...which looks a bit like what we're going through right now.

All to plunge the world into "blood and fire and chaos" in order to hasten the coming of the Muslim Messiah.

Gee whiz, I thought that left-wingers hated religious fundamentalists with apocalyptic messiah complex. And yet, so little mention of Ahmadinejad.

Posted by: Ace at 08:50 AM | Comments (66)
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I don't imagine this will have much effect, but I wonder if he's right that Arab opinion is that the Palestinians should get over it.

Dear Palestinian Arab brethren:

The war with Israel is over.

You have lost. Surrender and negotiate to secure a future for your children.

We, your Arab brothers, may say until we are blue in the face that we stand by you, but the wise among you and most of us know that we are moving on, away from the tired old idea of the Palestinian Arab cause and the "eternal struggle" with Israel.

Dear friends, you and your leaders have wasted three generations trying to fight for Palestine, but the truth is the Palestine you could have had in 1948 is much bigger than the one you could have had in 1967, which in turn is much bigger than what you may have to settle for now or in another 10 years. Struggle means less land and more misery and utter loneliness.

At the moment, brothers, you would be lucky to secure a semblance of a state in that Gaza Strip into which you have all crowded, and a small part of the West Bank of the Jordan. It isn't going to get better. Time is running out even for this much land, so here are some facts, figures, and sound advice, friends.

...

Your young people are growing up illiterate, ill, and bent on rites of death and suicide, while you, in effect, are living on the kindness of foreigners, including America and the United Nations. Every day your officials must beg for your daily bread, dependent on relief trucks that carry food and medicine into the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, while your criminal Muslim fundamentalist Hamas government continues to fan the flames of a war it can neither fight nor hope to win.

In other words, brothers, you are down, out, and alone in a burnt-out landscape that is shrinking by the day.

What kind of struggle is this? Is it worth waging at all? More important, what kind of miserable future does it portend for your children, the fourth or fifth generation of the Arab world's have-nots?

Worth reading in full.

Thanks to Corley for the article.

Caspera writes a sharp comment about the Arab mindset, as well as the leftists' inability to comprehend reality, past the jump.

One of Caspera's several points has to do with the "worthless" land of the Gaza Strip. Over and over, Arabs and leftists whine that there's nothing to do with such land.

Really? A strip of coastland on the Mediterranean? This is valueless land, huh? Can't do a darned thing with it?

Oh, well, guess we'll have to give you all of Israel.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 08:46 AM | Comments (88)
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To teach his gymnasts perfect form, the coach regularly stabbed his students with a drywall screw.

Gymnastics is physically grueling enough, without getting jabbed over and over with drywall screws until you bleed. Drywall screws are sharp, and the threads get progressively bigger.

Seminole County sheriff's investigators said Coach Mike Turner and another coach repeatedly stabbed one of the boys and a brother repeatedly with dry wall screws, breaking the skin on their buttocks, leaving permanent scarring.

Turner's theory was that he was helping them:

Investigators said Turner's reasoning was a gymnast's mistake could cause a much more serious injury than a stab wound from a little screw.

With video.

Thanks to DDG John.

Posted by: Ace at 08:17 AM | Comments (33)
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Reposting, in honor of her lawsuit.

Captain's Quarters checks the allegations in Plame's lawsuit against the factual record. You will be surprised to learn the allegations and the known facts are not as harmonious as one might like. (Thanks to CraigC.)

Update: More Wilson/Plame photoshopping and analysis.

Below the jump, an Aristocrats-style story of Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame. Kind of similar to Jim Treacher's photoshop, except super dirty. STRONG CONTENT WARNING. Aristrocrats jokes are filthy. more...

Posted by: Ace at 08:12 AM | Comments (11)
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Breaking on Fox.

Ugly American has the first reports that a strike may have killed Sheik Nasrallah (sp?).

But a subsequent report says that Hizbollah is saying he's just fine.

Posted by: Ace at 08:08 AM | Comments (3)
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We're deporting this guy.

Unfortunately, there's more to the process than just applying a boot to his ass:

CLEVELAND (AP) -- An Islamic religious leader convicted of concealing ties to terrorist groups remains jailed in Michigan seven months after he reached a deal with the U.S. government to be deported.

The agreement called for Fawaz Damra's deportation to Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Sudan, Egypt or the Palestinian territories. But so far, no one has been willing to take the former imam of the Islamic Center of Cleveland, officials said.

The article tells us that he was caught on tape raising money for a terrorist group, then:

Damra is having a difficult time in jail and misses his wife and three children, who still live in the Cleveland area, friend Haider Alawan said.

"He's a man without a country," Alawan said.

Posted by: LauraW. at 07:14 AM | Comments (20)
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You have to go here and see this right now.

Posted by: LauraW. at 06:38 AM | Comments (5)
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...it's easy... if you're a Daily Kos diarist...

... no Jews to cause wars... a Jew-free paradise...

...imagine a moustached strongman... showing us all the way...

Imagine a world without Israel
by qrswave

Or is that not allowed?

Muslims, Jews, and Christians could live in peace without fear of mutual destruction.

There would be no more need for US AID or justification for Dimona.

We could bring down the Wall, send prisoners home, and families could be reunited.

We could dismantle checkpoints, open crossings, and pull down barbed wire fences.

There would be no more settlements or armed settlers because the people would be united.

We could replant trees and olive groves and rebuild battered cities.

No more suicide bombers or sniper fire, and no more dead civilians.

No more targeted killings and hell-fire missiles, or systematic demolitions.

Palestinians and Jews could live together and the world could address other issues.

What a simpler place this world would be

if there was no need for a Jewish majority - where there would otherwise be none.

Is it so hard to imagine?

A simpler world indeed! Why, within 48 hours of the abolition of Israel, all those pesky Jews would be dead!

No, it's not hard to imagine it. A great man imagined it before. Alas, his dreams of a Judenfrei society were interrupted by unilateralist American imperalist neo-cons who invaded his sovereign kite-flying paradise.

Posted by: Ace at 07:11 PM | Comments (56)
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At least Time is getting full value on Josh's service:

Results 1 - 10 of about 54,800 for "question the timing" . (0.45 seconds)

Yahoo only manages to find 49,800 uses of this novel analytical template.

Note I didn't bother to also search for different versions, like "questioning the timing," etc. I'm pretty sure a better search would yield 200,000 or more references.

So: at least 55,000 people or so, and probably a lot more, "questioned the timing" of this or that in the past few years.

But Josh Marshall, I'm sure, put a fresh new spin on it all.

Maybe Time magazine will want to hire me? I'm pretty sure I can come up with paradigm-challenging notions, such as calling people I don't like "insufferable douchebags." I think that's an Ace of Spades original right there.

I could also call someone a "ducktwat." That seems new.

Time should be proud. They've landed an unpredictable, maverick thinker in the mold of the NYT's Bob Herbert.

Posted by: Ace at 05:58 PM | Comments (16)
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Josh Marshall, in his inaugural column for Time -- I know, you're shocked that Time would choose to grab hold of yet another liberal as a columnist -- accuses Bush of issuing terror-alerts for political purposes.

And then says he has no evidence of this.

But he, you know, questions the timing.

Josh Fucking Marshall questions the timing of his goddamned bowel movements. He actually screams at his anus, "DID DICK CHENEY PUT YOU UP TO THIS?!?!"

(Which -- keep a secret? -- he usually did.)

I question the timing of Time's hiring of unhinged hacks to make unsubstantiated charges just in time for an election.

Andrew Sullivan's e'er-palpitating heart is all a-twitter over the Bush Administration's desire to continue using two forms of "torture" -- making people stand for a long time, and keeping them in an unpleasantly cold cell.

I'm just curious. Where does Conniption Boy stand on US prisons' use of the "hot box" for punishing violent inmates?

Oh yeah. He also seems to suggest that Iran's maniac president is ordering Hezbollah to attack Israel because of Bush's failure to put "more troops" into Iraq.

Dog with a bone. If you have very little to say, just say it very frequently.

I think Sullivan got most of geopolitical expertise during a 'shroom trip, where he had a wonderful discussion with Von Clauswitz while rainbow-racing through lightning forests.

Thanks to Allah for the last.

Posted by: Ace at 05:17 PM | Comments (45)
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