Can't be real. Looks like a cross between a Gremlin and one of the infected alien-dogs from The Thing.

Posted by: Ace at 01:08 PM | Comments (16)
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A couple of steps beyond the "lie back and enjoy it" line, eh?

Thanks to Ogre Gunner.

Loose Shit Update: I wrote that this was a couple of steps behind the lie back and enjoy it line. Of course I meant "beyond."

I have a weird brain-glitch. I know the word I want to write, but if the first few letters of that word are common to another word, I tend to write the other word.

Oh, well. As Boston Irish once tipsilly opined: Three words--- editors edit.

Posted by: Ace at 10:23 AM | Comments (15)
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Yeah... female lacrosse players wore flip-flops to the White House. But of course this requires mention that Jenna Bush wore flip-flops to her court hearing for drinking underage.

As Two Or Three wonders-- will AP also mention Monica's blue dress in the next story mentioning a woman wearing a blue dress to the White House?

The way they... surround a story.

Posted by: Ace at 10:21 AM | Comments (8)
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Bridget Johnson, screenwriter, journalist, and blogger under the nom de cyber GOPVixen, will be joining us today to answer a lot of important questions, like why Hollywood is so damnedly liberal, how big is the closet-conservative contingent in Hollywood, and why did Howard the Duck suck so badly?

Shit, you had Lea Thompson and a talking duck. Right there, you're starting at two stars, even before you write a script or shoot a single scene.

Check in at Rightalk.com at 4PM Eastern for the show. Look for "Now Playing-- Channel One."

Call in at 866-884-TALK. I'm not sure if I mentioned this, but people besides John From Greenville are allowed to dial us up.

Posted by: Ace at 09:56 AM | Comments (19)
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The responsible and acceptable thing to do is to say these remarks were at best unwise, and at worse needlessly provocative and counterproductive. And also, stupid.

So I'll say that.

But:

Look, let's be real. During our long nuclear standoff with the Russkies, we wargamed a lot of potential scenarios, including first strikes on all Soviet cities. Stuff like that.

As a blogger linked by Michelle points out, it's a touch naive to think that nowhere in the bowels of some Pentagon sub-basement have any analysts been assigned to research and speculate upon the military usefulness of taking this rather dramatic (and, frankly, terrorist) action.

Someone in the Pentagon is always researching some possible military option.

Let's put aside the question of whether Tom Tancredo is a knuckle-dragging troglodyte for mentioning this possibility. Is it necessarily a bad thing for a not-really-prominent-but-not-exactly-unknown Representative to sabre-rattle in this manner, and let the world know that there is a possibility of such an unthinkable nuclear vengeance-strike should things get much worse than they are now?

I don't know. I know the Chinese General's statement that China was ready to use nukes on America should we interfere in a Chinese reconquest of Taiwan sort of put me on edge. He says he wasn't speaking for the Chinese Army or Goverment, but the fact that a high-ranking general felt comfortable making such a statement does tend to make one a mite more cautious about military moves to defend Taiwan.

Will Tancredo's remarks have a similar sobering effect on Islamist World-Domination Fantasists? I don't know; these people are too far gone, and perhaps they'd just view the nuking of Mecca as a useful propaganda tool for uniting the Muslim world against the West. Perhaps they just think they'd rebuild Mecca on the smoldering remains of Washington, DC, should it come to that.

Tancredo's remarks were irresponsible and provocative, as the Chinese General's were, but... there is little doubt that extreme measures require, often, extreme countermeasures.

If Al Qaeda gets a nuke and blows up a US city-- well, under those sort of circumstances, I don't think it will necessarily be verboten to suggest that the next nuclear detonation on US soil results in a detonation on the Arabian Peninsula.

Terrorism, to be sure. Unthinkable, under the present circumstances. But if Al Qaeda gets two or three nukes-- well, just as under the Mutual Assured Destruction regime of stability-by-nightmare, the unthinkable becomes suddenly quite thinkable.

Predated Update: Dave From Garfield Ridge was writing about this back in 2004. His words are just as incomprensible and senseless now as they were then.

Just kidding. Good piece.

Posted by: Ace at 09:51 AM | Comments (54)
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Detailed brief against the anti-anti-terrorist left. I guess it's too far to say that most of these organizations are actually pro-terrorist, but there's not much sunshine between being pro-terrorist and "merely" being anti-anti-terrorist.

I had not heard this. It's so shocking I sort of question the provenance of the report. But if true, Great Odin's Raven, this is disgusting:

The FBI may have also been alarmed that the protests enjoyed the professional organizing skills of Leslie Cagan and Medea Benjamin, who boasts of her role in the violent and costly anti-World Trade Organization riots. Benjamin’s organization Code Pink donated $600,000 in money and supplies to “the other side” in the terrorist stronghold of Fallujah, Iraq.

The article is a rebuttal to left-wing organizations' constant complaints that the FBI is collecting fat dossiers on them. Well, at the risk of stating the obvious, when you send money and supplies to our terrorist enemies killing our soldiers and Iraqi civilians, that sort of piques the government's interest, non?

Posted by: Ace at 09:39 AM | Comments (8)
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"[A]t present there is not a group with both the current intent and the capability to attack the U.K."

It's interesting that Blair is taking a lot of the same hits Bush did after 9-11, but now on an expedited schedule, as the left knows how to make these attacks based on previous experience.

Questions have been raised, for example, why domestic intelligence agents did not determine that Mohammad Sidique Khan, one of the four bombers, was a threat to national security in 2004. Early last year, Britain investigated him in connection with the alleged plot to build the fertilizer bomb and use it in London, according to several European-based counterterrorism officials. British officials have refused to confirm whether Mr. Khan, 22, of Leeds, was a suspect in that investigation, or answer questions about why they did not monitor his activities.

Actually, that's a very fair question. And some on the left ask, from time to time, fair questions. But... there's always this hyperpartisan animus wagging the tail of the dog. And gross inconsistency-- the anti-war-on-terror-contingent, the "Fictitious Threat" crowd, spends 355 days of the year yammering the the government is hyping the terrorist threat for political advantage, and then, after an actual attack, spends the last ten days arguing the government isn't taking the threat of terrorism seriously enough.

Conservative critics are always arguing that Bush/Blair/everyone aren't taking this threat seriously enough. That's consistency, and that's a genuine principled critique.

But the "There is no threat/You didn't do enough to thwart the threat" crowd... no wonder they're ignored. They just make no sense. and are like maladjusted fourteen year olds just sniping at everything.

Posted by: Ace at 08:59 AM | Comments (10)
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And Powerline has quotes and links.

Barone makes the point, which others have as well, that the Democrats and the New York Times (and? sorta implied) would be more credible on their outrage about outing Plame had they shown similar outrage, or, in the NYT's case, restraint in publishing extremely detailed information about the CIA's covert air wing-- not just outing an agent, but an entire program and dozens of planes and scores of pilots.

Steyn just makes a mockery of the whole attempted palace-coup by peaceniks in the CIA. Were hawkish rogue factions in the CIA attempting to undermine a lawfully elected dovish President, the Democrats and NYT would be singing a whole different tune, now wouldn't they?

But in fact a dovish faction in the CIA sought to arrogate to itself the power to make foreign policy -- a power given by the Constitution to our elected President -- and so of course this cadre of contrarians is celebrated for their bravery and enlightenment.

Posted by: Ace at 12:37 PM | Comments (30)
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The Times attempts to explain, lamely, why an editor inserted anti-Bush language ("Imagine my surprise" at being called up for action in Iraq) into a reserve officer's piece about recruitment.

They are somewhat successful in explaining that this was an inadvertant error-- they had suggested new language, the writer said "No way" to the changes, and they accidentally ran the wrong version of the piece.

But they say they suggested this language -- calling it ordinary editorial back-and-forth between editor and writer -- to make the piece "stronger."

Stronger? In what manner? True enough, the "surprise" language added an emotional element the original editorial had not had... but that's sort of damning. The writer didn't express negative emotion about being recalled for duty; the editor "helpfully" suggested that maybe he ought to.

The new language made the piece stronger, no doubt-- more strongly anti-Bush. Which was, I would suggest, the whole point of the exercise, and a failing the New York Times not only fails to refute, but simply ignores.

The mainstream media has long done just this-- as they are, or, rather, were, the gatekeepers of information, they previously had the power to simply make embarassing issues go away by embaroging them.

Well, the New York Times won't admit its reasons for "suggesting" that language to the writer; but there are legions in the Shadow Media who will do that distasteful service for them.

One small victory: until the constant critique from the Shadow Media, the Times never would have run even such a half-true/half-mendacious explanation about its error.

At least that's some progress.

Posted by: Ace at 11:13 AM | Comments (6)
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And so it goes.

Although I try to distinguish between Islamicists and civilized Muslims, the fact that a popular Muslim broadcasting network reports this sort of paranoid, "it's always someone else's fault" lunacy makes it hard.

Posted by: Ace at 10:11 AM | Comments (14)
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