As if there's another kind.

Al Qaeda recruiting HIV-infected suicide bombers to add some lethal blood-shrapnel into the mix.

Iraqi clerics receiving training in... Iran. Perfect.

Talking to jihadis in Indonesia. The mindset is almost impossible to comprehend. There's so much dogma and nonsensical double-think it makes your heart break -- if they can say crap like this, there's absolutely no hope of ever persuading them.

Check out this ignorant shit:

Then Hasyim began to rant -- really rant, in long passionate sentences which Abi and Syihab interrupted sometimes, just to translate -- about President John F. Kennedy, who (he said) tried to solve problems caused by America's wayward youth in the 1960s by sending the social scum to Vietnam. Did I think that was a good idea? Kennedy, said Hasyim, had promised in a campaign speech to cleanse American society of its losers and criminals by sending them as cannon fodder to Vietnam.

"That's not true," I said.

"But have you heard this campaign promise?" Rian asked.

"Never."

"Well," he said triumphantly. "You should look it up."

Of course Vietnam wasn't even a campaign issue in 1960; but I let that go.

Actually I think it was part of Kennedy's "bear any burden" Inaugural Address. After saying something about the cause of freedom he mumbled something about "getting all the, err-ehh, riff-raff plugged in Khe Sahn."

It's always amused me -- not in a ha-ha way, but a sad way -- how radical Muslims in foreign countries like to speak of American "arrogance," and then arrogantly repeat over and over "What you don't understand is...", and how they speak of our ignorance of their culture, when they believe all sorts of ludicrous nonsense about ours.

Arrogance combined with ignorance is a bad mix. And the Muslim world seems to have an awful lot of it. I guess when you spend every minute of your schooling repeating the Koran it doesn't leave much time for US Civics.

Thanks to the A-Man.

Posted by: Ace at 08:21 AM | Comments (7)
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This article doesn't really report anything you didn't know or isn't conventional wisdom. Yes, economists think the economy will cool off into a 3+% GDP range of growth. Yes, the housing market will almost surely cool off, especially now that everyone is sure it will. Etc., etc., etc.

But it's interesting that the MSM is setting up its next big story -- 2006: The End of the Bush Boom -- without ever having acknowledged there was a boom in the first place.

Think about it: after the MSM has been telling us the economy is horrible for five years, now, when a strong economy is going to moderate and become merely okay, they're all ready to start telling us how we've fallen from our previous highs. Without ever really informing the public about those highs in the first place.

It's brilliant, really. They will only note the strength of the past three years' economy in retrospect in order to tell people that now they're doing worse than they were before. Bush therefore never gets any political benefit from the strong economy -- when it was strong, they said it was weak, and when it moderates into consistent but not strong growth, they'll say it's weaker than it had been.

Nice. Well played, MSM. Very well played.

Paul Krugman, meanwhile, notes the growth in GDP while seizing upon one statistic -- median household income growth -- to claim the economy is "joyless." Q&O has thoughts on that over at TCS.

Krugman may be setting himself up for the same strategy. He can now say, "I did acknowledge strong economic growth," in the quarter in which it was expected to start declining, and then begin whining how we've fallen from those lofty heights, which he never really noted were all that lofty.

Posted by: Ace at 07:48 AM | Comments (21)
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Maybe he could team up with Madonna and write the most terrifying children's book ever:

Meet the latest children's author, Sen. Ted Kennedy, and his Portuguese Water Dog, Splash, his co-protagonist in "My Senator and Me: A Dogs-Eye View of Washington, D.C."

Scholastic Inc. will release the book in May.

"I am very excited about the opportunity to create a book for young readers and their families that will deepen their understanding of how our American government works," Kennedy said in a statement Monday issued by Scholastic.

According to Scholastic, Kennedy's book "not only takes readers through a full day in the Senator's life, but also explains how a bill becomes a law." Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat, was inspired to write the book from his work with a Washington-based reading program, "Everybody Wins!"

See Heather.

Heather is an intern.

See Heather's skirt.

Notice how her skirt so closely traces the silhouette of her supple, coltish buttocks?

Heather wears that skirt for Senator Ted.

She wants it.

Don't ask what "it" means. Your Mommy or Daddy will explain that to you some other time.

Just accept: She wants "it," whatever that might mean.

No, not cookies.

Something even better than cookies.

Let's just move on.

See the desk.

See the top drawer of the desk.

See Ted opening the top drawer of the desk and then mixing his "magic elixir."

He calls this "magic elixir" a "Chivas Royal."

He'll offer one or eight of these magic elixirs to Heather.

If Heather drinks them, she will get sleepy, and Senator Ted will be happy.

If she doesn't drink them, Senator Ted will drink all of them plus ten more.

And then he'll waddle out on to the floor of the Senate.

Without his pants.

See Senator Ted's genitals.

They're funny.

But they are powerful. O!, the power contained therein.

See Charles Schumer react in horror as Senator Ted tries to rub up on him with his funny, powerful genitals.

Senator Ted has mistaken Charles Schumer for 1960's bombshell actres Gina Lollobrigida.

He thinks she has nice cookies.

See Senator Ted introduce a nonbinding resolution to the Senate, expressing the American public's confidence in, and support of, "My Junk."

See Senate security escorting Senator Ted back to his office. And locking the door from the outside.

Thanks to Skinbad.

It's Old: Dave got here first, and suggests some further titles in the series.

As does Florida Cracker.

Gina... Here, if you don't know who she is.

Posted by: Ace at 07:47 AM | Comments (22)
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Unconfirmed report from Iran Focus.

The worse it is for those poor bastards, the better it is for us:

The government of radical Islamist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad plans to segregate IranÂ’s pedestrian walkways on gender basis, according to Fatemeh Alia, a deputy in IranÂ’s Majlis (Parliament) and one of AhmadinejadÂ’s closest allies.

Since Ahmadinejad took office as president, new measures have been enforced to, in his words, “return the Islamic Republic to the days of the [1979 Islamic] revolution”.

Have you assholes seen the young people in Teheran? You think they're eager to return to that grim madness?

As part of the government plan called “Increase the hejab (veil) culture and female chastity”, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development has received orders to construct separate pedestrian walkways for men and women, according to Alia.

"Increase... female chastity?" That should go over well with young women.

And it should go over even better with young men-- the sort of people who throw bricks and start fires just because their team lost in the Final Four.

I'm a little more sanguine now. These maniacs are going to provoke a civil war, a full-on revolution, and they're too fucking stupid to see it coming.

Thanks to the A-Man.

Posted by: Ace at 08:38 PM | Comments (30)
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Dean.

Reality.

Not quite in congruence.

The Democratic spin is that no Democrat received Abramoff's personal political donations, and that he's personally a Republcian. Well, yeah, and? Those come in scary-huge sizes of $1000 or $2000 per election cycle. And so he supported, with his personal donations, candidates whose policies he agreed with.

But a lobbyist does not lobby -- or bribe -- Congressmen by passing out his own money. See, were that the case, lobbyists would be bankrupted in a relatively short period of time. And it wouldn't be a lucrative job-- quite the opposite.

Lobbyists funnel money from interested parties to politicians in order to advance their clients' business interests, not their own personal political preferences.

And Abramoff's money-- the money from his clients, from his lobbying firm's accounts, from the affiliated organizations he controlled -- went to Democrats in large amounts. The Democratic national senatorial committee, for example, received 97% of the money the Republican senatorial campaign committee did.

So, when Howard Dean trots out his talking point about no Democrats ever receiving Abramoff's money, bear in mind that is a small amount of Abramoff's personal funds he's talking about, not the millions that he took from Indian casino interests to buy off polticians in payments of $10,000, $20,000, $30,000 or more at a shot.

Posted by: Ace at 07:52 PM | Comments (47)
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The piece is littered with anti-Bush statements to prove his liberal quals, but he offers some sound advice:

... the Democrats are on thin ice here. Some of the wilder donkeys talked about a possible Bush impeachment after the NSA program was revealed.

The latest version of the absolutely necessary Patriot Act, which updates the laws regulating the war on terrorism and contains civil-liberties improvements over the first edition, was nearly killed by a stampede of Senate Democrats. Most polls indicate that a strong majority of Americans favor the act, and I suspect that a strong majority would favor the NSA program as well, if its details were declassified and made known.

In fact, liberal Democrats are about as far from the American mainstream on these issues as Republicans were when they invaded the privacy of Terri Schiavo's family in the right-to-die case last year.

But there is a difference. National security is a far more important issue, and until the Democrats make clear that they will err on the side of aggressiveness in the war against al-Qaeda, they will probably not regain the majority in Congress or the country.

The piece is titled How To Stay Out Of Power. But I'm not sure they need any further instruction along those lines.

Bonus: Turns out Nancy Pelosi's letter, leaked last week to show her "protest" against the NSA's more aggressive stance, was misleading, and deliberately so.

Posted by: Ace at 07:44 PM | Comments (10)
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Mohammad El Baradei announces he's "running out of patience."

Wow. That should do the trick.

Meanwhile, full closed-cycle enrichment ahead:

Iran was preparing to remove United Nations seals at several nuclear research and development sites last night, despite warnings from the UN nuclear chief, Mohamed ElBaradei, that the international community was running out of patience with Tehran.

It would be the second time in five months that Iran, which insists its nuclear programme is peaceful, removed seals put in place by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

"We will remove the seals and we have announced that we are ready to start research from tomorrow," a foreign ministry spokesman, Hamid Reza Asefi, said yesterday. "It depends on the IAEA to announce its readiness as this will take place under the agency's supervision," he added.

Thanks to the A-Man.

Posted by: Ace at 07:16 PM | Comments (8)
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Enough with the cartoonish styling.

American car manufacturers will begin unveiling retro styling recalling the late 60's and early 70's.

Thanks to A-Man. And note: nothing gay about this tip at all.

Of course... If your tastes are less Starsky and Hutch and more Damnation Alley, you could spring for the GMC PAD diesel-electric:

35 mpg city, 55 mpg highway, 48 mpg when driving over giant cockroaches.

Posted by: Ace at 03:10 PM | Comments (95)
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Whatever could they mean?

Eh, no big deal. There's no way the Europeans will be rattled by such belligerent "diplomacy."

Posted by: Ace at 02:22 PM | Comments (15)
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They're forming a squad of mostly retired agents to try to track down the sources of leaks. It won't be long before this effort is dubbed by Maureen Dowd as "the Neo-Plumbers."

There's her gag for this week's column and you don't even have to pay $49.95 for TimesSelect.

Citing an anonymous former senior Central Intelligence Agency official, Time, in a report to hit newsstands this week, said on its website that CIA officials told employees during a meeting last week that leaking had gotten out of control and needed to stop.

The reported added that a new clampdown on leakers had been launched, supported by a team of "mostly retired" agents contracted to scan the news media for possible leaks of classified material and to try to find the leakers responsible.

This news about the Agency's new seriousness about leaking brought to you... via a leak.

As Ron Burgundy said, "That's not a good start... but do go on."

Posted by: Ace at 02:02 PM | Comments (12)
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