That may well be the case.

But if she's hectoring people for immaturity, what's this picture...

...doing on her web-site?

Yes, that's poopie.

It's not exactly Jonathan Swift, now is it?

Posted by: Ace at 08:29 AM | Comments (22)
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James Lileks is on f'n' fire, and he's got all the funny:

Gitmo is the gulag equivalent of a Ben Affleck movie: no one's seen it, but everyone has an opinion about it. Given all the rhetoric that's been spilled about this sorta-kinda-not-really Death Camp, it's time we re-examine the facts, and remind ourselves what's really at stake. Herewith a summation.

...

Q: Who's in Gitmo?

A: Operation Scoop Up The Little Lost Lambs plucked men from distant countries and brought them to Gitmo to beat them deaf for no apparent reason. There are between 400 and 30 million people at Gitmo, and somewhere between zero and 15 million people have died there.

...

Q: Wow. This is bad.

A: It is. It's worse than Waco, because at least those people aren't suffering anymore.

Q: When did they build this place?

A: After Sept. 11, 2001.

Q: That date seems familiar for some reason. Did something happen?

A: Not really. You can roll over and go back to sleep.

Q: Isn't it our role as citizens to be wary of government?

A: Sure. But take this quote: "I call on those who question the motives of the president and his national security advisers to join with the rest of America in presenting a united front to our enemies abroad." That was Sen. Dick Durbin in 1998, when Bill Clinton attacked Iraq. But that was then, and this is George W. Bush.

The whole thing. Read it you will.

To NickS, thanks again. /Yoda off.

Posted by: Ace at 08:26 AM | Comments (2)
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They've gone nuts.

Nancy Pelosi asks the typical questions:

The treatment of detainees is a taint on our country's reputation, especially in the Muslim world, and there are many questions that must be answered. These questions are important because the safety of our country depends on our reputation and how we are viewed, especially in the Muslim world.

There are many questions that have gone unanswered: What was the atmosphere created that permitted detainee abuse, and why was it tolerated? What was the training and supervision of the troops? Who had this responsibility? What is it that the Republicans are trying to hide? How far up the chain of command does this go? Why is the Secretary of Defense not taking responsibility? This happened on his watch.

Many of the detainees have been in U.S. custody since October 2001. Why have they been in custody for nearly four years without being charged? Why has so little been done to resolve the status of the detainees?

Again, if you want to "raise questions" and you're "demanding answers," let me ask Nancy a couple myself:

What coercive techniques do you specifically approve of?

Why would you release enemy soldiers, "charged" with a crime or not, before the war is over? Where in the Geneva Protocols do you read that captured enemy fighters are to be released if they are not convicted of a crime? Has this ever occurred in any previous war (apart from voluntary prisoner exchanges and hardship cases, etc.)?

Once again, I don't expect answers, and I don't expect the MSM -- which loves "raising questions" -- to actually raise any to the left.

Thanks to NickS.

And PS... Hugh also has Paul Begala agreeing that the war is over... and we lost, of course. (Scan down to the last couple paragraphs of the exchange.)

Posted by: Ace at 08:21 AM | Comments (14)
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So declares Miriam, and Lone Tree begins listing those who have decided to participate.

Will I be blogging naked? Well, of course. But I don't call Friday "Blog Naked Day." I just call it "Friday."

Posted by: Ace at 08:15 AM | Comments (19)
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So says this guy.

I made a similar point a long time ago. Back when there was just as much violence as this recent murder-Tet.

Is the war over? It depends on your terms. The "war" is over (and has been for two years) in this sense: The "war" waged by terrorists cannot be "won" in any meaningful fashion.

They can kill and maim and slaughter -- just like Al Qaeda can blow up sunbathers in Bali -- but they cannot achieve any political objectives greater than killing and maming and slaughtering.

Generally, killing is a means in warfare to achieving a geopolitical goal. Al Qaeda must content itself, both in Iraq and elsewhere, to making killing the end sought in and of itself.

Does anyone really expect that, if we departed Iraq tomorrow, Iraqis would just willingly hand Iraq back over to their former Sunni masters and their new/old Al Qaeda compatriots?

Of course not. It's inconceivable that an armed 75% of the country would turn over power to the 25% that has abused and murdered them for 50 years.

Only Europeans could possibly be such pussified cowards.

What would happen, were we to depart and the terrorism to continue, would be the famous Iraqi Civil War we've heard so much about.

And the Sunnis -- and their terrorist allies -- would be slaughtered. And viciously slaughtered, ethnic-cleansing sort of slaughtered, and quite frankly, it would be their fault.

Though the Sunnis don't realize it-- we're in Iraq now chiefly to protect them from the well-deserved mass-butchery they would suffer were they to continue to support the murder of those who refuse to knuckle under their nasty form of minority rule.

I don't support a quick withdrawal because I would like to give Iraq -- and the Sunnis, too -- a chance for a peaceful future.

But in any event, Iraq will have a more peaceful future, whether the Sunnis end their support for terrorism or not. That peaceful future will come either after the Sunnis join the political process and accept their new status as a minority population with as much power as a minority usually has, or after the Kurds and Shi'as begin leveling their cities and neighborhoods with indiscriminate mortar-fire.

The war is over. The carnage continues, because we are dealing with a foe who is not concerned with tangible geopolitical results, but merely slaughter for the sake of slaughter. But while the slaughter continues, the war is over.

And it has been for quite some time.

The Trouble With Exiting Now: We'd have to arm the legitimate Iraqi government with bombers and tanks and artillery and such.

Within a month or so those tanks and bombers and guns would be blowing the living shit out of every restive Sunni city, town, neighborhood, and hamlet.

America would be blamed for "supporting an ally just as bad as Saddam."

We wouldn't be doing anything like that, of course; at some point it does become justified to use the same tactics against your enemy -- indiscriminate slaughter of civilians -- they use against you. Especailly when, unlike the United States, your military is neither powerful enough nor disciplined enough to win without killing lots of innocent civilians.

Still, a PR nightmare.

Are the mounting deaths of US soldiers worth avoiding that nightmare of bad world opinion?

At the present, I guess yes, as there are hopeful signs the Sunnis are turning around and willing to end their terrorist insurgency.

But if this doesn't pan out-- pull out, arm the Kurds and Shi'as to the teeth, and let them do the sorts of nasty things we won't do ourselves. And just take the shrieking from Excitable Andy and his newfound ally Katha Politt.

Loose Shit Gotten Straight: Link should be fixed now.

Posted by: Ace at 11:32 AM | Comments (23)
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Well, not everyone. But 52% is a bare majority.

While Excitable Andy finds it gob-smackingly vile (of course) that most of us want to keep Gitmo open for business, he casts his disagreement in (of course, redux) the most emotion-laden of straw-man argument terms.

I don't support Gitmo and its practices primarily because I'm a fan of cruelty. Although, let me confess, I do take some pleasure in monsters being treated unkindly. I don't think I've ever cried that a child-rapist was himself raped in prison, or that a murdering bastard got shivved to death in the shower. I don't support rought tactics for punitive reasons; then again, I don't wring my hands about that incidental side-benefit.

It's important to keep Gitmo open for a lot of reasons. First of which-- being outside of America, it's partially immunized against court processes. I don't want judges setting the rules for treating illegal combatants and outright terrorist murderers; I'd rather have the military and some very tough-minded sonsabitches from the CIA doing so.

You've got to trust somebody. Somebody has to make the rules. Sorry, I trust the military and the right sort of CIA agent more on this point.

Second, we actually do need to engage in not-quite-dainty treatment of actual terrorists to compel them to answer questions they wouldn't otherwise answer. They hide amongst the civilian population, which is illegal; they are engaging in a criminal act simply by refusing to wear a uniform marking them as combatants. If we're to defeat this Army of Psychopathic Murder-Cultists, we need to be able to flush them out of their civilian-garb cover, and the only way to do that is to ask a captured, known terrorist who he works with, who he gets his supplies from, where he meets, whom he gives orders to, and (especially) who he takes orders from.

Excitable Andy and Dick Durbin have no alternate plan as to how we can accomplish this obviously-critical goal. Obviously, they believe it's not so critical at all, and we should just abandon it as a goal if it means we have to stoop to playing loud rap music in a terrorist's cell; but they're very cagey about actually saying so.

Admitting their precious little consciences are more important than saving human lives and capturing more terrorists would be counterproductive to their main goal of getting attention and nice reviews from left-wing publications.

Third-- if we shut down Gitmo, where the hell do we put them? Not America, certainly; we'd just have to find another base similarly removed from actual American soil and warehouse them there. And what the hell good would that accomplish?

And finally-- terrorists are actually afraid of Gitmo. To this extent, Excitable Andy and Dick Durbin are doing us an actual accidental solid, by frightening terrorists about the "horrors" they'll encounter there.

Posted by: Ace at 11:15 AM | Comments (79)
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Excitable Andy likes asking questions. Well, one question. The question he keeps asking -- first to Hugh Hewitt, now to emailers who disagree with with him -- is this:

So go ahead: answer his implied question. If you had been told that prisoners had been found in this state in one of Saddam's or Stalin's jails, would you have believed it? Of course, you would.

One of the few emails he prints that's not of a "You go, girlfriend nature" makes this point:

soldier sat in his barracks, shining his shoes. So go ahead: answer his implied question. If you had been told that soldiers had been found in this state in one of Saddam's or Stalin's barracks, would you have believed it? Of course, you would." This is the fundamental problem with Durbin's analogy. The are many things that are "encompassed" in the behavior of those regimes. However, we remember those regimes for the worst of their behavior not the behavior slightly below the median. You know this, dude. Don't play dumb.

Which is a good answer.

But I have a question for Excitable Andy.

Much of the attacks on American policy from the left -- and clearly Excitable Andy has joined the left in most important respects; obviously he's taking the left's position here -- follow a pattern. The pattern is simple; it's the oldest one in the book. The pattern is to simply excortiate America's actions without every stating, in affirmative terms which themselves can be analyzed and critiqued, any alternative line of action.

I was delighted when, before the invasion of Afghanistan, Excitable Andy debated The Nation's Katha Politt and continually challenged her to say what she would do, in affirmative terms, about the problem of the Taliban sheltering and supporting Al Qaeda, rather than simply saying "no, no, no" to Bush's plan to invade and remove the regime. He embarassed her, because she was forced to admit, ultimately, that she didn't know what to do; she just knew we shouldn't do this.

As they say in poker and politics, you can't beat something with nothing.

But now Excitable Andy is aping the left's tactics as well as their policy agenda. For while Andy rips into America for treating terrorist prisoners "like animals," he himself offers no counter-proposals regarding how to treat them.

The implication, of course, is that we should treat them more or less kindly, and give them all the comforts that, say, prisoners in a medium security prison would enjoy. No harsh treatment, no stress positions, no withholding of comforts like central air, etc., except in cases of violent behavior.

But he refuses to address the central question: If you're not going to employ any coercive tactics against terrorists, how the hell do you expect to elicit information from them -- information, mind you, that will often (if not always) save innocent human lives?

Are there any coercive tactics he approves of? If so, it is his duty as someone who fancies himself an intellectual braveheart and straight-shooter to announce what levels of coercion he's comfortable with and would approve of. The tactics he is currently so, well, gob-smacked about -- denying air conditioning, chaining to the floor, playing loud rap music -- seem fairly mild. So it does seem, at least by implication, that Excitable Andy approves of no coercive tactics against terrorists whatsoever during interrogations, apart from raised voices and lots of cursing.

Does he imagine that some impotent yelling and cursing will actually elicit any information? Does he think that terrorists will break just because some mean CIA contractor calls him a "coward" or even a "faggot"? (And would Andy approve of using that sexual hot-button word against a terrorist? I bet he wouldn't, even if it actually were useful.)

There are competing moral concerns here. One is to treat those captured in battle (or through covert snatches) humanely; that's the old "We have to be better than our enemies" line.

The other moral concern is to protect and save as much innocent human life as possible. Terrorists work in cells, in which they protect they small number of terrorists they know by name as best they can. If we're to find other members of that cell -- including the leader -- we'll have to do a bit more than yell and scream and jump up and down during interrogations to get those names, the locations of those safe-houses and meeting-places, those secret email accounts by which messages are exchanged, etc.

And each of those terrorists allowed to remain at liberty -- to plot, to act, to facilitate murder, to detonate bombs in pizzarias or on school buses -- represents some fraction of an innocent human life taken, vaporized, stolen by vicious thieves from the living world.

The moral question is posed in stark and unavoidable terms: to what extent is it moral to engage in otherwise-inhumane behavior to serve a humane cause? When do the ends justify the means? Certainly not always; but certainly, Excitable Andy, not never, either.

And as between people who have voluntarily enlisted in an Army of Psychopathic Murder and their would-be victims, I think the scales of morality lean more heavily towards the side of protecting innocent human life. Even if that means we have to twist arms or deny sleep to these bastards for days on end.

The question is posed. You claim to be an intellectual of some moral bravery.

So go ahead: answer my *explicit* question.

Or be exposed as the hack we all suspect you to be.

Are you an actual thinker and commentator, or are you just another Katha Politt, except, perhaps, a little more emotionally unstable?

PS: Stalin, Hitler, and Pol Pot tortured people and murdered them by the millions for, to put it in the most understated of terms, bad reasons.

They killed and tortured people for the crime of doing things that are not crimes -- for disagreeing with the political regime, for being too educated to be part of the New Peasant Order, for being Jews/gays (I'm reliable informed, by no lesser authority than Excitable Andy, that Jews and gays are now the same; this news leaves me torn between Oy vey and Faaaabulous!!!).

On the other hand, we are, arguably, mistreating or abusing terrorists (not "torturing" them, except in the most extreme cases of very high-level known terrorist leaders, and we generally haven't heard too much about those) for committing acts and concealing information about their confederates' acts which are not only illegal, but downright inhuman. Satanic, even. The word may seem over the top, but committing mass-murder in the service of "religion" is just about as Satanic as you can get.

Excitable Andy's and Dick Durbin's little analogies are similar to calling a soldier who kills an armed opponent on the battlefield a "murderer." Yes, he killed a fellow human being -- one of the worst crimes imaginable, if it is in fact a crime -- but that killing was justified.

Excitable Andy and Dick Durbin blur right over this distinction. If the extreme circumstance of war makes it justified to kill another human being -- in the appropriate case -- how can we say that rought tactics against terrorists who plot to mass-murder innocent women and children (and men, too, of course) are not similarly justified by an even more extreme circumstance?

At least war -- as fought between fairly civilized peoples -- has rules. There are no "Rules of Terrorism," no Geneva Protocols restricting which 10 year old schoolgirls you can blow up on a bus to make a political point.

Al Qaeda is on the scale of the Nazis in terms of pure evil. They only lack in terms of ability to actually carry out their vicious slaughters with the well-funded industrial precision of the Nazis.

I would not say that justifies everything we could possibly do to these sonsabitches. But it does justify an awful lot. Let's just say it opens up a bit of leeway and "gray area" in what constitutes justified and civilized treatment of these psychotic murder-cultists.

And by the way, Excitable Andy:

If you think we didn't occasionally abuse or mistreat a captured Nazi officer we knew had important information about the Wehrmacht's plans -- information that could spare the lives of American soldiers -- you're not merely naive. You're flat-out stupid.

Posted by: Ace at 10:26 AM | Comments (42)
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Veronique de Rugy writes that you'd have to go back to the Johnson Administration to find a bigger expansion of federal spending.

And he's got charts and graphs to prove it.

I partially defend Bush on this. But only partially. Of course we needed a dramatic expansion in spending on the military and domestic security organizations like the FBI. Sure, a lot of that was wasteful, but that's what government does. It wastes 70 cents of every dollar given to it, and that's pretty much an unavoidable loss, like the loss of energy through friction and disipation through heat.

And, given the 9-11 disaster -- which was also an economic disaster -- I do wonder if it would have been wise to cut government spending. I'm not a real Keynesian -- honestly, I don't know enough about economics to be an anyone-ian -- but it does seem that with the private sector cutting down on spending in response to a huge economic shock, the government should attempt to counter the private sector by at least holding spending at status quo levels, if not actually increasing it.

And finally-- look, we can all whine about federal spending on education, but the political reality is that the public sees more dollars as better schooling for their kids. Until conservatives can convince the public that that equation does not scan, arguing against spending on education (at the federal level) is, like Kurt Vonnegut said of war, arguing against glaciers.

All that said-- the man has to get himself under control. As does Congress. Did the Republican Congress really believe in controlling spending, or did they just seek to thwart Clinton?

If the latter, why are they so eager to spend, spend, spend under Bush?

Posted by: Ace at 09:13 AM | Comments (20)
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He tried. That's something. But he failed:

With the acquiescence of their leaders, key House Republicans are drafting Social Security legislation stripped of President Bush's proposed personal accounts financed with payroll taxes and lacking provisions aimed at assuring long-term solvency.

Instead, according to officials familiar with the details, the measure showcases a promise, designed to reassure seniors, that Social Security surplus funds will be held inviolate, available only to create individual accounts that differ sharply from Bush's approach.

Under current law, any Social Security payroll tax money not used to finance monthly benefits is in effect lent by Social Security to the Treasury, which uses it to finance other government programs. Government actuaries say the surplus is expected to vanish in 2017 when benefit payments exceed payroll taxes collected.

In addition, the GOP bill "doesn't deal with solvency," according to another official, indicating it would avoid the difficult choices of curbs on benefits, higher taxes or changes in the retirement age needed to implement the president's call for long-term financial stability.

Not really sure what the new "reform" actually does, then. Ah, well-- it's the job of government to do nothing and then call it "reform." It's what they do best. When they attempt to do more, they get into trouble.

On Brit Hume (I think) it was speculated that this might be an attempt at putting the Democrats in a put-up or shut-up position. Now that the GOP is letting them have their way on private accounts -- which is almost all we've talked about with regard to Social Security reform -- they will have to (one would hope) propose their preferred reforms to make SS solvent.

They will no longer have the luxury of simply saying "No" to substantive proposials; they'll have to suggest their own, and we'll see how the public likes those.

Again, one would hope. A fair-and-balanced media would require them to actually make positive proposals now that they've scored their victory through truculence. Somehow, though, I don't foresee there being many stories castigating them for inaction when they, as I imagine they will, fail to offer up any counter-proposals of their own.

Posted by: Ace at 08:54 AM | Comments (27)
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If you care about these dumb lists.

I find this list especially lame. These are all very well-known lines, but... they're sort of not free-standing. They depend on context. LIke, the line "Plastics" is cited for The Graduate.

They're not the greatest quotes in movie history, they're merely the best-known.

I suppose just citing the "Plastics" line conjures up the whole exchange (which is, I admit, sort of funny, or at least I used to think so). But "Here's Johnny!," "They're here!," and and "Is it safe?" are good lines in context, but what the hell do they mean outside of the movie?

More interesting I think would be a real list of the genuine best quotes from movies. Quotes that say something on their own, either a bit of wisdom or a put-down or boast or an ironic take on life, rather than just referencing the fact that there are poltergeists in the television.

It would be a tricky list, because lines are written to tell a story rather than impart wisdom, or they should be at least, and attempts to wax philosophical in movies are often embarassing or obvious (in that you can see the writer's fingers hitting the keys as he takes a stab at greatness). Still, there's a lot of quotes that have unobtrusively both served the story and said something that makes sense out of the context of the movie.

Gotta admit, I don't mind this one:

98. "Nobody puts Baby in a corner," "Dirty Dancing," 1987.

It's so ridiculous it has to be on the list. And it really is quotable outside the movie (even though I've never seen the whole movie and, in fact, didn't even ever see this line actually spoken).

People love saying "Nobody puts Baby in a corner." And it just doesn't jump the shark. I guess maybe because the line jumped the shark so hard the first moment it was even written, it is therefore immunized against all further shark-jumping through repetition.

Thanks to Chickpea.

Posted by: Ace at 08:39 AM | Comments (33)
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