The Blotter, quoted at Greg Tinti:

A U.S. government surveillance tape, obtained by ABC News, reveals in graphic detail the attack on the American embassy in Damascus, Syria, this September and raises new questions about the role of the Syrian government.

The tape will be seen tonight on ABC World News and Nightline.

Some U.S. diplomats have privately questioned whether Syria was behind the plot, or learned of it in advance, and let it take place in order to take credit for stopping it.

A vague suggestion that the surveillance tape itself raises these questions, without actually saying as much. Which means the surveillance tape doesn't really suggest anything of the sort, but ABCNews wants to hype its scoop.

Not saying there's nothing to be gleaned from the tape. But absent a statement that a Syrian security officer is caught on tape allowing the terrorists to pass, I'm guessing the tape shows no such thing.

Posted by: Ace at 12:31 PM | Comments (20)
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That school? The Kennedy School of Government. Lona Shoenstein, Harvard Class of '05, was said to be "disconsolate" and to have "nothing left to believe in." Apparently it was that Scrooge PJ O'Rourke who broke the bad news to her.

But seriously. In Britain:

A primary school has been accused of spoiling Christmas for pupils after a lesson telling them that Santa Claus does not exist.

Children as young as nine were told that only 'small children believe in Father Christmas'.

And yesterday their parents criticised teachers for taking the 'magic' out of the festive period.

The blunder came after the Year 5 pupils were given seasonal worksheets containing various festive classroom exercises.

One began by informing the children that 'many small children believe in Father Christmas'.

It then went on to explain that thousands of letters sent by these children to Santa every year are actually answered by the Post Office.

A blunder? Or teachers deciding they know better how to raise other people's kids?

Posted by: Ace at 12:22 PM | Comments (263)
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An infuriating trailer which quick-fades to black every damn time you're about to get a decent look at a Transformer.

I get the "Don't show the monster" thing, but that rule has been mothballed for years. Trailers now show just about everything, including, sometimes, the final plot point of a movie.

A dark, gritty, realistic-looking version of the Transformers -- in other words, a totally jackass interpretation of trucks that turn into giant bipedal robots.

From Michael Bay, of course, who brought us Armageddon, a dark, gritty, realistic portrayal of Ben Affleck's chin-sphincter.

Much Better... Unless you consider it heresy. What's cooler than the Millenium Falcon? How about a Transformer Millenium Falcon -- actually, two Transformers, as the fore and aft the ship transform into two different robots.

Click on the video here to see the Millenium Falcon transform into a "Han Solo Mech" and a "Chewbacca Mech" to battle the Slave One's transformation into a "Boba Fett Mech."

Blasphemy? Eh, after the prequels, I don't know if blaspheming Star Wars is possible any more.

Thanks to Andy the Dorky Squirrel.

Not Real, But Still A Good Stocking-Stuffer: Shia Pets.

Posted by: Ace at 11:42 AM | Comments (31)
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He just mentioned this figure as being "seriously" discussed on FoxNews. It's also mentioned in print here, though without attribution.

I don't expect the number to be that high, but it's good the number is moving up, and away from the ineffectual range of numbers like 10 or 15 thousand.

Of course Bush is finally considering increasing the total number of ground troops in the Army and Marines, which is well overdue (NYT link). We cut back far too much on the active duty strength as a "peace dividend" after the one-time end to the Cold War. We should have known better, but we had this goofy idea that we wouldn't have to fight major wars anymore.

Those were the days:

The increase will not be enormous -- from 510,000 or so up to 540,000 -- and it will be costly. But it seems necessary. This is going to be a long war.

Congress authorized a 30,000-soldier increase in the active-duty Army after the Sept. 11 attacks — when the Army stood at about 484,000 — in what was described as a temporary measure. Army officials say they hope to reach that authorized total troop strength of 514,000 by next year and would like to make that a permanent floor, not a ceiling.

To that end, the Army already has drawn up proposals to grow to up to 540,000, with some retired officers advocating an even larger increase.

The active-duty Army peaked at 1.6 million troops during the Korean conflict and stood at just below that figure during the war in Vietnam, before hovering around 800,000 for much of the 1970s and 1980s, according to Pentagon statistics. Following the first Persian Gulf war, which coincided with the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, the ArmyÂ’s active-duty force dropped first to below 600,000 and then below 500,000 before the increases ordered after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Any decision to increase the size of the Army and the Marine Corps would do little to meet the need for more troops should Mr. Bush order a significant increase of American forces in Iraq in 2007, as it takes considerable time to recruit, train and deploy new troops. Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, said last week that the Army could probably grow by only 6,000 to 7,000 soldiers per year.

Army officials have estimated that for each addition of 10,000 soldiers to the force, it would cost about $1.2 billion.

Exit question: Given that hopes of a quick end to the War on Islamofascism seem dashed, and that higher military spending will be an indefinite and not temporary strain on the budget, can conservatives rally behind a compromise tax increase, say, increasing the top marginal tax rate to 37% or even 37.5%? Or even 38%?

Still lower than Clinton's top rate of 39.6%, but still higher than today's figure.

Raising taxes is anathema, of course, but if the money isn't going to soft-and-fuzzy nonsense but rather a multi-decade war for freedom and security, is such a thing more palatable?

Posted by: Ace at 11:25 AM | Comments (57)
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Actually I guess I don't disagree with a word of that. Trouble is he doesn't recognize that he himself is a moron, writing moronic pap, too.

The blogs are not as significant as their self-endeared curators would like to think. Journalism requires journalists, who are at least fitfully confronting the digital age. The bloggers, for their part, produce minimal reportage. Instead, they ride along with the MSM like remora fish on the bellies of sharks, picking at the scraps.

Indeed. Bloggers, however, are not paid a salary to report, nor can we spend, as a typical reporter does, a week or two on a story.

More success is met in purveying opinion and comment. Some critics reproach the blogs for the coarsening and increasing volatility of political life. Blogs, they say, tend to disinhibit. Maybe so. But politics weren't much rarefied when Andrew Jackson was president, either. The larger problem with blogs, it seems to me, is quality. Most of them are pretty awful. Many, even some with large followings, are downright appalling.

You're welcome.

Every conceivable belief is on the scene, but the collective prose, by and large, is homogeneous: A tone of careless informality prevails; posts oscillate between the uselessly brief and the uselessly logorrheic; complexity and complication are eschewed; the humor is cringe-making, with irony present only in its conspicuous absence; arguments are solipsistic; writers traffic more in pronouncement than persuasion . . .

Um, dude? When you're writing twenty or thirty quick posts a day, you sort of have to write with a tone of "careless informality."

A lack of irony in blogs? It's many bloggers' stock in trade. Is he actually suggesting the turgid, self-important style of the MSM is more rich in irony than your typical blogger's style?

As for writing more for "pronouncement than persuasion:" Most paid opinion columnists preach to the converted. There are few liberal columnists who write to convince skeptical moderates (and none who write to persuade conservatives), and the same can be said, mostly, for conservative columnists.

The fact is, liberals don't even recognize a classy outfit like the Weekly Standard as worth reading. Ever cite a fact to a liberal and attribute it to the Weekly Standard? How their eyes roll. If it doesn't come from the NYT or a nonpartisan source like, say, Mother Jones, they won't believe it.

And the MSM itself -- in its straight "reportage" -- tends to "pronouce" rather than persuade.

This guy just seems to be the typical gasbag. With the exception of the "careless informality" of the style, every sin he criticizes blogs for is equally true of the media.

And that irony thing -- does he even understand what the word means?

Take a guess what this guy's politics are. After attacking conservative blogs in detail for a paragraph, he also notes that such "fatuities" can be found on "leftward" blogs.

A paragraph spent attacking conservative blogs, then one sentence noting that leftie blogs have problems, too.

It's a mystery.

PS, his article isn't terribly well written. It's not well argued nor well considered.

He had a week to work on this?

Blog writing is, yes, bad writing, because it's mostly on the fly. It's the 20/80 principle: for 20% of the effort, you get 80% of the result; the last 20% of the result takes 80% of the effort.

It's true that blog writing isn't well polished (or, in my case, even proofread a single time). But that last 20% of polish would consume a couple of hours a day, and there just is not the time for that.

Ever read a technical manual, jagoff? It's a particular sort of writing. Not the most pleasurable writing, but a sort of writing very well-suited to its actual purpose.

This guy -- a paid assistant editor at the WSJ -- is knocking blogs for lacking the one thing MSM staffers have over bloggers: A straight salary and plenty of company-paid time (and support staff!) to put out one or two pieces a week.

In other words, the only real superiority his MSM halfwits have over most bloggers is the fact that they are MSM, with the benefits and privileges of such.

More Careless Informality! I guessed wrong about the writer's politics, See-Dub tells me. He worked at the Dartmouth Review, one of the country's staunchest conservative college rags. (Where I doubt they have a very high "persuasion" to "pronouncement" ratio, btw.)

It's not that he's liberal, it's just that he's smug and callow and just jazzed he got a job in the MSM.

I think that accounts for 90% of the MSM's anti-blog animus -- it's tough to get a job in the MSM, and those who make the cut have reason to feel like they've accomplished something. But when some nobody comes along and generates far larger audiences than they do without the MSM credential, they feel their Big Damn Accomplishment is greatly diminished. Hence, these constant cri di couers of "I'm relevant! I'm better! I still count! You here me, Mom and Dad! I'm still somebody!"

Posted by: Ace at 10:18 AM | Comments (77)
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Seems like a no-brainer. We've got an awful lot of these doing little good -- they won't be toting a nuke warhead anytime soon, alas -- and they could be redesigned for more likely missions.

Within 2 minutes, the missile is traveling at more than 20,000 ft. per second. Up and over the oceans and out of the atmosphere it soars for thousands of miles. At the top of its parabola, hanging in space, the Trident's four warheads separate and begin their screaming descent down toward the planet. Traveling as fast as 13,000 mph, the warheads are filled with scored tungsten rods with twice the strength of steel. Just above the target, the warheads detonate, showering the area with thousands of rods-each one up to 12 times as destructive as a .50-caliber bullet. Anything within 3000 sq. ft. of this whirling, metallic storm is obliterated.

If Pentagon strategists get their way, there will be no place on the planet to hide from such an assault. The plan is part of a program — in slow development since the 1990s, and now quickly coalescing in military circles — called Prompt Global Strike. It will begin with modified Tridents. But eventually, Prompt Global Strike could encompass new generations of aircraft and armaments five times faster than anything in the current American arsenal. One candidate: the X-51 hypersonic cruise missile, which is designed to hit Mach 5 — roughly 3600 mph. The goal, according to the U.S. Strategic Command's deputy commander Lt. Gen. C. Robert Kehler, is "to strike virtually anywhere on the face of the Earth within 60 minutes."

...

The Navy... had been testing conventionally armed Trident II missiles since 1993. With a few hundred million dollars, strategists said, the first Prompt Global Strike submarines could be ready to go in just two years.

The $60 million conventional missile needs to be far more accurate than the nuclear version. But the multiple warheads can lock onto GPS coordinates while streaking through space. Upon entering the atmosphere, the warheads use flaps to steer to a target. With the Trident II's range of 6000 nautical miles, subs armed with the missiles could threaten a whole continent's worth of enemy positions. "Now," says Benedict, who leads the Trident conversion effort, "we've got the capability to hold all of these targets in all these hot spots at risk at one time."

And if that doesn't grab you, there's the X-51 WaveRider:

more...

Posted by: Ace at 09:57 AM | Comments (39)
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Hopefully he means "isolate with extreme prejudice."

Of course Maliki is still a big fan of the Mook-man.

Posted by: Ace at 09:46 AM | Comments (8)
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And I thought people were going overboard with the soy milk thing.

This really needs to been seen to be believed. I'll set it up for you: There's a kid with a guitar, and he thinks everything is gay. And I do mean everything. That may not sound like a viable premise for a song, but you'll be amazed at the places this kid goes with it. I've watched it three times now, and the line about orange juice gets better each time.

Also, a valuable lesson is learned at the end, which makes it educational. In fact, they should probably show this in schools.

Content Warning.

Update: Okay, the consensus seems to be that it's old. Not only that, but it was Ace who had to tell me, which is just salt in the wounds.

I was so excited to share this. I feel like the Bee Girl in that Blind Melon video, except that, instead of being happy to see me, my fellow bees hold me on the ground and force me to consume honey until I die of overeating like that guy in Seven.

Posted by: AndrewR at 07:04 PM | Comments (214)
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On the Boston Globe's website right now:

This:

VIENNA, Austria -- A German Muslim says his neighbors suspect he is making weapons in his mosque...An Austrian believer complains some dog owners set their pets on her when they pass her on the sidewalk...Such acts of "Islamophobia" are on the rise across Europe, where many Muslims are menaced and misunderstood -- some on a daily basis -- the European Monitoring Center on Racism and Xenophobia warned yesterday in a new report.

And the very next story, underneath it:

BERLIN -- A production of Mozart's opera "Idomeneo," dropped for fear of a Muslim backlash over a scene with the severed head of the Prophet Mohammed, returned to the stage under heavy security yesterday at Berlin's Deutsche Oper.

The two are not believed to be related.

In other news, the eight gin and tonics I had before the Reverend Horton Heat show last month had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with my later being forcibly ejected by a bouncer.

Posted by: AndrewR at 06:14 PM | Comments (28)
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Waterboard him.

Hell, cut off his goddamn fingers. Let's stop fucking about.

Via Allah, who also has Reuters reporting a French claim that French troops had OBL in their gunsights twice in '03 but those stupid Americans couldn't give the go-ahead order to shoot him in time.

Reuters. The French. The report positively drips with credibility.

Question: Why on earth would someone need a go-ahead order to kill OBL after 9/11?

Posted by: Ace at 01:46 PM | Comments (38)
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