Not the sort of extremism the MSM usually likes to discuss, though.

Thanks to Larwyn.

Posted by: Ace at 09:39 AM | Comments (18)
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I watched the segment.

There's a lot of panic, coughing, and involuntary struggling. Almost immediately after each 'treatment,' however, he is able to sit up and describe the experience to the camera nearly dispassionately.

At one point, when he was about to taste a new variation of the technique, he said he knew he wouldn't last long because he was already not liking the black-masked men administering the test, and that he was afraid.

Yes, he's not a hardened Al Qaeda member. But unlike them, he knows intellectually that he's in friendly hands that will not harm him. Yet one or two phases lasting mere seconds each gave him a visceral fear of the administrators.

In the studio dialogue he noted that just minutes after the waterboarding he was feeling fine. He was able to understand though how momentary panic and severe discomfort would be enough to cause a person to tell all that they knew. Without permanent physical damage.

If I remember correctly, I've seen Steve Harrigan get deliberately tasered, and dodge flying debris during a hurricane.

What else is FOX going to do to this guy?

UPDATE: Next on FOX...Want to know what it feels like to be gored by a wildebeest?
Steve Harrigan investigates.

"Okay, it's charging. Still charging, aaand, here it com-
Ow! OW OW OW *cough* AAAAAAIIIIIEEEEEEE

The...wildeh...bee...I CAN'T FEEL MY LEGS"

Posted by: LauraW. at 08:19 PM | Comments (127)
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His website links a Seattle Post-Intelligencer editorial saying that, whether he meant it as he claims as a slam on Bush, or as a slam on the troops' lack of education, the remark was truthful and accurate either way.

If Kerry would never even entertain a thought which might denigrate the trooops, why does his website link an editorial -- in his defense! -- doing just that?

Why is John Kerry himself claiming that his "joke" was accurate under either interpretation, including the one he claims to deny?

Hot Air had this earlier, but I guess I didn't notice it.

And Dan Riehl, too. He says Kerry just "unapologized."

I thought that liberal democrats and bloggers would play this game of "it was a joke about the President, but it was also quite true as regards the troops."

I never imagined John Kerry himself would attempt this.

Which is, Johnny? Is it true, or is it not true?

If it is true that troops are uneducated dolts with no other options, as your Seattle P-I editorial suggests, how the fuck can you stand up there and claim you never would dream of saying something so hateful?

BREAKING: John Kerry's staff just issued a statement that this link was "intended as a joke about President Bush."

They will soon be providing the correct version of the link, as it was intended to be, which links to an interview with Audie Murphy, with "The Halls of Montezuma" being hummed in background.

By the way... As people are asking, I'll just note it for the record: No, there's no bad-blood feud between Allah and I, or anyone who disagrees on this.

I might say that if you don't make yourself smart and educate yourself, you'll get stuck believing Kerry's asinine double-talk, but it's meant in good fun, though really, people who disagree with me are suffering from severe nitwitism.

But that doesn't make you a bad person.

It just makes you military material.

Posted by: Ace at 07:00 PM | Comments (95)
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On Hannity & Colmes, in support of Rick Santorum, slamming opponent Bob Casey, Jr., for defending Kerry when even Hillary called the statement "inappropriate."

I wonder if John McCain is suppressing his natural insticts (support Kerry, defend him, call him "my very good friend") because he hears the footsteps behind him.

Posted by: Ace at 06:31 PM | Comments (22)
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Via, appropriately enough, Feisty Republican Whore, who takes particular exception to this.

Is this a big deal? I don't know. But apparently the flare-up was due to his running mate (for Lt. Gov.) being unable to answer simple questions about ethanol.

So it's a two-fer. First the idiocy of the running mate, then the "Republican whore" remark in attempting to defend her.

Maybe together...? Who knows.

Posted by: Ace at 05:12 PM | Comments (25)
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Via, appropriately enough, Feisty Republican Whore, who takes particular exception to this.

Is this a big deal? I don't know. But apparently the flare-up was due to his running mate (for Lt. Gov.) being unable to answer simple questions about ethanol.

So it's a two-fer. First the idiocy of the running mate, then the "Republican whore" remark in attempting to defend her.

Maybe together...? Who knows.

Posted by: Ace at 05:12 PM | Comments (25)
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Baffling.

Cardin just scored an own-goal by claiming the Patriot Act "predates" his election to Congress.

Cardin has served since 1987.

Now, I know sometimes dates get confusing, but I'm relatively sure the Patriot Act was passed after 9/11, which, I believe, occurred in 2001.

In other words, Cardin placed the Patriot Act in the wrong century.

This is pretty big. Maryland may be ferociously pro-Democratic, but are the also ferocious partisans for Stupid?

In related news, there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe.

Do I Really Think He's This Stupid? Not exactly, but it will stick anyway, and it should.

What I'd guess he meant is that various forms of the Patriot Act had been floating around for a while. So he was trying to evade responsibility for his vote by saying, "Hey, people were workin' on this before I was even in Congress."

Well, that's not really enough for him to evade responsibility for his vote. (It's also probably not factually true, either.) So what if parts of it had been drafted and suggested before? When it's time to vote on the bill, now, what does it matter if it parts of it were drafted three weeks ago or thirty years ago?

It doesn't. So it's a stupid defense, a stupid evasion.

Either he's so stupid to think this absolves him from responsibility for his vote, or he thinks the voters are so stupid they'll buy it, or both.

So the defense to the facial stupidity of this statement is the deeper stupidity that he actually intended to say something nearly as stupid, as well as insulting to the intelligence of voters.

Tough sell.

I think he should just claim he intended it, somehow, as a joke about President Bush.

The media seems favorably inclined to that excuse.

JJ says...

Let me play devil's advocate: Most of the Patriot Act was already on the books in different sections. I believe the first bill passed - I forgot the name of it- was in Carter's administration in the late 70s.

I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean. The Patriot Act is the Patriot Act and it was passed in 2002 (I think). I don't know what he means when says "the first bill" was passed in the Carter Administration.

If he means bills with similar language were proposed, but never became law, well, okay, but so what?

People have been suggesting this or that change to, say, the capital gains tax rate since... we began taxing capital gains. How can you evade responsibility for your vote by saying, "Well, actually, the Bush Capitan Gans Tax Cuts date back to Alexander Hamilton" ?

Or maybe he means that the Patriot Act amended/changed/modified/added to a number of laws that have been around a long time? But that's true of every new law, pretty much. An act which makes the minimum sentence for murder 25 years to life, for example, doesn't actually say that. It will say "In section 115(a)(3) of the United States Criminal Code, "15 years to life" should be stricken, and "25 year to life" should be amended in its place," or something like that.

All "new laws" are just modifications of already existing laws -- adding a condiditon, subtracting a condition, increasing a sentence, decreasing a sentence, inserting a word, deleting a word, expanding a definition, narrowing a definition, etc.

Acts of Congress are hard-to-read guides of how to specifically edit previously existing laws to reflect their new intent of how the codes should read.

They're all like that. How many new laws actually are "new," in the sense they consist of a complete, self-contained new entry into the books? Very few. It's 99% editing this word or that, this number or that, in the already-published laws.

He might as well have said he is absolved of all votes on criminal justice matters because the US Code dates back to 1790 or whenever.

Or take taxes -- the tax code gets revised, what, a hundred different ways per year? And yet the code itself "predates" anyone's service in Congress. (Except, maybe, Robert Byrd, who served when the government was funded solely by tarriffs on pitch-tar for cross-burnin's.)

It's just a stupid statement, whatever way you slice it. There are ways to read it as less stupid than it at first seems, and those interpretations are, yeah, correct, but those still yield readings which are fundamentally and irredeemably stupid.

Whatever his defense, it won't work. His defense "I didn't mean that stupid shit, for the Love of Soros! I meant this stupid shit!"

Either way, it's some really stupid shit.

Again: The only thing that can save him from humiliation is Matt Lauer scolding other Democrats not to abandon him in his Hour of Cretinism.

Posted by: Ace at 05:02 PM | Comments (72)
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My math may be screwy, particularly on the House races. If' I'm wrong about what kind of majority the net pick-up results in, go with the net pick-up as the thing you're picking. The resulting majority thing should be taken as a guide.

Early Analysis of Predictions: The AoS crew is pessimistic on the elections. The most popular choices seem to be predicting that the GOP almost loses the House and almost loses the Senate, suggesting, to me anyway, many think we'll actuallly lose both but want to pick a choice that doesn't quite say that.

I think you're being a little too pessimistic as a group on the Senate. Corker seems to have a solid lead, Steele's opponent just went full-on drooling imbecile, and even Conrad Burns is back from the dead.

On the House... I don't know. Just barely hanging on may be a decent prediction... though slightly on the optimistic side.

I think that's what I picked.

Posted by: Ace at 04:46 PM | Comments (27)
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It's just another colllection of polls, but surprising.

Click on the House tab, and chose a 50/50 split for the 25 races CNN judges as toss-ups.

It results in a narrow Democratic take-over, a +4 majority for Democrats.

Which seems to be a fairly optimistic (for Republicans) assessment, given the bulk of media predictions.

Let's say CNN is basically right -- we'd only need to cling to life in a couple more of those toss-ups to retain power.

Dare to dream.

Posted by: Ace at 04:17 PM | Comments (11)
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At least according to the left, it's a very, very big story.

Because this guy you never heard of is also an Evangelist you never heard of, and making anti-gay statements you never heard of, while having gay sex with dudes you definitely never heard of.

But it turns out he's a homo, so suddenly he's someone you're going to be hearing a lot about, and, in fact, will become within 24 hours The Most Important Figure On The Religious Right In All Of The History Of The Universe.

And you'll hear less about the fact that, for a fire-breathing right-winger, he was kind of a liberal pussy.

But no matter. I just found out another one of my heroes who I had never heard of before had on occasion lunched at the Sizzler's Man-Steak Buffet.

His name is seared, seared into my memory, or will be, once I find out what it is.

I haven't been this dejected since I found out George Michaels was gay and Nick Rhodes was straight.

Reports say that some of his parishoners began to become suspicious of his sexuality when they realized he looked like this:

(Okay, cheap joke, probably borderline homophobic, and on top of that, even Instapundit's made it already. But, come on. I'm not saying that some people "look gay." I would never say such a thing. No one "looks gay."

On the other hand, some people do "look Supra-Gay.")

Apparently he was outed by a gay prostitute whom he'd been paying for messages, with incidental gay sex and drugs included gratis.

I feel bad for this guy. I mean, an Evangelist preacher buying drugs and paying for sex from a gay hooker.

Sometimes disaster just seems to strike out of nowhere, doesn't it?

I wonder how people hold on to their faith when such unforeseeable tragedies befall them.

By the way... The Gay Hooker came forward with his allegations when he realized an Evangelist was against 1) ordaining gay preachers and 2) gay marriage.

You can imagine how important those issues are -- beconing a preacher, getting married -- to a Gay Hooker.

Posted by: Ace at 03:35 PM | Comments (74)
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