on Al Jazeera to apologize for the "abhorrent" abuse.

"I am sickened by the images I saw," said Bashar Assad of Syria. "I want to know precisely who is responsible for the failure in command here. And I don't care how high up the chain of command we have to go for justice."

The Muslim-American advocacy group CAIR immediately sprang to make no arguments of moral equivalency of any kind. "This is simply unacceptable behavior," a spokesman said. "This is barbarous. This is vicious. This is not merely anti-Islam, but more importantly, it's anti-human."

Extremist Muslims throughout the world immediately downloaded the graphically violent images, and then did not sing out "Allah is Great, he has given us this great victory over the infidels" a single time. "Political disagreements are one thing," said an extremist Muslim Imam living on the British government's dime in London. "The Israel-Palestinian dispute is another thing. But if we are to call ourselves human, to call ourselves men of genuine honor, there are certain standards of simple decency that must be observed and can never be compromised, no matter how angry someone might be."

Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat immediately went on the air to deliver a forty-minute long speech denouncing the "cruel and shameful act" and cautioning Muslims that "we must make more effort to live up to the great ideals of our religion and our traditions." His full-throated condemnation of the murder, occasionally requiring him to take a break in order to compose himself and wipe away his tears, consipicuously did not include any attempts to minimize or mitigate the atrocity by invoking "Zionism" or "Muslim humiliation."

Left-wing newspapers throughout Europe immediately ran the disturbing photos of the butchery with headlines uncompromising and unstinting in their condemnation of the savagery. The Hidden Face of Evil blared Le Monde. The leftist press vowed to treat this violation with all of the intensity it had treated the revelations of the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners by Americans. "Politics is politics," said a senior editor at The Guardian (UK). "But politics must never, under any circumstances, lessen our desire to condemn inhumanity."

Even ABCNews' anchorman Peter Jennings was philosophical about the animalistic act. "Simple depravity is inexcusable under any context," he said. "This outrage certainly puts the Iraqi prisoner abuse story in context. ABCNews will henceforth better endeavor to keep a sense of proportion when reporting certain stories, even when reporting those stories we believe can be used politically against the American military or to Republican administrations."

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd appeared visibly shaken after witnessing the brutal act. "It certainly reminds us of what the real issues are in the world today," she said. "This is a serious time, and it demands serious thought and yes, sometimes serious actions. I'll be putting aside my typical cutesy word-play and girlish name-calling in order to devote my column to exposing the viciousness and barbarity of the animals who have declared war on civilization itself."

Left-wing blogger TheDailyKos simply put up a stark image of the beheading and refrained from posting for the entire day. "I just felt there was no need for words," he said. "There are no words. This man was decapitated for simply attempting to bring the benefits of technology to the world's poor. He was a mercenary-- a Mercenary in the Army of Humanity."

Cartoonist Ted Rall announced that he "had no plans at the moment" to draw a cartoon making light of the man's death, or savaging his family's public reaction to the tragedy. "That's sooooo 2002," he said. "I'm above that."

Campaigning in Missouri, Democratic nominee John Kerry shared his outrage for the crime and his sympathy for Mr. Berg's family. He made no effort to claim that the butchery was due to George Bush's "reckless and arrogant" foreign policy, or that the killers would have been mollified had the Coalition included French troops. "Politics stops at the knife's edge," a Kerry aide said, seething with fury not at his fellow countrymen who oppose his political agenda, but rather at the Al Qaeda terrorists who threaten our very lives.

In related news, engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced that they had successfully granted a 200-pound sow the power of flight. "We just grafted four pairs of condor wings on to the pig," said Henry Fields, project manager of the Winged Wilbur project. "You should see that pig fly. It's something to behold, I'll tell you. And we're going to need flying pig technology in the future, given the widespread effects of global environmental change. The latest reports of the temperatures plummeting in Hell should be a warning to us all."

Posted by: Ace at 12:04 PM | Comments (294)
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First order of business. I open up the paper today, I see a dozen naked hairy Arab asses in my face. I wasn't looking to see naked hairy Arab asses. Did I tell any of you I wanted to see naked hairy Arab asses?

[Various voices:] No, sir.

Because, if I was in anyway unclear about my feelings about the Geneva Conventions, let me clarify any confusion. Geneva Conventions, good. Naked hairy Arab asses, bad. Do you understand that?

Didn't I say shorts?

[Donald Rumsfeld:] I thought the guys were covered.

You thought, you thought, you thought. You thought eight fucking things since the war began. You're on fuckin' notice, Don. I gave you a list, you had half a list that I gave you, we're just choosing everything on it. Okay? The guys get shorts.

Don't make a fuckin' maniac out of me.

The guys get shorts. Do you understand? We're not going to be as strong as our weakest links. The guys get shorts. Do you understand that?

This is like football, baseball, like anything else. The guys get shorts. The guys get shorts.

That's just. The fucking. Way it is.

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Posted by: Ace at 10:44 AM | Comments (55)
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Remember 2000, when Democrats blamed the start of the recession on the fact that Bush, who was not yet President, was "talking down the economy"?

It seems that Republicans can cause all sorts of economic disruptions, even when they're not in power. When they're not in power, they can just talk and create recessions.

But this theory just doesn't apply to Republicans. It applies to Democrats too, but in the opposite way.

Democrats, who are not in power, can have powerful positive effects on the economy, just by "talking fiscal responsibility."

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Posted by: Ace at 11:05 PM | Comments (32)
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Thanks to Little Green Footballs, we were directed toward the Protest Warrior site.

There we discovered that these guys actually made it on to the dopiest "newscast" in all of TV, MTV's ludicrous "Choose or Lose" feature.

Here's where you can see no lesser light than John Norris calling Protest Warrior "rebels with a conservative cause" and "Republican renegades."

Yeahp, John Norris. You heard right: John Norris. Only Kurt Loder and that redheaded walking tit Tabitha Soren are higher up on the MTV moron-news foodchain.

All ribbing about MTV aside -- Nice going, Protest Warrior. A big part of the left's appeal is its strange ability to convince young people that its boomer-centered mix of statism, nannyism, and general douchebaggery constitutes some type of rebel-cool. Anything that helps undermine that bizarre linkage is helpful.

You can also watch their 45-minute documentary about "Operation Wolverines," also known as tweaking the morons at recent A.N.S.W.E.R. rallies.

Our favorite part: at the LA rally (about 18-20 minutes in), a "legal observer" from ANSWER says he's there to "document the police" to make sure they're "respecting the rights" of ANSWER protestors.

He then notes that Protest Warrior is there, and that he'll "be watching them too."

Why?, he's asked.

Because Protest Warrior is obviously just there to "disrupt the ANSWER demonstration." !!!???!!!???-- disrupt a demonstration?

Is that anything like discombobulating a clusterfuck?

He then says he'll carefully document any "law-breaking" by the Protest Warrior folks, in order to make sure that if they do break the law, they're "punished by the police."

Ah.

The police must respect ANSWER's right to break the law (and they always do, of course, in ways both great and small), but the moment Protest Warrior steps out of line, ANSWER's "legal observer" is going to sic the pigs on them.

General leftist douchebaggery defined.

Posted by: Ace at 10:17 PM | Comments (8)
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Just when we were beginning to feel comfortable about Bush's propects in November, the Scrappleface News Service hits us with a sudden and nasty body-blow.

John Kerry is running a $25 million ad blitz to inform Americans that he actually served for a few months in Vietnam:

"While most voters are familiar with Kerry's sterling record of legislative achievement as a leader in the Senate," said an unnamed spokesman, "they're surprised to discover that he actually served during wartime."

The source said that the story of Mr. Kerry's Vietnam service has been "suppressed by the right-wing attack machine."

News is breaking out all over on Scrappleface. He scoops everyone with the, err, scoop that John Kerry has announced that George Bush is not "qualified" to be disgusted over the Iraqi prisoner abuse story, having never committed atrocities himself.

Posted by: Ace at 09:59 PM | Comments (14)
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...this time along with a female dupe:

In a parody of reality-romance programs, the two new marks believe they are on a program called Last Chance for Love. What they don't know is that they have actually been cast and Joe and Jane Schmo and they are the only real people on program filled with actors and actresses. Familiar parody-elements return including ridiculous competitions and over-dramatized eviction ceremonies. Also present is host Ralph Garman, returning in disguise as Derek Newcastle, the "pompous but randy British host."

The original Joe Schmoe was a cult classic. We're still giggling over the ludicrous eviction ceremony catch-phrase/cult-chant, "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, you're dead to us."

If you were a fan of the show, your first thought is probably, "Great! I can't wait!" and your second thought is probably, "Hey, the first show was a big put-on; how can they do a sequel when the word is already out there that the original was a sham?"

Well, you know, only 3.2 million people watched the final episode of the first Joe, and, come on, only another 20-30 million people beyond that are even aware there even was a fake reality-tv show called Joe Schome. That leaves about 50 million potential dupes, aged 21-35, out there.

Posted by: Ace at 08:52 PM | Comments (6)
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NYT Front Page Blast: "Alcohol May Have Been Involved"

Left Wing Media Rages, "It's Make Love Not War -- Not Both!!!"

This must be the first time in recorded history that American soldiers, or, for that matter, any co-workers in any American organization had sex with one another!

Is Drudge, like, against the war (we've always suspected he was, actually), or is he engaging in this ridiculous sensationalism over nothing in order to subtly discredit the "We're Doomed" chorus?

Developing HOT and WET...

Posted by: Ace at 07:55 PM | Comments (21)
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Great story. Great catch by Travelling shoes.

Posted by: Ace at 06:18 PM | Comments (20)
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Thanks to Free Republic, which links Real Clear Politics (a site we can't access at the moment), we're directed towards amazing Survey USA poll which shows John Kerry ahead of George Bush...

...by a single percentage point, 46%-45%.

Talk amongst yourselves.

Now look, we just don't believe this, and we will continue not believing this until other polls confirm it, and over a longer period of time.

But just because we don't believe it doesn't mean we can't gloat about it. The liberals almost certainly were not so stupid as to believe we were really in a "quagmire" during that April sandstorm right before the fall of Baghdad, but they sure did gloat about those 24 hours of blissful, rapturous American military defeat.

And so, based on George Bush being behind by just one percentage point (obviously well within the MoE), we've just got to have

Did Someone Ask for More Cowbell? Coolness. We were going to excerpt from this article we read in the New York Sun, available on but it turns out it's on NRO as well.

Couple of fun facts:

For months, economists have been predicting that solid growth in the gross domestic product would translate to a comfortable victory for Bush on Election Day. The economy has now averaged 5 percent real growth over the past year. Experience shows that this is well more than enough to ensure victory for the incumbent party in the presidential election.

With the April 29 announcement that the economy grew 4.2 percent in the first quarter, Yale University economist Ray Fair raised his prediction of President BushÂ’s share of the two-party vote in November from 58.7 percent to 60.4 percent. Either figure would constitute a blowout victory.

[We already linked that, on Friday.]

Other economists are not quite so optimistic, but nevertheless show Bush with a large and growing lead. In an April report, Global Insight, the giant economic forecasting company, has him winning 55.8 percent of the two-party vote this year.

Economist Robert Dye of Economy.com, looked at economic growth in individual states in an April 21 report and did an electoral analysis on a state-by-state basis. Overall, he sees Bush with 54 percent of the vote and carrying every state except California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, and Rhode Island. This translates into an Electoral College victory for Bush of 373 votes to 165 for John Kerry.

All of this depends on the non-occurrence of a major terrorist event, however.

Posted by: Ace at 12:34 PM | Comments (14)
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We continue to not especially care about this story. Bad things happen in wartime.

But, since the liberal media will not stop talking about the incidents (incorrectly seeing, yet again, another phantasmal opportunity to politicize an issue against Bush), we'll reluctantly weigh in.

First of all, let's disabuse ourselves of this idea that this was "just a few bad apples." There may be a good reason to claim that -- dishonesty towards the world at large is not only permissible, but required, during war; more on that later -- but let's not fool ourselves. This wasn't "just a few bad apples," and believing that is only going to set us up for heartbreak when the truth comes out later, as it almost certainly will. The press knows how to get to the truth, at least when it feels there's a political advantage in doing so that inures to the benefit of Democrats/liberals.

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Posted by: Ace at 11:41 AM | Comments (43)
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