Robert Novak explains it all:

All this is a charade. Opposition to Bolton has become a party matter, where his possible Democratic supporters have been brought to heel. The cloture vote to end the filibuster scheduled for 6 p.m. today is unlikely to collect the necessary 60 votes. That effectively would end the confirmation struggle. President Bush then would face the dilemma of either sending Bolton to the United Nations on a recess appointment that will be reviled by Democrats as extra-constitutional, or accepting defeat. This outcome hardly seemed possible two months ago when Dodd, long seeking improved relations with Fidel Castro's Cuban dictatorship, renewed an old complaint about Bolton's disclosure as undersecretary of state of Castro's bioweapons development. Sen. Joseph Biden, ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee who seldom shuns a confirmation fight, eagerly joined Dodd.

Not much has been said lately about Cuba or Bolton's conservative outlook, neither of which is good grounds for denying confirmation. Dodd still complains Bolton is hard on subordinates ("Mr. Bolton was a very driven individual when he sought to get his way with underlings," the senator said Thursday).

Seeking a way to justify preconceived opposition, Dodd and Biden seized on the executive branch's refusal to give the Senate what it wanted. The issue, so obscure it is difficult for the non-senatorial mind to grasp, goes to Bolton having requested intelligence intercepts. Dodd demands the names of U.S. officials listed there whom Bolton might have intimidated.

Sen. Pat Roberts, the Intelligence Committee chairman, reviewed the intercepts and reported to Dodd they were "vanilla" and did not affect the confirmation fight. Roberts originally thought his Democratic vice chairman, Sen. Jay Rockefeller, agreed. But that was before Democratic leaders got hold of Rockefeller and turned him around.

So much of this is dishonest Kabuki. If the Democrats are so convinced in the rectitude of their positions, why this eternal obfuscation about what those positions actually are? Why do they routinely avoid substantive disagreements in favor of shadow-theater procedural whining?

They were against the Iraq War, to name an obvious example. But 90% of their arguments were about procedure and timing; i.e., we can't do this without the approval of the French/the UN, we can't do this now, etc. Why did so few of them step up to the plate and just say, "I am against this war on principle; it's bad policy and will end badly"?

Democrats maintain some of their appeal by concealing their actual beliefs. But it's a double-edged sword; there are a lot of voters who know that what they say isn't what they actually mean, and suspect that even New York Times-styled "moderates" are actually quite liberal.

Posted by: Ace at 10:08 AM | Comments (4)
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Yes, the left continues to harbor fantasies about impeaching Bush.

Perhaps we ought to encourage them.

Putting aside questions of right and wrong-- the impeachement of Bill Clinton was a political loser. It was the sort of political loser a party is compelled to embark upon (as the most vocal and passionate supporters of the party, like me, demanded it), but it alienated moderate voters and cost us, for a time at least (with Jeffords' defection) majority status in the Senate.

Those who follow politics closely can't help but get personal about them. Not only is there the childish impulse (which we all share, of course) to be proven right in some dramatic fashio, but there are petty grievances and hatreds that we carry in our hearts.

But most people don't follow politics closely, and so while most people aren't as informed as, say, you Wonderful Readers, neither are they succeptible to an overpersonalization of politics. Politics just doesn't mean enough to them to take it too personally. Being somewhat ignorant about the daily who's hot/who's not of partisan politics yields an accidental beneift-- perspective, which sometimes hardcore partisans (guilty) lose.

Bill Clinton was able to turn his ethical and legal problems into an actual positive by setting up a contrast. While Republicans were fixated on him, he projected the image (the image, mind you) of being fixated on "solving problems for the American people."

I have little doubt that George Bush and Karl Rove will do the same.

The right had one advantage over the left during the Clinton Impeachment Wars -- while moderate voters were turned off by what they considered and unnecessary and destabilizing and wasteful effort to turn Clinton out of office, more voters still apparently believed in the basics of the Republican platform than the Democratic platform.

The left had better watch it-- they're on the wrong side of many of the most important issues, in political terms. If they compound that by taking this impeachment crap a little too seriously-- then they'll be alienating moderate voters through their partisanship that are already pretty much aliented from them based upon the Democratic Party's beliefs.

Posted by: Ace at 09:38 AM | Comments (11)
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... if you have the bandwidth.

Over the weekend I was discussing blogs with someone. Although blogs have some influence here in America, American blogs' ability to actually spur change is hampered by the fact that we have (I can't believe I'm about to say this) almost free and accurate press. Sure, they lean very liberal, but there is no state control. Just a shared cultural/social system that acts as a sort of control on what is published.

But in true tyrannies like Iran and China... a thriving Shadow Media really could produce enormous changes. If people are too cowed to express their true feelings, an underground, popular media could give them some courage -- the courage that comes with realizing you're part of a big group that could kick some ass if it wanted to.

Thanks again to NickS.

Posted by: Ace at 09:29 AM | Comments (4)
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Here's the key paragraph from an FBI agent's report that Excitable Andy and Dickie Durban make such a fuss over:

On a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food, or water. Most times they urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18-24 hours or more. On one occasion, the air conditioning had been turned down so far and the temperature was so cold in the room, that the barefooted detainee was shaking with cold... On another occasion, the [air conditioner] had been turned off, making the temperature in the unventilated room well over 100 degrees. The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his hair out throughout the night. On another occasion, not only was the temperature unbearably hot, but extremely loud rap music was being played in the room, and had been since the day before, with the detainee chained hand and foot in the fetal position on the tile floor.

Now, without a doubt, being chained to a floor is not pleasant. But it's not torture. It's deliberate discomfort, as are "stress positions" and the like.

As for the AC being turned off and the temperature being "well over 100 degrees" -- hey, that's life. There are a lot of people without AC who have to endure temperatures "well over 100 degrees" for days on end. This is torture? If so, I've undergone torture quite a few times in past Augusts.

And rap music? Give me a break. Obviously they're trying to give this guy headaches and not give him the quiet necessary to think. Playing music loudly is annoying, but once again-- not torture.

So, there you go. Based on that, we're running "gulags" torturing people as badly as the Nazis.

Great Cox & Forkum Cartoon on Durbin: And, by extension, Excitable Andy too.

Torture in Iraq! No AC for Iraq the Model, and Metallica's blaring.

But where is Dick Durbin? Who will speak for Omar?

Thanks for the last two to NickS.

Posted by: Ace at 08:53 AM | Comments (11)
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Upped to "Disgusted."

Not only is he defending Dick Durbin's remarks ("Dick Durbin Said Nothing Wrong"), he's also burlbling some stupid new theory about gays being the new Jews (or vice-versa-- it's just as dumb either way).

And he's disgusted that the pro-torture right couldn't sink any lower after the "I [heart] Gitmo" bumper-sticker (linked below on this page).

Posted by: Ace at 08:48 AM | Comments (9)
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It's all good:

Again, the more one hears the specifics of the “insensitivity” of the American regime at Guantanamo, the more many of us reckon we’re being way too sensitive. For example, camp guards are under instructions to handle copies of the Koran only when wearing gloves. The reason for this is that the detainees regard infidels as “unclean”. Fair enough, each to his own. But it’s one thing for the Islamists to think infidels are unclean, quite another for the infidels to agree with them. Far from being tortured, the prisoners are being handled literally with kid gloves (or simulated kid-effect gloves). The US military hand each jihadi his complimentary copy of the Koran as delicately as white-gloved butlers bringing His Lordship The Times of London. When I bought a Koran to bone up on Islam a couple of days after 9/11, I didn’t wear gloves to the bookstore. If that’s “disrespectful” to Muslims, tough. You should have thought about that before you allowed your holy book to become the central motivation for global jihad.

...

Judging from the way he’s dug himself in, Dick Durbin, the Number Two Democrat in the US Senate, genuinely believes Gitmo is analogous to Belsen, the gulags and the killing fields. But he crossed a line, from anti-Bush to anti-American, and most Americans have no interest in following him down that path.You can’t claim (as Democrats do, incessantly) to “support our troops” and then dump them in the same category as the Nazis and the Khmer Rouge. In the hermetically sealed echo chamber between the Dem leadership, the mainstream US media, Hollywood, Ivy League “intellectuals” and European sophisticates, the gulag cracks are utterly unexceptional. But, for a political party that keeps losing elections because it has less and less appeal outside a few coastal enclaves, Durbin’s remarks are devastating. The Democrats flopped in 2002 and 2004 because they were seen as incoherent on national security issues. Explicitly branding themselves as the “terrorists’ rights” party is unlikely to improve their chances for 2006.

Dave Chappelle has a funny bit concerning the few times that racism works in black men's favor (serendipitidously enough, the bit has to do with terrorism).

Similarly, media bias sometimes works in conservatives' favor, and when it does, as Chappelle says, it's delicious.

Jonah Goldberg pointed out how liberal media bias hurts liberals: In a nutshell, they just don't see these shit-storms coming. Conservatives almost always see these shit-storms coming, because we know every false-footing (yeah, I know the French term, but fuck 'em) will be played up on page one of the New York Times. So we're naturally hesitant and paranoid and a little afraid of public reaction (or, rather, media attempts to drive public reaction).

Unless of course the conservative in question is a total tool like Trent Lott or Jerry Falwell.

But liberals get caught an awful lot with their little pink dinks poking out of their zippers, because the reinforcement from their cocooned liberal social circles and the New York Times editorial page tells them You're not only right and brave to do this, but you'll be rewarded handsomely in political terms.

They see little else but a very skewed sample of "American opinion." I'm sure Dick Durbin was mouthing off about this at a DC cocktail party a few weeks ago, and he got nothing but "Huzzah!'s" from his dopey liberal buddies. Someone should have the guts to say that on the Senate floor, someone told him, who, just guessing, was probably a cute 20-year-old intern at The Washington Prospect.

And so, partly to impress his little cocktail party chickadee, he decided he'd compare the very minor physical coercion at Gitmo to Pol Pot's killing fields and Hitler's industrialized genocide.

And then he found out something that should have been obvious had his mind not been clouded by bedding an intern: This was a colossally stupid, dangerous, anti-American, and politically disastrous thing to say.

The stupid son of a bitch-- and he IS stupid, of course -- never saw this coming. He thought himself "brave" in making these remarks, but only in that rather odd sense of "bravery" in which he'd actually be rewarded for his "risk." It didn't occur to him he was about to bring himself and his party into general disrepute.

And so it goes. The liberal media has once again screwed one of their own by not accurately reporting the public temperament and mood. Dick Durbin trusted the liberal media, and is only now finding out that, gee willickers, maybe the American people aren't quite as hopped-up about "abuses" at Gitmo as the left-leaning folks at Amnesty International are.

As Styen (and everyone else) is remarking: After Clinton finally helped shed the Democrats' long reputation as the party of criminals' rights, a new Confederacy of Dunces is hell-bent on establishing them as the Hug a Terrorist party.

Congratulations-- you just endeared yourself to the NYT's Gail Collins. And alienated the majority of voters in all of the swing states you'll need to win in 2008.

Posted by: Ace at 11:34 AM | Comments (48)
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Just linked by National Review's The Corner, by Jonah Goldberg, who is "hip" (at least by the low standards of conservative hipitude.

It's Andrew Dice Clay ripping into a CNNfn guy who suggested he was no longer a headliner, using the f-word an awful lot.

And it is ancient.

Still, sorta funny.

Also VERY Old: Old-but-classic Spoil-Sports cartoon about the essential lameness of Aquaman, to Five for Fighting's (?) It's Not Easy To Be Me.

Today is piss-off-Dave-from-Garfield-Ridge day. Anyone got any other oldies but goodies?

So Old It's New Again: Viking Kittens do Zep's Immigrant Song.

Screw you, Dave.

Dave Joins In: Jim Everett doesn't want Jim Rome to call him "Chris" Everett. I mean, he really doesn't want him to call him that.

I loved seeing this little douche get it.

Posted by: Ace at 10:53 AM | Comments (17)
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Top Secret deep-cover goverment source "Deep Stoat" sends the following observation:

Listed below is a selection of organizations that received federal grants from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) in fiscal year 2005....

Assuming passage of the bill reported by the full Senate Appropriations committee and sent to the floor of the Senate, the NEA is set to receive $126 million next year, an increase of $5 million over its current funding level. In contrast, Senate appropriators are set to underfund President BushÂ’s budget request for defense by $7 billion.

Let's be honest. Art should pay for itself. If it's not paying for itself, it's not good art.

What about "great art" that can't find a large enough audience to make itself profitable?

Look, we all do things we don't want to do. If you're a writer or sculptor or whatever, and you want to serve the not-very-high-paying counter-culture, I'm sorry, take a day job or mix up your transgressive works with some commercially viable stuff. You can do the commercially-viable stuff under a psuedonym if you like.

I'm tired of paying money so that artists (both alleged and actual) don't have to compromise their integrity by doing work that might actually support them. No government agency is paying me money to turn this crap out; perhaps if I were on the taxpayer's dime I'd feel differently. But I'm not so I don't.

Examples of the important "art" being funded by the NEA follow. It's not that each grant is very large, especially by the standards of our drunken-sailor US government welfare regime. But the size of the grants don't matter. I don't spend money on brussel sprouts because I don't like them and there's no point in spending money on something I neither need nor want. It doesn't matter that they're 2 for $1.59 at PathMark.

As Michael Kinsley observed, long before he descended into nasty knee-jerk hackdom, you have every right to be part of the counter-culture. But you don't have the right to be counter-culture on someone else's dime.

Sorta runs contrary to the idea of "counter-culture," actually.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 10:32 AM | Comments (14)
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An ex-CIA agent made some arguably anti-Semitic (well, let us say, "anti-Zionist") remarks at John Conyers' barking moonbat hearings on Iraq, but the New York Times whitewashes his statements and won't report them to its liberal, and fairly Jewish, well-cocooned readership.

The New York Times

All the news that we think you can handle without drawing "improper" inferences. We are the gate-keepers of your minds. It's a service we provide to you, gratis.

Thanks to the Hotline's Blogometer.

Ask the "Public Editor!": Tom Maguire suggests you ask the public editor why the New York Times deliberately embargoed the most newsworthy part of this story.

Posted by: Ace at 09:41 AM | Comments (37)
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Okay, so the left wants to impeach Bush over the personal observations and opinions of a left-leaning British aide to the left-leaning Blair government.

That's a bit like saying we should impeach Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg because G. Gordon Liddy wrote a nasty screed about her.

But not only do they not matter worth a damn but there's some question about their actual accuracy as well. As the reporter who published them claims he destroyed the originals, and what he offers is merely a transcript of what he read, there's a bit of doubt as to how faithfully they reproduce the memos.

Powerline disagrees, noting that fake memos would be sexier, as it were, and more damning regarding Bush, and besides, no one in British government has contradicted the basic accuracy of the memos (at least as far as them expressing this one aide's thoughts).

Either way, it doesn't matter. So I'm not sure if we should care if they're 100% accurate or a little sweetened. They're meaningless.

It's fun to hear the left talk about impeachment, though.

Have fun, guys. As someone who was big into impeachment a few short years ago, let me tell you it's not going to be nearly as fun or satisfying as you might be imagining.

Posted by: Ace at 09:29 AM | Comments (6)
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