The MSM loses all interest just as the Taliban appears to be suing for peace:

One of the Taliban's most senior and charismatic commanders has become a key negotiator as more and more members of the Islamic militia in Afghanistan give up the fight against the Americans.

...

More than 1,000 people have died in violence in the past 18 months, but attacks have tailed off since the guerrillas failed to make good their vow to disrupt the presidential election in October, which saw a huge turnout and was won by Mr Karzai.

Zalmay Khalilzad, the US ambassador to Afghanistan, said yesterday that a group of Taliban militia including senior officials will soon join the Afghan government's peace initiative.

"They are in Kabul seeking peace and to boost the reconciliation process," he said, adding that he was hopeful that the Taliban surrender would take place before the parliamentary elections, expected in the summer.

Analysis at Captain's Quarters, at the link above.

Posted by: Ace at 01:11 PM | Comments (7)
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Jeff Gannon just contacted me (at least I assume he contacted me, unless someone has hacked his domain and is sending out and receiving emails from his jeffgannon.com address), and has agreed to an interview. He's also willing to take questions from readers, which I'll select. I'll try to avoid duplication and, well, just plain dumb ones.

If you have a question you'd like to ask, either send it to aceofspadeshq@yahoo.com or I guess you could post it here.

But try to avoid posting embarassing questions in the comments; they'd be better handled through email, I guess. After all, he's doing me a favor.

Incidentally, he seems to have a pretty good sense of humor about things, and called my Gannon coverage "FUNNY STUFF." He also wouldn't mind if I let through a few moonbat questions, so that could be fun.

Posted by: Ace at 12:19 PM | Comments (50)
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You know, I just wrote a post about the rightosphere not trafficking in rumors, yet here I go.

It's not a conspiracy theory, though.

I don't really believe this at all. Rumors about Dick Cheney leaving his position have been percolating for so long I think we can safely say they jumped the shark sometime back in 2003.

Still, a lot of people who should probably know better never tire of hyping a hypothetical Condi run, so here's the latest Condi-for-Cheney replacement rumor:

Dr. Jack Wheeler reports on his Web site, To the Point (http://www.tothepointnews.com/article.php?id=629&i=), that a "red-breasted rumor bird" is buzzing around the Capitol whispering Hillary's worst nightmare. Congressional know-it-alls claim Vice President Dick Cheney will use health reasons as an excuse to not finish his term. If or when that happens, word is that Bush will pick Condoleezza Rice to succeed Cheney.

Wheeler says: "Being a sitting Vice-President places Condi in an impregnable position for the GOP nomination in 2008, and sucks every breath of wind from Hillary's sails. ... This is George Bush and Dick Cheney's way to buck history – and make it."

...

Condoleezza Rice is a flipping juggernaut waiting to be unleashed on the dysfunctional, lost, babbling Democratic Party.

...

Hillary has 'tried' to reinvent herself. She has 'tried' to mitigate her extreme liberal roots. She has even 'tried' to equivocate on abortion (go figure). However, if you think John Kerry got hammered for flip-flopping, wait for the point-counterpoint on Hillary.

Condoleezza Rice is Hillary's worst nightmare. If only the "red-breasted" rumor is true ...

I've said it before, but here goes again: Condi has never run for elective office. Being a politician requires a very odd and particular skill set, and there is no evidence whatsoever that she possesses it.

Further, she is probably too pro-Affirmative Action to woo the conservative base (she was reported to have fought tougher anti-AA language in Ted Olson's brief in the Michigan U. case) and I think it's known (?) that she is at least moderately pro-choice.

Which leads me to wonder: Sure, she has a great story, and sure she's a black woman and a capable strategist as far as foreign and military policy, but if the Republican Party is inclined to nominate a social moderate/liberal, it has others it can turn to. John McCain, for one. Rudy Guiliani, for another, and a superior one at that.

I don't buy it, but I'll just report and let you decide.

Thanks to LauraW.

And... If you want to start wargaming out a Condi-Hillary death-match, you can pick up miniatures -- well, action figures, really -- from this company.

H/t Michelle Malkin.

Posted by: Ace at 12:10 PM | Comments (32)
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Well, that would explain things.

Posted by: Ace at 11:28 AM | Comments (14)
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Australia Boosts Iraqi Forces By 450: You are buying Australian wine, right?

They'll partly make up for the 1,400 Dutch soldiers going home.

Anchorage Woman Cuts Off Boyfriend's Penis: And the thing is, she did so pre-emptively:

Surgeons reattached an Anchorage man's penis over the weekend after his girlfriend, apparently upset over a pending breakup, cut it off with a kitchen knife...

Did you catch that? A pending break-up? Sheesh!

But the whole story is shot through with weirdness:

Weird: A city wastewater utility worker recovered the penis from a toilet down which the woman had flushed it. It was rushed to Providence Alaska Medical Center, where doctors performed reattachment surgery...

Weird: The woman drove the man to the hospital after the attack.

Very Weird: The man, whom police would not identify, was married to Tran's aunt, Shell said. All three had lived together for a while, during which time Tran and the man had a relationship for at least a year, Shell said. The man moved out of the home on Moose Run Circle sometime recently, but Tran and the aunt still live together, she said.

"The aunt was aware of the relationship, and it was causing problems," Shell said.

Um, yeah. I can see that.

Not So Much Weird As Just Common Male Stupidity: The two were arguing about the [impending break-up] sometime before midnight Saturday, but at some point they decided to have sex.

After he allowed Tran to tie his arms to the window handle above the bed, she pulled the kitchen knife and severed his penis...

A guy is fighting heatedly with a woman he wants to break up with. She says she wants to have sex. The guy, of course, says yes. The woman wants to tie his hands up, rendering him helpless.

They guy, of course, says yes again.

The woman takes out a kitchen knife.

The guy asks, "How long is this going to take before we start having that sex we were just talking about?"

I feel bad for the guy. I don't see myself doing a single thing differently, even if I'd caught the gleam of sharp steel peeking out of the chick's underpants.

Iraqi Terrorists Target... Hairstylists: For the outrage of trimming beards.

Sad for the barbers, but it's a sign that they're losing the war.

Updated Terrorist To-Kill List

American Soldiers Too tough!
Iraqi Police Officers Starting to fight back!
Iraqi Civilians Also starting to fight back!
Hairdressers -- Aaaah, by Allah's Grace, here is victory ripe for the taking! Oh, wait, shit! They're all armed with scissors!

I don't know if there's much hope for a political movement that puts so much emphasis on facial-hair grooming.

German Man Shoots Self In Neck With "James Bond" Style Pen-Gun: Fell out of his pocket when tying his shoes, plugged him right in the neck.

He lived. I suppose it was one of Q's numerous failed prototypes.

When asked from where he'd gotten the gun, the man claimed he "found" it.

Okay. Not a good story, but then, he'd just been shot in the neck.

John McCain: Hillary Would Make a "Good President" Part of John McCain's long-term strategy to piss off each and every Republican voter in America. I'd say he's about three quarters of the way there.

Um, does this guy realize there are only about 10,000 reporters in America? He knows that at some point he'll have to start reaching out beyond "his base," right?

CSI Shows Give Public "Unrealistic" Expectations About Power and Certainty of Forensic Science: In related news, Gilligan's Island misleads the public about the feasibility of constructing a short-wave radio out of three coconuts and an epileptic gibbon as a power-source.

This is an old phenemon, though. In David Simon's outstanding Homicide, the cops he interviewed complained the the public had gotten the idea that every case would have smoking-gun evidence for every part of the crime from TV shows, too. Like, if a suspect confesses that he shot a bartender and then ditched the gun in the river, the jury would still want that submerged murder weapon.

Which proves my longstanding thesis: People are fucking stupid.

And finally:

Tapes Indicate Bush May Have Smoked Marijuana: I haven't been this shattered since I found out 1) that Jeff Gannon was gay and 2) who the hell Jeff Gannon was in the first place.

But seriously-- didn't we know this? I'm 100% positive that Bush previously used this answer publicly-- "I don't want to say, because I don't want kids to say, 'He's the President, so it's okay'." So what the hell is the "news" here?

The media pretty much already declared Bush to have been a cokehead, anyhow.

That's the good thing about having a liberal media-- there really aren't too many big bad surprises for Republicans. They report everything bad they can come close to proving and what they can't prove they just sort of speculate about, with the strong hint that this is more than mere speculation.

Which immunizes Republicans from these sorts of "shocking" revelations later on.

Posted by: Ace at 02:00 AM | Comments (17)
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Claims, "I'm just a patsy!" Or words to that effect:

In the letter, which the panel's legal representative confirmed
receiving, Burkett says that CBS blamed him for its own failures in order to
minimize the damage to its own reputation. He also continues to stand by
his revised explanation of how he obtained the documents, which allegedly came from the personal files of Bush's commanding officer, now deceased. Burkett says he obtained the documents from an anonymous man at a Texas livestock show who was apparently acting on behalf of an unknown
woman who identified herself as Lucy Ramirez.

"As I openly stated, backgrounded in excruciating detail to Mapes, Rather and CBS, the documents had to be able to be 'free standing' before I would release them. I had to be satisfied that CBS had the capability and intent to fully authenticate the documents," Burkett wrote in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by the ezine Salon.com. "CBS, through its employees, had to make a critical decision as to whether they were willing to take that risk. There were no expressed or implied warranties about the documents. Yet I believed them to be authentic."

The three CBS producers asked to resign will probably just be paid off after making some noise.

But Burkett's a little different. CBSNews can't really be seen paying this guy off to keep quiet.

And he wants money, after all -- he wanted money for his original story, and he seems to have wanted a book deal.

And best of all, he is litigious. And self-righteous.

On the other hand, he's a goofball crank.

Still, I say: Give 'em hell, Bill. Sue. Sue like the wind.

Posted by: Ace at 10:29 PM | Comments (6)
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Winds of Change wants to know if Ann was serious about calling for a New McCarthyism, or just being provocative.

Let me say I think it's pretty clear she was just being provocative. However, my rushed quasi-transcript of her remarks -- focusing chiefly on her wisecracks and putdowns and Coulterisms -- distorted the thrust of her speech and may have left some question about this.

Coulter was making the same point I've made a thousand times, and you probably have too-- as you sit there watching these fleebs (where?) whine about having their freedom of speech chilled, you want to scream at the TV, "Idiot, you're saying precisely what you want to say. Maybe you need some genuine experience with repression -- such as in your beloved Cuba -- so that you can understand how trivial your whining is."

And I think that's what Ann meant. Her call to "repress" these idiots if they're already blaming us for the same was meant to draw attention to the fundamental stupidity of a Hollywood cretin whining about his free speech being suppressed while speaking in front of an adoring crowd of college students, without being shackled or shot on sight.

But here was Ann's more serious point:

If you've read her book Treason, you know you supports the basic idea of "McCarthyism" -- not as liberals or the conventional wisdom defines it, but how she defines it. And she defines it, with some persuasiveness (though many disagree strongly), as a sincere and prudent effort to find communist agents -- and there were such agents -- working in the highest levels of our government, particularly in the State Department.

Now, obviously she's not concerned with communists so much at the moment. But the thrust of her remarks about this was that giving rhetorical support to terrorists -- as Ward Churchill and many others do -- is outrageous and borderline seditious. (Well, it probably is seditious, but we don't seem to enforce that law anymore (perhaps for good reasons), so let's just say it's "borderline" and move on.)

She was telling the crowd-- composed mostly of college students -- to expose these terrorist-friendly professors and confront them with more free speech. To criticize them, to argue with them, to call their hate speech by its proper name, and to simply publicize their words so that the whole country knows precisely what they're saying in the classroom.

Now, I'm sure some of these guys would call that "repression." But, once again, they seem to define "repression" as anyone taking issue with their hateful remarks. Apparently their right to free speech is defined as nullifying ours; they feel their free speech is protected only to the extent ours is suppressed.

And that was the basic point Ann was making. To the extent she was calling for actual "repression," she was just being provocative.

But to the extent she was calling for a "New McCarthyism," she was serious, at least how she defines McCarthyism-- as a concerted effort to expose an insidious and anti-American fifth column which has infiltrated important institutions.

Posted by: Ace at 07:36 PM | Comments (23)
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I asked this question a long time ago, and concluded:

There is no fact-checking for anti-Republican hit pieces.

This particular forgery got exposed because it was sooooo amateurishly and ineptly done. Only because this forgery was so laughably crude did it get discovered.

But imagine if it had been a better job. And imagine if it had been something really damning about Bush. Still 100% false, and still coming from shady characters and the slimy undergrowth of the DNC, but competently-crafted forgeries.

The mainstream media would be running with the story. They would be running it 24/7. It's would be the focus of every press conference; it would be mentioned every night on the news, even via strained connections to reports having little to do with the "scandal" (as echoes of Abu Ghraib were seen by the press in practically every other political story).

We got lucky on this one guys. True, we had guys like Bill from INDC and LGF and the Powerline guys and those first Freepers who asked questions doing a man's job. But we were lucky that these "documents" were so transparently fraudulent.

I also quoted a story, running contemporaneously with the exposure of the forgeries, which admitted in passing the documents may be fraudulent but then demanded to know why the White House hadn't released these documents.

Consider that-- even as a reporter admits the documents are possibly forged, he demands to know why the White House did not release these "records."

So that should tip you off as to the MSM's reaction to competently forged documents.

Beldar Blog asks the question again, and spies through a crystal ball into an alternate future:

The absence of the documents from "official" records, plus the doubting opinions of near-witnesses, by themselves wouldn't have convinced many folks that there was a genuine question of the documents having been forged. CBS News might well have been able to continue to stonewall on the identity of its "reliable source" at least until after the election. (For a course syllabus in "Brazen-but-Effective Stonewalling 101," consult the John Kerry Military Academy; see also the Miller-Cooper Institute for Self-Righteous Journalists Concealing Sources' Identities on "Principle.")

Would this scenario have swung the election? I can see it swinging maybe one percentage point of the total vote. I have no reason to think that, for example, it would have swung a disproportionate number of Ohio voters, but a one percent swing there could have made things Florida-2000 tight. My gut tells me that it still wouldn't have changed the election's outcome, and that one percent is an overgenerous guestimate. But it might well have undercut the basis on which Dubya has been able to claim having a broad mandate, however, with resulting significant weakness in his second term.

Scary.

And the media wonders why we both fear and disdain them.

It's because they are just as powerful as they so smugly assume they are. And that they aren't particularly scrupulous about using that power.

Posted by: Ace at 06:47 PM | Comments (4)
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... of the poltical-dissing sort.

Rod Nordland, Newsweek's bureau chief in Baghdad, is probably a bit of a prick but he's in good form here insulting just about every questioner during a live chat. Be aware that he criticizes both the left and right. He is fair-and-balanced in his terse snideness:

Question: "Dirty bomb. Wow, Zarqawi might have one dirty bomb. The U.S. has been shooting off nuclear waste all over Iraq in this Gulf War, and in the last one too. So who is the real terrorist here?"

Answer: "What a poorly informed question."

...

Question: "why does Bush care so much about what happens in Iraq when there are so many poor, sick, poverty-stricken people in the U.S.?"

Answer: "Who said he cares? "

...

Question: "Do you, Masland and Dickey mean "F---ing Murderers" when you say "insurgents" and "fighters" in your STUPIDITY? I've grown sick and tired of you "politically incorrect" reporters. Why don't you have the gumption to call a spade a spade?"

Answer: "OK, you're an idiot. How's that?"

Sort of amusing. On one hand, I wonder why he bothered to do a live chat if his attitude was so clearly disdainful of those daring to question him.

On the other hand, though, it's pretty stupid to suggest that Newsweek begin calling terrorists "FUCKING MURDERERS." I mean, look, sure it's the right basic idea, but it's just an idiotic question, isn't it?

Posted by: Ace at 06:30 PM | Comments (9)
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That's the only explanation I can conceive of for this bit of insanity, via Representative Maurice Hinchey:

They’ve had a very very direct, aggressive attack on the, on the media, and the way it’s handled. Probably the most flagrant example of that is the way they set up Dan Rather. Now, I mean, I have my own beliefs about how that happened: it originated with Karl Rove, in my belief, in the White House. They set that up with those false papers. Why did they do it? They knew that Bush was a draft dodger. They knew that he had run away from his responsibilties in the Air National Guard in Texas, gone out of the state intentionally for a long period of time. They knew that he had no defense for that period in his life. And so what they did was, expecting that that was going to come up, they accentuated it: they produced papers that made it look even worse. And they — and they distributed those out to elements of the media. And it was only — what, like was it CBS? Or whatever, whatever which one Rather works for. They — the people there — they finally bought into it, and they, and they aired it. And when they did, they had ’em. They didn’t care who did it! All they had to do is to get some element of the media to advance that issue. Based upon the false papers that they produced.

The leftist moonbattery of DU is now being parroted by high elected officials of the Democratic Party, and the media doesn't bother taking note of this.

I seem to remember them being very concerned that the Right had been captured by Krazy Konservative Konspiratorialists during the Clinton Administration.

And yet the current fever-dreams of the left are going entirely unremarked by the same, fair-and-balanced media.

I had a conversation with someone from TalkRight while in DC. Basically, we were discussing the fact that the biggest right-leaning sites -- Instapundit, Powerline, LGF, even Andrew Sullivan, if you count him -- are fairly reasonable and respectable and responsible in their opinions. They are, in fact, pretty moderate and centrist.

The worst charge that can be leveled at them is that they're sometimes a bit anodyne*. But they're every bit as respectable as David Gergen at a breast-cancer awareness benefit.

On the other hand, take a look at the big left wing sites -- Kos, Atrios, etc. -- and they seem to be peddling nothing but howl-at-the-moon conspiracy theories.

And then the MSM disses bloggers for being irresponsible and prone to rumor-mongering.

But they never seem to notice that this irresponsibility and, let's face it, nuttiness all seems to be coming from the left.

My site is pretty irresponsible in some ways. I'm snide, I'm nasty, I curse a lot, I post bizarre fantasias about almost having sex with Joshua Micah Marshall. And, let's face it, I'm a very partisan kind of guy.

A hack, if you wish to be uncharitable. I'd quibble with that, but I wouldn't really get offended if someone called me that.

But I don't traffic in nutty conspiracy theories. I don't promise readers that I have all sorts of breaking news about the Jeff Gannon/Karl Rove gay sex affair.

I pretty much stick to criticizing the media, commenting on the current non-conspiratorial political stories of the day, and occasionally noting that Margaret Cho is both unattractive and so not-funny it hurts.

And that's what I seem to notice that most right-leaning bloggers do. Except most of them do it more seriously and more responsibly. And with less "douchebag" insults.

So I'm a bit nonplussed about the media's continuing refusal to note that there is indeed irresponsibility in the blogosphere, and that the great majority of it is coming from the left.

And I'm also now a bit annoyed that high elected officials of the Democratic Party are now trafficking in the same sort of insanity, but Howard Kurtz says not a peep about it.

If bloggers are irresponsible -- and by "bloggers" here I mean my fellow right-leaning bloggers -- why is it we're more capable of self-restraint than Democratic representatives?

* "Anodyne" is a word I learned when studying for the SAT's which means "too scaredy-cat to call someone an 'insufferable dickhead.'"

Just kidding, guys!

Posted by: Ace at 06:15 PM | Comments (10)
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