Wow... Skins' defense, huh?

Posted by: Ace at 01:51 PM | Comments (19)
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Stepping down as majority leader.

Embattled Rep. Tom DeLay decided Saturday to give up his post as House majority leader, clearing the way for new leadership elections among Republicans eager to shed the taint of scandal, two officials said.

These officials said DeLay, R-Texas, was preparing a letter informing fellow House Republicans of his decision. These officials spoke on condition of anonymity, saying they did not want to pre-empt the formal announcement.

DeLay's defiant, take-no-prisoners style had won him the admiration and respect of fellow Republicans, but his mounting problems cast a shadow over the whole chamber.

I still don't know how I feel about DeLay. In another age, I'd say all the complaints about him added up to a case of where there's smoke, there's fire. But as the Democrats and their liberal spirit squad in the media have been so hysterically shrill and partisan about everyfriggingthing for the past five years, that old rule doesn't apply anymore.

He definitely doesn't seem to have been on-patrol for corruption, though. And perhaps he should step down even if that's all he's guilty of.

Red State Endorses... Mike Pence. And gives some good reasons not to support the other contenders for the position.

Posted by: Ace at 10:21 AM | Comments (113)
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Don't expect this to get much play:

In a hairbrained scheme that was personally approved by then-President Clinton, the CIA deliberately gave Iranian physicists blueprints for part of a nuclear bomb that likely helped Tehran advance its nuclear weapons development program.
...

Reports Risen: "It's not clear who originally came up with the idea, but the plan [to give Tehran nuclear blueprints] was first approved by Clinton."

Beginning in February 2000, the CIA recruited a Russian scientist who had defected to the US years earlier. His mission: Take the nuclear blueprints to Vienna to sell them - or simply give them - to the Iranian representatives for the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Dubbed "Operation Merlin," the plan was supposed to steer Iranian physicists off track by incorporating design flaws in the blueprints that would render the information worthless.

But in what may turn out to be one of the greatest foreign policy blunders of all time, Operation Merlin backfired when the Russian scientist spotted the design flaws immediately - and even offered to help Iran fix the problems.

Wow.

Of course disinformation operations are nothing new. And operations like this have backfired before, and will backfire in the future.

However: It seems that lately we're not giving the executive the benefit of the doubt as to his intentions. We seem to be only interested in whether or not he was 100% right in his call.

Clinton was a "miserable failure" here. He aided and abetted Iran's nuke program, no matter what his intention was.

Think the New York Times will give this part of Risen's story above-the-fold, three-column treatment?

Posted by: Ace at 09:53 AM | Comments (130)
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Just noticed a new channel on cable. Maybe you have it too.

"Sleuth" is all old mystery and crime shows. Right now-- Knight Rider. (I guess the "mystery" format also embraces Cylon Trans-Ams, somehow.)

Then Simon & Simon. Later, Miami Vice.

Note that this isn't a recommendation so much as a notification.

Funny: The Simon & Simon on now is the one about Dungeons & Dragons, back during the early eighties D&D craze. The game's actually called "Angels & Demons" on the show, but there are dungeons and dwarves and d20's.

Good Lord.

Posted by: Ace at 09:13 AM | Comments (11)
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Why is this such a concern?

"A year ago, I said we can't win this militarily, and I got all kinds of criticism." Now, Murtha told the strongly antiwar audience, "I worry about a slow withdrawal which makes it look like there's a victory when I think it should be a redeployment as quickly as possible and let the Iraqis handle the whole thing."

If Murtha's concern is for the troops and America, why should he be worried that a slow drawdown will be perceived as a victory? Isn't a good thing that America perceives itself as victorious? Given the choice between an immediate withdrawal perceived as defeat, and a slow withdrawal perceived as victory, who would favor the former?

Well, he would, obviously. Because he's the one who suggested doing that. And he claimed the war could not be won-- he can hardly have Bush seen as winning now that he's staked his reputation (such as it is) on the impossibility of such.

He only seems to care about his personal victory-- he needs a clear defeat and acknowlegement of such in order to vindicate himself, no matter how such a thing might encourage terrorists and sap America's confidence in its ability to fight necessary wars.

I've said it before, I'll say it again: they are desperate to lose this war as quickly as possible because it appears that we just might win. They know they cannot survive the political consequences of an American victory of which they were most assuredly not a part.

Remember-- this is the guy who said he wouldn't have taken the enormous step of calling for a full withdrawal if Bush's people had only kissed his ass a little more on the phone.

What a hero.

Meanwhile, via Allah, TKS finds a fairly large lefty blogger making this statement about Zawahiri's "Bush has lost" claim:

I have to admit it is fun to see Al Qaeda play Bush like a violin.

Al Qaeda is "fun" as long as it can serve as an embarrassment for Bush.

But don't question their patriotism. Oh, no. Don't you dare do that.

Posted by: Ace at 08:37 AM | Comments (13)
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Pretty cool. I can't be 100% sure it's Mark Seavy, but he does have a .mil email address (or at least that's the one that comes up; could be spoofed, I suppose).

Seavy -- I think -- talks a bit in the comments. Click on "suprise commenter" in the update to go to his first comment.

Correction: I wrote that Mark Seavy was a Marine. I've been corrected that he's in the Army.

Posted by: Ace at 07:19 AM | Comments (5)
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I can't seem to find that quote in my dogeared copy of Stuff Jefferson Said, but a new world poll says French food isn't all it's cracked up to be. And even the French agree.

Egon Ronay, former restaurateur and food critic, suggested the conclusions were more about the international view of France than the standard of its food. "I have a suspicion that this survey is influenced by the general downward trend in France's popularity since the war. Why else would people feel so strongly?"

Good question.

Basically, France is a very large amusement park that takes the form of a nation. Like Six Flags, it relies upon the public's good will to keep its customers visiting as well as buying its merchandise (food, wine, romantic comedies in which Gerard Depardieu serves as the improbable love interest). They've squandered much of that good will and now find there's a lot more competition from Busch Gardens and Dorney Park.

When you're in the service sector, as just about all of France is, you just can't afford to be such supercillious douchebags to all of your customers. I have no idea how they got away with it this long.

A-Man, of course.

Posted by: Ace at 07:08 AM | Comments (17)
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Can't Stop The Music, as the early 80's Village People movie was called:

The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation is demanding an apology from "Today" show film critic Gene Shalit for his review of "Brokeback Mountain."

During his Thursday review of the critically hailed film, Shalit called Jake Gyllenhaal's character, Jack, a "sexual predator" who "tracks Ennis down and coaxes him into sporadic trysts," E! Online reported Friday.

Kind of a bizarre take (especially as Jack was, ahem, on the receiving end of things). But, in all fairness to Mr. Shalit, Jack was seducing a mentally challenged man, the Gay Slingblade, rmmrm-hmmmrm, rhrmm-hrrmmh.

The A-Man again.

Posted by: Ace at 06:38 AM | Comments (11)
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Come on, boys, you can do better than this, can't you?

The article is definitely negative and slanted, but only a little compared to the usual fare. And it does contain this extraodinary admission:

By almost all measures, last year was a good one for the American economy. The economy expanded by about 3.6 percent in 2005, the fourth consecutive year of solid growth, despite the soaring energy prices and the destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina.

But check this out:

Many analysts said, however, that Mr. Bush's policies were not the primary reason for the economy's strength.

"Tax cuts had very little to do with it," said Narimen Behravesh, chief economist at Global Insight, a forecasting firm in Lexington, Mass. "You had a housing boom, which had very little to do with tax cuts, driving consumer spending. We also had before this year the dollar coming down, which helped drive up exports."

This is absurd. No President's policies are the "primary reason" for the economy's strength (or weakness). What a president can do to improve (or sabotage) and economy is fairly limited by structural restrictions (e.g., the Federal Reserve controlling interest rates, entirely out of the administration's hands) or political ones (e.g., there is only a limited range of tax rates the public will accept).

Clinton's policies were also not the "primary reason" for the strength of the later 1990's economy, as "many analysts" would have said then, too, had the NYT only bothered to ask.

But of course the NYT's economic storyline back then was "Everything that's good that's happening is all because of Clinton," because they generally agreed with his policies. Especially that bit about raising taxes "on the rich."

The proper question is whether or not the administration's policies are helpful to growth, whether or not they contribute to the strength of the economy. The Times didn't ask that, perhaps fearing what "many analysts" would tell them.

Skilllllll... Luck! Update: When I was in high school, I and my friends engaged in this childish sort of analysis-- but ironically. As a joke.

We'd play ping pong, and we'd argue (again, joking) that whenever we won, it was "skillllll..," and whenever an opponent won, it was "luck." We had a handy blackboard, where we graphed out the "skill-luck" duality. My friend, for example, would put up on the blackboard his three wins and show a rising trend-line as he said "skillllllllll..." and then when he got to my two wins, he'd plunge the trend-line down and say "luck!"

It's good to know we were so far out on the forefront of economic analysis. We were doing skilllllll...luck! analysis before the NYT started doing it with Clinton and Bush.

Reagan: Pretty much the only modern President who pushed through such major changes to the tax code that he could be said to be the "primary reason" for the economy's health or sickness (health, as it turned out).

Since then it's mainly been tinkering at the edges.

Posted by: Ace at 06:04 AM | Comments (36)
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...but, they say, there is no specific timetable and the withdrawal will begin only "as and when the Iraqis are satisfied that their own forces can cope completely with the responsibility."

Posted by: Ace at 05:46 AM | Comments (1)
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