10,350 or so.

About another 350 to finally get higher than we were under Clinton's bubble economy.

Cheap shot, I know. Clinton's economy was basically sound. But it had a huge bubble component, too. Which of course burst... before Bush took office.

Since then we've been building soundly towards those levels. When we hit 11,000 this time, it won't be a bubble.

Coming Reuters headline:

Economists Hail Bubble Economies As "Super Fun" and a "Hell of a Roller-Coaster Ride;" Call Bush's Sound, Sensible Growth "Boring" and "Probably Bad For Your Cholesterol"

Posted by: Ace at 07:14 AM | Comments (6)
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To the owner of this blog:

You're a moron if you think the majority of libs as you call them supports this type of behavior.

It's good to know this guy doesn't support this. However, many liberals do. Check Democratic Underground. I'm not linking it because they keep posting her information there, but I can assure you they support this.

And they call themselves Democrats, of course. Not "anarachists/socialists" as the commenter says in his next paragraph.

Update: I just went to the link and found the page was now missing. So the management, perhaps, fearing legal consequences, took the thread down.

What amazes me is that you morons confuse these socialists/anarchists who protest the military on campus with the Democratic Party. Those idiots probably do not vote and when they do vote, they probably vote Green. If you took the time to read all of the posts at one of the top Democrat sites like Daily Kos, you would see that the people in charge dislike Malkin but they will not allow any of her personal info to be posted on that blog. We dislike her politics but we respect her privacy and will not allow it to be violated at Daily Kos.

Not true. At least one of Daily Kos' "diarists" came out full-throatedly in support of the campaign. I read his piece. I'll look through my email and see if I can find the link.

It looks like you're itching for a reason to get violent but let me warn you, not all of us "libs" are against gun control and we will smoke your ass if you attack us.

We're itching to get violent? No asshole. For the entire life of this blog I have strongly counseled against violence or even comments that suggested violence. The trouble is that liberals -- yes, liberals -- are now so unhinged they believe that violence is justified to vindicate their political beliefs.

Over and over we've seen death threats against Republicans. A Florida state Democratic chapter took out an ad recommending the execution of Donald Rumsfield, for example. The left has decided that Bush is so tyrannical that no restraints on civil behavior apply anymore.

No one is "looking for a reason" to get violent with you, jerkweed. But your political fellow-travellers, and you by silently supporting them, are escalating what is intended to be a civil, nonviolent process of political change into one of personal threats and possible personal violence.

Liberals claim to love democracy, but they seem eager to abandon the necessary undergridings of it -- nonviolence, civility and fair play in politics, etc. -- when they're losing.

I may be a worriwort, but it does seem to me that this country is growing near a 1970's-style period of political violence and civil unrest. And yes -- it is liberals and leftists who are provoking this. And, indeed, masturbating themselves over the possibility of this.

You want power back? Win a fucking election, jagoffs. You want to convince the country you're right? Answer your critics with arguments. Stop trying to silence them through scary threats.

Update: Under the headline "Don't stop with Malkin," a certain left-wing site I won't mention is now publishing the "names" and "addresses" of other "right-wing website" owners, encouraging people to "use a map."

I'm on there. Well, I'm not on there. My website is on there, with incorrect information.

So, they're trying.

I seem to remember the liberals being very insistent that organizations which seemed to encourage or facilitate violence against abortion clinics be dealt with criminally and through RICO. Are they also agitating for legal action against these sites too, I wonder?

Posted by: Ace at 07:06 AM | Comments (10)
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Fortunately, it was her old address, but the intent was there.

Goldstein calls for public ostracism of the bloggers and leftwing websites engaged in this behavior. Good luck with that.

What is there to say? This information is being put out there for only one reason: to intimidate and harrass political opponents. Obviously, if it's merely trivia that no one will act badly upon, it hardly hurts Michelle to have this floating out there.

No, the intent is that someone will actually begin harrassing her, or vandalizing her property, or perphas even acting violently against her. The message: We can and will harm you.

What I despise about liberals most of all is their cowardice. These cocksuckers stroke themselves off over thoughts of possible violence against their enemies -- masturbating to murder. They're all in a big vicious circle-jerk, trying to egg each other on, like a bunch of fairies getting ready to slap-fight, trying to provoke one of their own into actually acting upon what most of them are too chickenshit to actually do.

They are giving moral support for those among them so unbalanced as to commit crimes based on political differences, letting them know in advance, Do this thing for us and you will be hailed among us as Hero.

Well, pussies, keep it up. You can push this society ever and ever closer to open political violence, but it's about time you took a look at your sorry fat asses in the mirror and remembered all the ass-kickings you suffered through in your years of miserable alienation in high school. You want this, tough guys? Last time I looked at the lot of you you looked like the sort of half-a-fags even I could kick the shit out of.

It's amazing to me that such physically weak, cowardly chickenshits are so giddy over the thoughts of violence. And I thought liberals fancied themselves smart.

Sounds like a recipe for getting yourselves killed, but have fun, shitbags. If you succeed in provoking the violence you seem so eager for, you will not have a fun time reaping the whirlwind.

Posted by: Ace at 09:42 PM | Comments (162)
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And that means "idiot," you know.

Hitchens with another great takedown:

Nobody appears to dispute what I wrote in last week's Slate to the effect that in February 1999, Saddam Hussein dispatched his former envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency, and former delegate to non-proliferation conferences at the United Nations, to Niger. Wissam al-Zahawie was, at the time of his visit, the accredited ambassador of Iraq to the Vatican: a more senior post than it may sound, given that the Vatican was almost the only full European embassy that Iraq then possessed. And nobody has proposed an answer to my question: Given the fact that Niger is synonymous with uranium (and was Iraq's source of "yellowcake" in 1981), and given that Zahawie had been Iraq's main man in nuclear diplomacy, what innocent explanation can be found for his trip?

The person whose response I most wanted is Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who has claimed to discover that Saddam was guiltless on the charge of seeking uranium from Niger, and has further claimed to be the object, along with his CIA wife, of a campaign of government persecution.

....I am prepared to keep on repeating this until at least one cow comes home[:] Joseph Wilson went to Niger in 2002 to investigate whether or not the country had renewed its uranium-based relationship with Iraq, spent a few days (by his own account) sipping mint tea with officials of that country who were (by his wife's account) already friendly to him, and came back with the news that all was above-board. Again to repeat myself, this must mean either that A) he did not know that Zahawie had come calling or B) that he did know but didn't think it worth mentioning that one of Saddam's point men on nukes had been in town. In neither case, it seems to me, should he be trusted with another mission that requires any sort of curiosity.

...

Take that permanent smirk off your face, Ambassador (and the look of martyrdom as well, while you are at it). It seems that your contacts in the Niger Ministry of Mines—the ones that your wife told the CIA made you such a good choice for the trip—didn't rate you highly enough to tell you about the Zahawie visit. It would, interestingly, have been a name you already knew. But you didn't even get as far as having to explain it away—or not until last week—because you were that far in the dark. It was left to Italian, French, and British intelligence to discover the suggestive fact and transmit it to Washington. And it's been left to someone else, most probably in the Niger embassy in Rome, to produce a much later fabrication, either for gain or in order to discredit a true story. The forged account has no bearing at all on the authentic one: It bears the same relationship as a fake $100 bill does to a genuine bill. The rip-off remake movie, "Mr. Wilson Goes to Niger," now playing to packed houses of the credulous everywhere, has precisely the same relationship to its own original.

Heh, Indeed, and/or Read the Whole Thing.

Thanks to Steve_in_HB.

Posted by: Ace at 09:26 PM | Comments (7)
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Well, not really. But the death rate under Bush is down by a dramatic 50,000 deaths per year, which means that 50,000 more innocent Americans died under Clinton than Bush, which means, if I understand the logic of the left, that Clinton killed them all.

Do I have that right?

The U.S. population may be aging, but the number of Americans who died in 2004 represents the biggest one-year decline since World War II, according to preliminary government data released Wednesday.

Nearly 50,000 fewer Americans died in 2004 than in 2003, according to data based on about 90% of U.S. death certificates. The preliminary number of U.S. deaths in 2004 was 2,398,343, compared with 2,448,288 in 2003.

The last decline this large occurred in 1944, when there were about 48,000 fewer deaths than in 1943, says Arialdi Minlead author of the report.

"We were surprised. We were scratching our heads," says Minino, a statistician at the National Center for Health Statistics. "Something of this magnitude is really out of the ordinary." U.S. deaths usually rise each year, he says, adding that the last decline occurred in 1997, when 445 fewer Americans died than in 1996.

The drop in deaths was accompanied by a slight rise in life expectancy at birth, and the 2004 preliminary estimate reached a record high of 77.9 years, about 5 months higher than in 2003, Minino says.

It's not clear why there was such a big drop in 2004, he says. Minino says he and his colleagues suspect a mild flu season might be one of many converging factors. Better treatments and improved access to health care are among the possible contributors to the decline, he says.

Damn Clinton for his murderous stinginess on access to health care. It was almost an American genocide, for crying out loud.

Anyway, it seems to put a damper on last week's Good Economy, Bad Economy spin, Reuters' effort to establish that a good economy will literally kill you.

Thanks to Dave.

Posted by: Ace at 09:20 PM | Comments (58)
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So, you know, a religious maniac was "elected" President of Iran, basically drawing power from lower-class, low-educated men who are members of hardline extremist religious militias.

He belongs to a sect so extremist and lunatic that the Ayatollah Kholmeini banned it as dangerous.

He considers it his holy obligation to speed along the coming of the new Muslim messiah by putting the world through "chaos and bloodshed" (required for the coming of the Mahti, doncha know) is determined to get an atomic weapon.

His clerics proclaim fatwas that God wants Iran to have a nuke.

He has all but announced he views it as his sacred destiny to nuke Tel Aviv and New York City.

So... who is Ted Rall concerned about as regards dangerous religious extremism?

You got it.

Maniacal Messianic Prepares to Fulfill His Destiny

"I have fulfilled my destiny," the president says manically. He has just entered the nuclear launch codes that will trigger World War III. Seconds later, he emerges from a bunker. The Secretary of State squeezes between two soldiers. "Mr. President!" he shouts. "We have a diplomatic solution!"

He smiles. "It's too late," he replies. "The missiles are flying. Alleluia. Alleluia."

The above scene, from David Cronenberg's 1983 adaptation of the horror novel "The Dead Zone," is a classic if slightly preposterous nightmare of a world destroyed by a demented demagogue. Now, incredibly, a lunatic out of a Stephen King movie has brought the United States to the brink of Armageddon.

Until I read Seymour Hersh's expose in The New Yorker and subsequent follow-up coverage by other journalists about the Bush Administration's plans to start a war against Iran, I had dismissed talk of George W. Bush's messianism as so much Beltway chatter. True, he hears voices, even claiming that God and Jesus Christ talk to him. "I believe God wants me to run for president," he told a friend in Texas. Eschewing mainstream religion, he routinely parrots the apocalyptic ravings of fringe Christianist cults: "And the light [America] has shone in the darkness [the enemies of America], and the darkness will not overcome it [America shall conquer its enemies]," he said during his fevered campaign for war against Iraq. He mimics Old Testament cadences: "God told me to strike at Al Qaeda and I struck them," Bush told the Palestinian prime minister in 2003, "and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East."

Nooor-mal.

Despite the man's wacky religiosity, I have been giving Bush the benefit of a small amount of remaining doubt after five years of the most disastrous rule this nation has ever suffered. I believed that he was breathtakingly bigoted, stupid and ignorant. But I didn't think he was out of his mind. Until now.

He has been giving Bush "the benefit of a small amount of remaining doubt" "until now"? Really?

The trouble with always having your outrage meter pinned at 11 is that you can never really get the attention you want by announcing your outrage. It's about as surprising as Ted Kennedy coming down for Sunday breakfast with his genitals exposed.

So you have to begin lying and claiming that before, you weren't really outraged, it's just now you're really, really outraged.

Why does this douchebag have a column? Cripes, I used to think his cartooning's caricatures were crude and tasteless.

Thanks to Jack Straw.

Posted by: Ace at 04:08 PM | Comments (32)
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"I have a request. While I may engage in public discourse, my wife and my family are private people... they do not wish to be under the glare of the cameras."

Guess who said it?

A) Michael Jackson, about himself and his children Prince Michael Jackson and "Blanket"

B) Paris Hilton, about herself and her parents

C) Tom Cruise, about himself, his pubescent wife, and his new daughter/placental pate provider "Suri"

D) Joe Wilson, about his camera-hoggin', grand-standin', truth-twistin', money-shottin' self and his Double-O Soccer Mom superspy wife

Answer: the one who actually has absolutely no human shame whatsoever.

Thanks to Allah.

Posted by: Ace at 03:53 PM | Comments (31)
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Unbelievable. The one tracks the other almost perfectly. If you presented this kind of graph to a statistics professor he'd probably flunk you for faking your data.

Dave at Garfield Ridge suggests, for purely scientific reasons I'm sure, testing this hypothesis, by, say, releasing tens of millions of gallons of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Around October, I'm thinking. That's the best time to run scientific tests.

Posted by: Ace at 11:56 AM | Comments (64)
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He used to be a buttoned-up starched-collar stiff-shirted "flaming centrist" who wouldn't "VOOM" if you put 10,000 volts through him. Now he's a ranting bomb-throwing archliberal whose idea of rhetorical restraint is to insert the word "perhaps" before the sentence "Bush should be dropped into a pit of starved wild boars with assorted lunchmeats wrapped around his genitals."

The man is pushing 60 and he is still trying on new identities like a thirteen year old.

Then again, he's been pushing 60 since he was a thirteen year old, so I guess, like Michael Jackson, he feels it's time to finally experience adolescence, and maybe try getting to that "third base" all his friends keep bragging about.

So much is at stake in this November's election. So many critically important public policies are being driven right now by a small cabal of Bush cronies who are free from even the pretense of oversight by their enablers in the Rubber Stamp Congress. This must come to an end.

The fact of the matter is the Republican Congress is incapable of fulfilling its constitutional responsibilities of checking the breathtaking excesses of the Bush administration. And, change must come now. America cannot take three more years of one-party rule in Washington D.C. Fortunately, we don't have to. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney may not be on the ballot this November, but the Rubber Stamp Congress is.

And, we can hold Republicans accountable for the horrible mess they have made of our country and halt the GOP's attack on our fundamental freedoms ... reduce our nation's dependence on foreign oil ... restore stem cell research ... and tackle global warming, a planetary emergency that we must address immediately.

532 votes, guys. Five hundred thirty f'n' two votes, and this guy would have been our president.

Posted by: Ace at 11:37 AM | Comments (34)
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Not really news at this point, but maybe grist for comments.

The WH says McClellan wasn't forced out, but Time says he was. For once I'm on Time's side.

The New Editor quotes a Michael Wolff hit-piece about McClellan. Michael Wolff is a vapid shitweasel overly impressed by his own "attitude-charged" form of wit, but for once I'm on Michael Wolff's side.

If you looked up "hapless" in the dictionary, you'd see a photo of Scott McClellan, except you wouldn't, because he wasn't able to make the photo session because he had an impacted molar that day.

Tony Snow, who is not at all hapless, may replace him. Which would be great for the White House and great for Snow; I always felt his firing from Fox News Sunday was undeserved.

Rove's policymaking role stripped away; given the policy coming out of the White House of late, that sounds like a pretty good idea. Rove's big ideas seem to have been Harriet Miers, the prescription drug (sorta) benefit, and minting millions of new Democratic/economic left voters by giving citizenship to illegal immigrants. We could use less of that sort of genius.

It may also be a bit of distancing from Rove; I'm sure the media isn't done with him yet on Plamegate.

In related, very stale, Drudge-linked news:

Rolling Stone says Bush is the worst President in history, in an article by Sean Wilentz, a Princeton historian who moonlights as an unpaid DNC hack.

That's shocking, of course, but more shocking still is Time magazine's list of the Ten Best Senators, which features -- are you ready? -- Ted Kennedy, Dick Durbin, Carl Levin, John McCain, Olympia Snowe, and Arlen Specter.

So obviously there's no political bias there; the list includes Senators from both political persuasions, mixing the most liberal of Democrats with the most liberal of Republicans.

Read Time, and understand... the unchangeable college-sophomore lefty mindset of 55 year old Yuppie liberals.

Posted by: Ace at 10:56 AM | Comments (56)
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