The "Terror-gator," a musical coercive device just concocted by Are You a Conservative?

Be warned, this thing looks like a lot of fun, but right now it seems like it's been Insta-lanched or something. I can't get it to work at the moment.

Mrs. R has now fixed the link for IE and it should work. It's pretty fun. I've got Eleanor Clift telling me (in rhythmic loop) we don't know how to win the war, with a sort of base-n-drum chill background and occasional shout-outs by Howard Dean.

Not sure why Ed Grimley is one of the "shout-outs," but I do appreciate it. As Jackie Rodgers Junior would say, "Thanks for remembering."

Posted by: Ace at 01:49 PM | Comments (3)
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You've probably seen similar quotes around, but let me remind you of these gems:

WeÂ’ve got to ask, why is this man [bin Laden] so popular around the world? Why are people so supportive of him in many countries that are riddled with poverty? HeÂ’s been out in these countries for decades, building schools, building roads, building infrastructure, building day-care facilities, building health-care facilities, and the people are extremely grateful. -- Democratic Senator Patty "I'm an F'n' Moron" Murray

I still giggle like a retard on happy-gas when I hear about the "day-care facilities" bin Ladin builds. You know-- because Osama bin Ladin's all about making life easier for workin' moms.

Nothing makes him happier than to see a woman pursuing a high-powered career while dropping the little ones off at the Magic Madrassa Happytime Day School.

I've resisted pronouncing a sentence before guilt is found. I still have this old-fashioned notion that even with people like Osama, who is very likely to be found guilty, we should do our best not to, in positions of executive power, not to prejudge jury trials. . . -- Then Democratic candidate for president, now DNC Head Howard Dean

Remember, he wasn't afraid to pre-judge Tom DeLay's guilt.

I guess you can suspend niceties like not prejudging jury trials when you're facing an implacable and evil enemy like Tom DeLay. But with a misunderstood peasant reformer like Osama bin Ladin-- wouldn't want to insinuate any guilt.

And I'm not quoting it (always leave something behind to click on, I says), but there's that little matter of Kerry quibbling over whether the "war on terror" (always scare-quotes around it, as far as liberals go) was actually a war or not.

What.

Ever.

Posted by: Ace at 01:24 PM | Comments (15)
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He's right, and kudos to Betsy for the quote.

Why are liberals incensed by Rove's remarks? Because it forces them to confront an issue they'd been hoping to avoid-- the split between America-hating leftists and America-tolerating liberals. They've got to keep this alliance intact for political reasons... but ideologically, it's a muddle:

In the liberal narrative, the Democratic Party selflessly supported George W. Bush until he unwisely decided to make war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq. And indeed many of them supported that: Schumer and Clinton voted for the Iraq war resolution in October 2002.

Reading the initial press accounts of Rove's speech, I wished that he had been more specific about which liberals he was denouncing -- except that, as those press accounts failed to mention, he was. "I'm not joking," he went on immediately after the words quoted above. "Submitting a petition was precisely what Moveon.org, then known as 9-11peace.org did. You may have seen it in The New York Times or The Washington Post, the San Francisco Examiner or the L.A. Times. (Funny, I didn't see it in the Amarillo Globe News.) It was a petition that 'implored the powers that be' to 'use moderation and restraint in responding to the terrorist attacks against the United States.'"

One reason that the Democrats are squawking so much about Rove's attack on "liberals" is that he has put the focus on a fundamental split in the Democratic Party -- a split among its politicians and its voters.

On the one hand, there are those who believe that this is a fundamentally good country and want to see success in Iraq. On the other hand, there are those who believe this is a fundamentally bad country and want more than anything else to see George W. Bush fail.

Those who do not think this split is real should consult the responses to pollster Scott Rasmussen's question last year. About two-thirds of Americans agreed that the United States is a fair and decent country. Virtually all Bush voters agreed. Kerry voters were split down the middle.

As Betsy notes, either liberals have to confront the America-haters they are tactically allied with or suffer the political consequences themselves.

Let me put it in terms liberals can understand:

Would you ever in a million years allow conservatives to wink-wink nudge-nudge kinda-sorta ally themselves with racists without noting that fact, and without ripping into them for being sympathetic to racists?

Of course you wouldn't. And you don't. You're real bears on ripping conservatives whenever they use "racist code-words" to signal covert support for racism and to curry political favor from racists (whether those racist code-words are real or largely in your imagination).

So please explain to me why we conservatives should just ignore the fact that you are in a political marriage with those who actively root for American casualties and American defeat.

Mainstream conservatives have done a good, if imperfect, job, of rooting out and repudiating the racists in our midst. Don't forget-- it was largely conservatives who brought down Trent Lott.

Liberals cannot continue their wink-wink nudge-nudge flirtations with the hardcore anti-American left and then express shock when their commitment to winning the war or their love of country is questioned.

The alliance of the hard left and more reasonable liberals has persisted because 1) they try to blur their differences in order to keep the political alliance alive and 2) they paper over these differences by emphasizing the One Big Thing they agree on-- the Unholy Trinity of Bush, Rove, and Cheney must be brought low.

Rove is stirring the pot now, and forcing you to take sides. And you don't like that-- because this is a wedge issue, and if you disavow the America-hatin' left, you lose votes.

Well, sometimes you have to give up the votes of moral monsters (like, for example, racists) in order to do the right thing and keep politically clean.

Posted by: Ace at 11:56 AM | Comments (10)
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And not only that-- if you oppose the idea of having the WTC's primary museum dedicated to blaming America first, you're against the idea of free speech.

And so it goes. Apparently only about one-quarter of this country is given the right to free speech by the Constitution. The other three-quarters has to shut up, or else we're chilling the dissent of the one-quarter who really matters.

Posted by: Ace at 11:25 AM | Comments (15)
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1. The decadent Left in its enclaves on the coasts is not dead - and may well mount what amounts to a fifth column.

2. [The terrorists] have good reason to believe that this country is soft, that it has no appetite for the war that has now begun.

3. When the current enemy struck again and again throughout the 1990s, Bill Clinton responded without real credibility, struck back without real endurance, enraged the terrorists without truly hurting them. We are now living with the consequences of his appeasement, and of his refusal to challenge Americans beyond what the polls said they already wanted to do.

4. [Approvingly quoting George Orwell:] "Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side you automatically help out that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one. In practice, 'he that is not with me is against me.'''

5. Of course the initial response of left-wing intellectuals to Sept. 11 was one jerking of the collective knee. This was America's fault. From Susan Sontag to Michael Moore, from Noam Chomsky to Edward Said, there was no question that, however awful the attack on the World Trade Center, it was vital to keep attention fixed on the real culprit: the United States. Of the massacre, a Rutgers professor summed up the consensus by informing her students that "we should be aware that, whatever its proximate cause, its ultimate cause is the fascism of U.S. foreign policy over the past many decades." Or as a poster at the demonstrations in Washington last weekend put it, "Amerika, Get a Clue."

6. Leftists would like to pretend that any criticism of their views raises the specter of domestic repression. But in a country with a First Amendment, no suppression from government is likely, and in the citadels of the media and the academy, the far left is actually vastly overrepresented. The real issue, as pointed out this week by Britain's Labour prime minister, is that some on the left have expressed "a hatred of America that shames those that feel it."

And that's just after three google searches.

The answers:

Of course, they're all from Andrew Sullivan.

In Fairness Update: Quotes 5 and 6 are taken from a piece which expresses optimism that "liberals" are beginning to see the light and break from "leftists."

Still, the line separating liberals and leftists is a blurry one. And, further, he's still making the "sickening" charge that liberals were (and remain) conflicted about this war. The piece is titled "The Agony of the Left," and it's about how liberals find themselves torn between an unimaginably evil enemy and the enemy they've grown to love to hate (i.e., the American way and all that).

If You're Better At Googling Than Me... Shoot me any "sickening" attacks on liberals perpetrated by the fascist Sullivan you discover.

PS... In case you don't know this (I'm sure you do, but then, you're all retards) "Fifth Column/ists" is a direct suggest of actual treason. It comes (I think) from the Francoist forces seeking to seize Madrid, and the suggestion that there were four columns of troops outside the city, and a fifth one-- sympathizers, subversives, those willing to taked armed action against their own lawful government -- within the city itself.

Covert enemies of the state, in other words. Traitors.

So honestly, Excitable Andy should spare us the lessons on civility and what makes for "sickening" rhetoric. The only standard I can see here is that it's okay when he indulges in such rhetoric but that it's (wait for it) gob-smackingly vile when anyone else comes close to expressing himself in the hyperbolically emotional and over-the-top ad hominems he does on a regular basis.

Posted by: Ace at 10:50 AM | Comments (17)
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I have to say in fairness: He doesn't quite come out and say it, but I have little doubt that's what he's suggesting, though in the cautious-cocksucker manner he's employing now that he's under the microscope.

There is a charge of criminal incitement. Apparently there's some hidden law on the books enforced by left-wing judges that such a charge can never be brought against a left-winger (it's always, it seems, "hypothetical" and "attenuated" and thus never a "clear and present danger" to incite criminal behavior).

I think an anti-abortion extremist inciting a similar sort of bombing could face legal problems though. (And again, I'd support that... just not sure how the left-wing exception came to be.)

Thanks to Eric.

More at Michelle Malkin, including a link to the audio.

Posted by: Ace at 10:05 AM | Comments (6)
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Basically he's just on a constant jag about "torture" and HIV.

But it was this post that I think cinched the code red:

It seems to me that Karl Rove's sickening generalization about "liberals" in the war on terror is revealing in ways not obviously apparent. Sure, there were some on the hard left who really did jump to blame America for the evil perpetrated by the monsters of 9/11. I took names at the time. But all "liberals"? The New Republic? Joe Lieberman? Hitch? Paul Berman? The Washington Post editorial page? Tom Friedman? Almost every Democrat in the Congress who endorsed the war in Afghanistan? You expect that kind of moronic extremism from a Michelle Malkin, but from the most influential figure in an administration leading a country in wartime? Ok, ok, I'm not surprised. Rove is a brutal operator. But to my mind, the hysterical attacks on Durbin and now this outburst (and the White House's subsequent endorsement of it) are an indication of some level of panic.

It's funny that Excitable Andy uses the phrase "hysterical attacks" to castigate his opponents but continues using highly-emotional language like "sickening" like he was writing a fucking H.P. Lovecraft horror-story. I expect him to next describe Karl Rove's lair as being constructed of a strange and disquieting gray-green stone, piled high in impossibly tall Cyclopean towers, which seem to follow some non-Euclidean geometry in a most nauseuous manner.

Update: Master of None quotes Excitable Andy and observes:

"Sure, there were some on the hard left who really did jump to blame America for the evil perpetrated by the monsters of 9/11. I took names at the time."

Isn't that exactly what Rove said?

Let me go that one better.

After 9-11, Excitable Andy routinely used the "sickening" language "Fifth Columnists" to describe those seeking to undermine the war effort. Even when challenged on such name-calling, he did not back down.

Furthermore, on multiple occasions he quoted Orwell for the proposition that anti-war is "objectively pro-Nazi" (meaning, of course, that being anti-war now is objectively pro-Al Qaeda).

One thing I despise is the sort of person who has one strongly held belief, reverses it completely, and then has the temerity to tear into those who continue to hold the beliefs he once did -- without ever acknowledging, repudiating, or apologizing for his own prior support of those now-"sickening" beliefs.

Posted by: Ace at 09:35 AM | Comments (33)
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I wasn't sure if I wanted to link this, but given the fact that the blogosphere has pretty much trashed him (yes, before reading the actual book), it just seems contrary to the spirit of "fair and balanced" and open discourse to not let him fire back.

RWN has the interview. Interestingly, Ed Klein does a little interviewing of his own, asking John Hawkins about the conservative take on the book, to which Hawkins replies:

Off the record, pretty bad, Ed. I think that rape thing really hurt because a lot of people took a look at it and they said, "Alright, this is not going to help, itÂ’s going to be a smear book, itÂ’s another Kitty Kelley sort of thing" and I think a lot of people because of that are very, very cautious about it...I mean, you know, looking at Hannity and National Review, theyÂ’re giving you a rough time. People are really cautious about it, I think.

I did at least want to give you some time to talk about (the book) because IÂ’m listening to all these other interviews and nobodyÂ’s even giving you a chance to talk about Hillary. YouÂ’re talking about Ed Klein the whole time, defending yourself. So I think itÂ’s been kind of lukewarm from what IÂ’ve seen in a lot of places...

Ed Klein: What can I do about it?

Klein says the rape quote was taken out of context, and that he hadn't intended to suggest a genuine rape and all that. Not having read the book, I don't know how out of context this line was.

I do know that when you report something like that, people are naturally going to take it to mean what it seems to mean (i.e., that Klein is suggesing Clinton raped Hillary), and therefore it's better to omit such a detail (even if true) because the implications are so slanderous and outlandish.

And if you're going to report it, you'd better state pretty clearly you think the "rape" line was a joke.

But then, if it was a joke, the value in reporting it seems rather weak. It's newsworthy to report that someone said something racist in seriousness. On the other hand, I don't think it's newsworthy that I once joked with a Puerto Rican friend of mine that I was worried he was stealing from my desk when I went to the bathroom, "because that's what you people do." He laughed (we had that kind of relationship, where I was Mr. Dumb Racist White Guy and he was Puerto Rican Hubcap Burglar).

What value is there in reporting a joke meant ironically? Even if Bill said this, Klein now says he knows he was making some not-quite-in-good-taste ironic joke, so what's it matter? The whole point of irony (Type A irony, let's call it) is to say the opposite of what you mean. And therefore irony doesn't really reveal much about your true thinking.

That said, the interview is filled with creamy salacious goodness, and we get to revisit all the various affairs both Bill and Hillary are rumored (and, in a couple of cases, proven) to have had.

If you still care.

And perhaps we should. Yes, this is all very sordid and personal, but there is the potential for real-world, policy-making impact. As RWN asks,

Do you think that could be a security liability for the United States? Let's say a foreign intelligence agency gets Frank Gifford style pics of Bill Clinton having an affair and then asks Hillary to look the other way on something or face maybe a 6 month feeding frenzy in the press when it breaks? Do you think that could be a security liability for the US?

It's fanciful but not implausible. I suppose many politicians can be compromised, but this is a fairly spectacular form of compromise, and it's not exactly unlikely.

Posted by: Ace at 09:24 AM | Comments (8)
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Great piece I never quite got around to linking:

The World Trade Center Memorial Cultural Complex will be an imposing edifice wedged in the place where the Twin Towers once stood. It will serve as the primary "gateway" to the underground area where the names of the lost are chiseled into concrete. The organizers of its principal tenant, the International Freedom Center (IFC), have stated that they intend to take us on "a journey through the history of freedom"--but do not be fooled into thinking that their idea of freedom is the same as that of those Marines. To the IFC's organizers, it is not only history's triumphs that illuminate, but also its failures. The public will have come to see 9/11 but will be given a high-tech, multimedia tutorial about man's inhumanity to man, from Native American genocide to the lynchings and cross-burnings of the Jim Crow South, from the Third Reich's Final Solution to the Soviet gulags and beyond. This is a history all should know and learn, but dispensing it over the ashes of Ground Zero is like creating a Museum of Tolerance over the sunken graves of the USS Arizona.

The public will be confused at first, and then feel hoodwinked and betrayed. Where, they will ask, do we go to see the September 11 Memorial? The World Trade Center Memorial Foundation will have erected a building whose only connection to September 11 is a strained, intellectual one. While the IFC is getting 300,000 square feet of space to teach us how to think about liberty, the actual Memorial Center on the opposite corner of the site will get a meager 50,000 square feet to exhibit its 9/11 artifacts, all out of sight and underground. Most of the cherished objects which were salvaged from Ground Zero in those first traumatic months will never return to the site. There is simply no room. But the International Freedom Center will have ample space to present us with exhibits about Chinese dissidents and Chilean refugees. These are important subjects, but for somewhere--anywhere--else, not the site of the worst attack on American soil in the history of the republic.

More disturbing, the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. is handing over millions of federal dollars and the keys to that building to some of the very same people who consider the post-9/11 provisions of the Patriot Act more dangerous than the terrorists that they were enacted to apprehend--people whose inflammatory claims of a deliberate torture policy at Guantanamo Bay are undermining this country's efforts to foster freedom elsewhere in the world.

The driving force behind the IFC is Tom Bernstein, the dynamic co-founder of the Chelsea Piers Sports and Entertainment Complex who made a fortune financing Hollywood movies. But his capital ventures appear to have funded his true calling, the pro bono work he has done his entire adult life--as an activist lawyer in the human rights movement. He has been a proud member of Human Rights First since it was founded--as the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights--27 years ago, and has served as its president for the last 12.

The public has a right to know that it was Mr. Bernstein's organization, joined by the American Civil Liberties Union, that filed a lawsuit three months ago against Donald Rumsfeld on behalf of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was Human Rights First that filed an amicus brief on behalf of alleged "dirty bomber" Jose Padilla, an American citizen who the Justice Department believes is an al Qaeda recruit. It was Human Rights First that has called for a 9/11-style commission to investigate the alleged torture of detainees, complete with budget authority, subpoena power and the ability to demand that witnesses testify under oath.

And you must read the bios of the other people involved in the IFC. Eric Foner and George Soros are on the list.

They. Never. Stop.

You'd think that being able to push their views on the public through the airwaves and on campuses would be enough. Nope. They also seek to appropriate from Americans a monument to the dead. You won't even be able to make the trek to Ground Zero without having to endure the same "Guantanamo-obsessed" (in Ms. Burlingame's phrase) ideology you get from the NYT and CBSNews every f'n' day.

Posted by: Ace at 09:06 AM | Comments (12)
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Makes sense, sorta:

Gov. Mike Easley has turned his affection for Fox TV's animated show, "King of the Hill," into a target group in his polls.

Easley, who views the show's main character as a man devoid of party label, asked his pollster several years ago to separate "King of the Hill" viewers in poll results in order to use them as a political barometer.

"What happens in the show is, the wrestling (with issues) manifests itself in the gray area," Easley said Friday. "He thinks he has the answer but there's a little different spin on it. Maybe it affects him personally or his friends."

...

Easley's poll asked voters if they watched "King of the Hill." Viewers tended to be non-college educated white males, a group that Democrats overwhelmingly lose _ except for Easley. His pollster, Fred Yang, fielded surveys last year showing top Democratic candidates losing 3-to-1 among the "Hill" fans, but Easley capturing more than 40 percent of those in the survey.

The Democrats have offered up a lot of silly solutions for their political problems, and this seems the least silly of the lot so far.

Next: Governor Bill Richardson hires "Brian" from Family Guy as a consultant.

Via Fark.

Bonus Parody: John from Wuzzadem presents the King of the Hill characters discussing that "eye-talian" reporter/kidnap victim and the supposed attempt to kill her.

Posted by: Ace at 08:15 AM | Comments (12)
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