Believe it or not, he's got a nuanced position on this one, too.

The press is always yammering that our elections should be decided "on the issues."

And yet they're giving John Kerry a pass on announcing his issues at all. The problem with John Kerry isn't flip-flopping, actually. An actual flip-flop is a confession of prior error but leaves the public with little doubt as to the candidate's current position.

John Kerry isn't flip-flopping. He's simply taking both sides of every issue simultaneously; a true flip-flop involves taking two different positions in succession.

This strategy is designed to conceal John Kerry's actualy positions from the public, rather than announcing them and then defending them, as has usually been the practice.

And the media has no interest whatsoever in pinning him down on any issue whatsoever. They know that taking clear positions -- single positions, that is -- on any issues can only hurt Kerry; so they are consciously allowing him to take multiple positions at once, each position geared at appeasing a different constituency.

It's a dishonest strategy: Obviously, when he takes two incompatible positions, he's lying to someone; we just aren't sure who that someone is.

One would think the media -- remember, all about the "issues" -- would attempt to pin Kerry down one one position or another.

One would be wrong.

Posted by: Ace at 12:14 PM | Comments (1)
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Michelle Malkin on Seattle's very-patriotic liberals.

Lauraw tipped me over the weekend to the Seattle-PI article Malkin discusses, but I didn't post it at the time.

Enjoy Every Sandwich has an interesting catch in his postings for Saturday. (Scan down for the Truth about Michael Moore article; he doesn't have permalinks. And be warned! He's three times dirtier than me, and Friday's postings contain a big picture of that Norwegian couple having sex on stage at a rock-concert.)

Michael Moore called Paul Berman, a member of the respectable (which is to say, not-anti-American) left a "traitor to the left" when he attempted to publish a critique of the Sandanistas in the magazine Moore was editing at the time, the noxious leftist drivel Mother Jones. Moore spiked the article.

So apparently Moore trafficks in that charge he claims he so reviles-- the charge of being traitorous. I'd be curious to know why he thinks it's fair game to call someone a "traitor to the left" but why it's completely out of bounds to call him what he clearly is, a traitor -- in his heart, at least -- to America.

I think I know the answer: because Michael Moore cares about, loves, and believes in the left, but he does not similarly have much regard for America. In his view, one can be a traitor to a noble cause -- such as leftism -- but one can't be a traitor to an evil enterprise, such as the country we all live in.

When confronted with stuff like this, the left always talks about a "higher patriotism." But obviously "higher patriotism" isn't ordinary patriotism as it has been understood for 5,000 years of human history, or else there would be no need for that telltale modifier "higher."

If a man screws everything that moves, he might tell his wife he has a "higher fidelity" to her, a fidelity of the heart, a "real" fidelity that ignores bourgeois concepts of sexual monogamy. Whether the wife buys this bullshit or not, it can't be argued this "higher fidelity" bears much resemblance to fidelity as we usually understand it.

Posted by: Ace at 11:38 AM | Comments (1)
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I think Instapundit posted this, but I didn't actually bother to watch it until Lauraw recommended it.

Pretty darn funny.

The birth of "scambaiting."

Frustrated by all those ridiculous emails from Nigeria stating "My name is Dr. Joseph Treance, I need $10,000 to claim $66 billion in Nigerian gold bullion," some have decided to fight back...

... by wasting the con-artists' time. They con the con artists by promising to send money, then coming up with ridiculous reasons for not sending it.

Be warned, the article isn't as funny as the opening paragraph promises. If so many people are doing this, it's strange that there are so few funny exchanges.

Still, I like the idea of stringing along these guys. I hate those Nigeria emails.

Posted by: Ace at 10:34 AM | Comments (4)
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Clifford May.

Even better, this WSJ piece (requires registration).

Let me just say something about the Clifford May article. One problem liberals have, again and again, is that they're never willing, or even capable, it seems, of letting a bad argument go. They simply don't understand that fighting for ridiculous claims hurts their fight for more defensible ones.

In the WP article about this, Sue Schmidt reported that Iraq sought 400 pounds of yellowcake from Niger in 1998. As Josh Marshall points out, the actual Senate report says that IraN tried to buy this yellowcake. Schimidt is apparently in error, barring the Senate announcing that this was a typo.

And yet Clifford May -- who is otherwise spot-on -- asks:

Another former government official told Wilson that Iran had tried to buy 400 tons of uranium in 1998. That's the same year that Saddam forced the weapons inspectors to leave Iraq. Could the former official have meant Iraq rather than Iran? If someone were to try to connect those dots, what picture might emerge?

Well, Mr. May, the former government offical might have meant Iraq. He also might have "meant" to say that Iraq was behind 9-11 or the anthrax attacks; he might have "meant" to say that Saddam and Osama were gay lovers. He might have "meant" any number of things, but I think we're stuck with what he actually did say.

This blogger, in an otherwise valuable piece, also can't help but suggesting that maybe the Iran mention was just a big typo.

Maybe it was. If it was, it will be corrected. But I really don't think we can go postulating that statements going against our cause are typos, at least not until someone who wrote the report says, "Hey, I just realized there's a typo in the report."

The Senate's report is damning enough to Wilson. We shouldn't damage good arguments by trafficking in bad ones.

Posted by: Ace at 10:32 AM | Add Comment
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James Schlesinger says Madonna's ever-escalating demands -- first insisting that more "Indian music" be put in a mainstream rom-com, then demanding that costly CGI special effects be used to "beautify" her in the film -- caused him a heart attack. And probably the stroke he suffered later.

I can attest that this charge isn't as outlandish as it might first seem. After being abducted by former SLA terrorists and then forced to watch the director's cut of Body of Evidence, I myself developed a bad case of metabolic acidosis.

The combination of Madonna's acting and sex scenes also caused me to become, as my doctor's diagnosis put it, "half-a-fairy."

He prescribed a week of bed rest and a Russ Meyer movie marathon. I think it did the trick, but still, whenever I hear Willem Dafoe's voice, I have an almost irresistable impulse to go to Restoration Hardware and "redectorate madly."

Posted by: Ace at 10:16 AM | Comments (2)
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"I'm getting excited about it. I'm just thinking about it," the beloved coach says.

And what's this? A dig at Ted Kennedy?

"If you're going to tell me I couldn't be a better senator than Ted Kennedy, D-Mass. -- I could be," Ditka said.

Good enough for me! Fill out the paperwork, get this man a senate seat.

Posted by: Ace at 09:26 AM | Comments (2)
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No cause for alarm, however, because as we all know, those WMD's didn't exist.

At least until they're used, in which case the left will begin slamming Bush for not spending more effort finding the WMD's they were just claiming didn't exist at all.

Posted by: Ace at 05:20 PM | Comments (3)
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Paris woman & thirteen-month-old infant attacked by Muslim thugs.

The attack was motivated by antisemitism. Swastikas were drawn all over the woman's body in pen.

Turns out neither was Jewish.

If the French don't mind a few anti-Jew attacks, perhaps they'll care a bit more when Muslim thugs begin attacking non-Jews in the mornoic mistaken belief that anyone not wearing a turban is a Jew.

And speaking of anti-Jew attacks, Yasser "In the Closet" Arafat hints that the latest terrorist attack to take an Israeli life was conducted by, you guessed it, Israelis.

I think he just earned himself an interview in Michael Moore's next film-flam.

The former President of USF, now running as a Democratic candidate for Senator, faces tough questions about why she kept Palestinian terrorist Sami Al-Arian on the payroll for so long.

Canada's arrogance: Whiny, bitchy Canadian boy won't shovel pidgeon-shit during a charity refurbishing of a house, attempting to pawn off the work on American girls, stating that Americans "are better" at shoveling pidgeon-shit.

Well. It's nice that we're finally credited with having some skills.

I don't think we have to worry about Canada invading us anytime soon. They seem to be breeding a nation of sissies (albeit of the nastier variety) up north.

I wish them well in their socially-engineered sissification project.

Weird. Jack Idema goes to Afghanistan, claiming to be a Green Beret, and sets up his own vigilante anti-"terrorist" squad, arresting Afghans left and right and holding them in his private prison.

Turns out Idema is nuts and that the Afghans he seized were innocent.

Jeff Jacoby revisits the "16 words" non-scandal about Iraq's efforts to buy uranium from Africa.

Four Marines died in a "vehicle accident" yesterday. The headline says they were "killed," which I think intentionally and misleadingly suggests they were killed by enemy action. It doesn't seem as if enemy action was involved (if it was, I don't see why the words "vehicle accident" are in the article), and so I think this is yet another case of the media intentionally misleading the public.

Of course, it's a tragedy no matter how they died. And they served bravely whether they were felled by a vehicle accident or by an enemy rocket. My point is just that the media shouldn't deliberately attempt to portray their deaths as the direct result of terrorist attacks.

Okay, this article is all about the Republican's efforts to draft Mike Ditka.

I have no interest in this story, because I don't think that Ditka will give up his lucrative career and his non-partisan-beloved status just to pull the Illinois Republicans' fat out of the fire. I think the whole thing is just us kidding ourselves.

Everything in this article is about the Republicans approaching Ditka. Never Ditka approaching the Republicans.

On the other hand, Iron Mike hasn't issued a public "no." Nor, apparently, even a private no, if the absence of evidence can be taken as evidence of absence.

What happens if Mike Ditka does in fact run, and the Democrats respond by forcing Obama out and bringing in their own ringer in the form of Michael Jordan?

Now that would be a race worth watching.

No tears from Ace on this one. Five young "Frenchmen" (no, ahem, other details supplied) lost eyes and arms when a bomb they were constructing from an Internet recipe detonated.

I know many born-again Christians don't believe in evolution, but there's your proof of Darwinism in action right there. Case closed.

Posted by: Ace at 11:35 AM | Comments (11)
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Rare, but it does happen.

The next time I don't notice how few Thalidomide-deformed Americans I'm not meeting, I'll try to remember that it was actually one good bureaucrat doing her job right I have to thank for that:

As autumn closed in on the Christmas holiday season—the most lucrative time of the year for the sale of sedatives—the pharmaceutical company, frustrated by the repeated—and in their view, unnecessary—delays, began to pressure Dr. Kelsey with visits and phone calls to her superiors. Despite the increasing pressure, Dr. Kelsey remained steadfast in her demand for thorough clinical studies demonstrating the drug’s safety.

...

In the few years that the drug was on the world market, thousands of children were born with Thalidomide-related deformities[6]. Many did not survive their first year. Countless more miscarriages were traced to the use of Thalidomide. The damage in the United States, due to the work of Dr. Kelsey, was small by comparison, with 17 children documented to have Thalidomide-associated deformities. These children were affected during clinical trials of the drug, prior to its approval. During this investigational period, Richardson-Merrell distributed more than 2.5 million Thalidomide tablets to more than 1,000 doctors who, in turn, gave the tablets to nearly 20,000 patients—several hundred of whom were pregnant women.

Posted by: Ace at 08:04 PM | Comments (9)
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The Times doesn't credit the turnover of power, but I do, at least to a major extent:

BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 10 — Tension appears to be rising between the homegrown Iraqi resistance and the foreign Islamist fighters who have entered the country to destroy the American military here. This is one reason, experts speculate, that Iraq has not had the kind of spectacular attack meant to spread terror and defy the American agenda for a long two weeks, even during the transfer of formal sovereignty back to the Iraqis.

Evidence has emerged in sniping between groups on Arabic television and Web sites, and in interviews with Iraqi and American officials, as well as members of the resistance and people with close ties to it. All speak of rising friction between nationalistic fighters and foreign-led Islamists over goals and tactics, with some Iraqi insurgents indicating a revulsion over the car bombs and suicide attacks in cities that have caused hundreds of civilian deaths.

But such friction does not mean there is a "submission by the resistance," said Dhary Rasheed, a professor at the University of Baghdad who lives in Samarra, a center for the resistance. "It is a phase of reconstruction and re-evaluation in order to push the operations out of the cities," so as "not to have innocent people killed."

Large car-bombings — thought to be carried out more often by foreigners, who make up a tiny percentage of the rebels — have "disgraced the reputation of the resistance," Professor Rasheed said. "And the resistance has worked just like the government has been trying to, to curtail the influence of the foreigners."
...

Opinions among resistance fighters vary, but it is not uncommon these days to hear comments disdainful of the foreign fighters, like those from a young fighter in Falluja, whose relatives hold high positions in the resistance.

"Iraqis do not need Zarqawi or Al Qaeda members to help them," he told an Iraqi reporter working for The New York Times.

Dividing the Rebels

The split would seem to be welcome news to the new government of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi. His strategy for combating violence is to divide the insurgency by appealing to the patriotism of Iraqi fighters to reject the presence of foreigners who he claims do not care about Iraq itself. He is promising amnesty for some Iraqis, but threatening to crack down on those who do not accept it.

To that end, Mr. Allawi and other government officials say, he has been meeting with former Baath Party members in the resistance and tribal leaders to convince them that their interests and those of foreign fighters are not the same.

"We're negotiating with what I call the noncriminals, those who never really were the hard core like Zarqawi and his aides and the Al Qaeda-style people," Mr. Allawi said in an interview. "And on the other hand, be very firm with the criminals and the assassins and the killers and the terrorists."

...

A Shift in Perceptions

The establishment of the sovereign government may have set in motion a subtle but real shift in perceptions among some Iraqi rebels. Some argue that Mr. Allawi's Baathist past — he was a hard-liner before he ran afoul of Mr. Hussein — is swaying some former Baathists toward loyalty to the new government.

Perhaps even more persuasive, American military officials say, is the new president, Sheik Ghazi Ajil al-Yawar, a Sunni who has spoken against the occupation. And even if Americans hold ultimate power, Iraqis head a government with broad authority, and the resistance is taking notice, several experts say.

"All these things taken together will pull in some Baathists, though not all of them," said Hamid al-Bayati, the deputy foreign minister. "We have to see how many of them will join in."

Though the Iraqi guerrillas have proved to be skilled warriors, it is the foreign fighters who are most often accused of plotting the larger attacks, which have hit Shiite mosques, crowded streets, political parties and foreign aid groups. In a single day of bombings, as many as 200 people have been killed.

Over time the deaths of those innocent Iraqis, American and Iraqi officials say, have angered many Iraqi resisters, and that is evident in several statements by groups involved with the resistance or close to it. There even seems to be specific opposition to the attacks on police stations, oil pipelines and electrical stations — all basic structures of a functioning state.

Asked recently if he advocated continued struggle against the Americans, Sheik Abdul-Satar Sattar al-Samarrai, a leader of the Muslim Clerics Association, said: "Yes. Honest and true resistance — that is away from chaos, killing innocents and policemen and sabotaging the infrastructure — should go on to kick the occupation out of the country."

Perhaps it was obvious, but I concluded some time ago that it was essential to change the fundamental psychology of the situation, and that more power for Iraqis -- and more responsibility for fighting their own war -- could accomplish our goals better than additional US troops or US force.

It's not so much that the current plan is guaranteed to work as it is that the "do more, fight harder, stay longer" plan is almost guaranteed not to.

The fight against Saddam was our fight, because he was our enemy, and because only we could fight him. The current fight is largely the Iraqis': they both can and must win this fight for themselves. And more and more of them finally seem to be realizing that.

Posted by: Ace at 11:14 AM | Comments (11)
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