Moderate Muslims -- catch the fever!

Larwyn adds:

Dinocrat, VDH, Mark Steyn and many others have written about the lack of our demanding the same tolerance and respect of our religions
that CAIR and the rest of the apologists demand of us. It is time for the Christian and Jewish communities worldwide to demonstrate and demand that the governments of the Western world make these demands of the Islamic
governments.

A lot of talk of anti-Muslim backlash in the West -- coming after mass murders, completed or attempted -- but little talk of simple brutality towards Christians and Jews in the Muslim world.

I'm sure CAIR will be issuing a powerful statement on this outrage presently.

Posted by: Ace at 11:03 AM | Comments (13)
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To add to three they already operate.

Israel's core principle isn't "Never Again," as someone observed.

They know they can't really prevent a concerted effort by the Islamic world to kill them.

The real principle is "Never Again -- Alone."

Of course, MAD doesn't actually work against a madman who sees the nuclear destruction of his own country a small price to pay in order to hasten the return of the 12th Imam.

Posted by: Ace at 10:34 AM | Comments (31)
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I can't wait for the Anchorman style gangwar:

Dr Alan Stern, who leads the US space agency's New Horizons mission to Pluto and did not vote in Prague, told BBC News: "It's an awful definition; it's sloppy science and it would never pass peer review - for two reasons.

Pluto discoverer Clyde Tombaugh pictured in 1980 (AP)
Pluto was discovered in 1930 by the American Clyde Tombaugh
"Firstly, it is impossible and contrived to put a dividing line between dwarf planets and planets. It's as if we declared people not people for some arbitrary reason, like 'they tend to live in groups'.

"Secondly, the actual definition is even worse, because it's inconsistent."

One of the three criteria for planethood states that a planet must have "cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit". The largest objects in the Solar System will either aggregate material in their path or fling it out of the way with a gravitational swipe.

Pluto was disqualified because its highly elliptical orbit overlaps with that of Neptune.

But Dr Stern pointed out that Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Neptune have also not fully cleared their orbital zones. Earth orbits with 10,000 near-Earth asteroids. Jupiter, meanwhile, is accompanied by 100,000 Trojan asteroids on its orbital path.

These rocks are all essentially chunks of rubble left over from the formation of the Solar System more than four billion years ago.

"If Neptune had cleared its zone, Pluto wouldn't be there," he added.

Stern said like-minded astronomers had begun a petition to get Pluto reinstated. Car bumper stickers compelling motorists to "Honk if Pluto is still a planet" have gone on sale over the internet and e-mails circulating about the decision have been describing the IAU as the "Irrelevant Astronomical Union".

Theory: These geeks had to come out of there with some news, and this was the easiest way to get attention.

But honestly, that take-down is pretty good. Their definition doesn't seem to make any sense, and seems constructed backwards just to get the headline-making conclusion that Pluto isn't a planet.

This seems to be a generational thing. Some writer on NRO was happy about returning the Solar System to the "traditional eight."

Traditional eight? I guess Pluto was deemed a planet shortly before I came of age, because I never heard of any "eight" planets.

At least in one small respect, I can count myself among the younger generation.

Posted by: Ace at 10:05 AM | Comments (40)
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He really admits it.

No wonder he's such a fan of the Hezbollywood foreign stringers. He's dabbled in that medium himself.

And rather unapologetically, I might add.

He needed only to ask some tourists about their reactions to the diversion of water from Niagra Falls, resulting in the falls becoming a mere trickle.

He "rebelled," he says. He could not bring himself to ask tourists about the Falls; it was, I guess, beneath him.

So he just sat on a bench and made up fake quotes for his reporter's notebook and then printed up a sham story.

By his own admission.

And, again, unapologetically. He thinks it was kind of cute.

Granted, this wasn't a major story. But if this douchebag can't lower himself to interview the "dorky" tourists he was sent to question, what the hell is he doing in the media in the first place?

Posted by: Ace at 09:56 AM | Comments (18)
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I guess yesterday's post encouraged Allah to explore the studio space.

More porn = less rape.

Career woman = bad wife.

Lazy husband = bad marriage.

Three of the four basic food groups right there.

Only missing something about the size of bearsacs.

Posted by: Ace at 09:46 AM | Comments (101)
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I guess fearmongering, and suggesting your lives may well be in danger if you vote for the wrong party, is okay so long you're on the right left side.

Nuance, baby.

Hurricane Katrina convulsed the nation with its massive destruction. Now Democrats believe it could wreak havoc again in a tide of voter resentment that could sweep Republicans from power.

On the verge of Katrina's one-year anniversary, Democrats from New Orleans to New Haven, Conn., to New York are launching a coordinated political assault on the Bush administration's response to the devastation that struck the Gulf Coast.

Democratic lawmakers began arriving in the stricken region Thursday, making a stand that will culminate Monday when about 20 House Democrats convene in Bay St. Louis, Miss., for a town hall meeting. Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu (news, bio, voting record) of Louisiana plans to deliver the Democratic response to President Bush's Saturday radio address.

Party leaders sense that the Bush administration's performance in the aftermath of last year's hurricanes and lingering problems rebuilding the region are as politically damaging to the president — and by extension, other Republicans — as the war in Iraq.

"The bad thing is that no matter what happens in Iraq, Katrina is done," Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean said in an interview Thursday. "It happened. You can't undo it. It's a huge scar."

Hmmm... making a coordinated political attack to coincide with a major disaster that cost human lives to reap some political advantage from the opposing party's perceived weakness on the issues.

Gee, if Republicans were permitted to do that, they'd have a few issues to discuss, huh?

There has not yet been a hurricane this season, or at least not one touching the US.

I question the timing.

Karl Rove can get those weather-control-machines on-line fast enough when it suits his purposes, but he seem to be willing to permit (assist?) Asian men in blowing up US airplanes.

Posted by: Ace at 09:31 AM | Comments (47)
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Idiot-- even if it were shot down, it wouldn't be "sinister." For crying out loud, liberals have been screaming for years about Bush's alleged ineptness in not scrambing the F-16's sooner to shoot the second, third, and fourth planes down before they could hit their targets.

I suppose the cover-up would be somewhat "sinister," but then, I'm not sure why it simply would't be stated that yes, faced with a plane we could not control, hurtling towards DC, we took the extreme but necessary measure of destroying it over a relatively uninhabited bit of forest and farmland in Pennsylvania.

Anyway. The Daily Mail gives this lunatic lots of column-inches for his Application For Voluntary Confinement To A State Medical Health Clinic.

To a nation still reeling from the attacks on New YorkÂ’s World Trade Centre and the Pentagon that same September morning, these were men and women every bit as heroic as those who had fought at the Alamo.

Yet my own exhaustive investigations have led me to conclude that the story of Flight 93 is far from being the straightforward account of supreme courage that the authorities would have us believe.

Instead, the real story is mired in cynical manipulation and warmongering propaganda. I am convinced there is evidence to suggest a wholly sinister twist to the tale that already holds pride of place in American folklore. For I believe that Flight 93 may well have been deliberately shot down as a means of stopping it from reaching its ultimate target — even at the expense of the 40 blameless people on board. It is a suspicion that was held even by the FBI, but was swept aside as a shaken America clung on to the official version of selfless sacrifice and raw patriotism.

Today, with the approach of the fifth anniversary of 9/11, some will still say that such speculation only serves to lend comfort to terrorists and does a disservice to the dead.

Others, however, will feel there are too many disquieting circumstances and unanswered questions to simply ignore.

This is why they are so determined to prove Flight 93 was shot down-- because they need, for some sick, viciously anti-American reason, to prove that there was no heroism aboard that flight, or, if there was such heroism, it was futile and doomed by the actions of the American government.

I remember an MSM article that puported to "debunk" the heroic version of events. The evidence? Sure, the recordings indicate the passengers breached the cockpit door (meaning they had killed or incapacitated the terrorists in the cabin), but who could know if the struggle resulted in the crasing of the plane, or the terrorists, realizing they were beaten, plunged the plane to the ground to take them with them?

Again, the writer stated that this possibility all but negated the "heroic legend" of Flight 93.

Which I find baffling. Even if we assume that the terrorists themselves crashed the plane upon realizing they were about to be torn to pieces by the heroic passengers and crew of Flight 93, how does that diminish their heroism? Crashing upon a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, was obviously not their goal.

Whoever directly plunged the plane to the ground, the Flight 93 Rebellion caused it indirectly, at the very least. And in doing so, they saved hundreds of lives.

Just not their own, alas.

This makes their actions less heroic?

It was a truly disgusting moment in MSM "storytelling," one of the many moments we've seen lately where the mask has slipped completely away and they've indulged in their most vile anti-American, anti-patriotic biases.

The writer of the current conspiracy book gives the game away several times. Here's a telling example:

Why had the FBI failed to put the record straight over the previous four-and-a-half years?

One answer is that it suited the heroism legend to keep silent as the Pentagon banged the drum for war in Iraq.

"Heroism legend"? Again, assuming arguendo he's right -- how does this diminish the heroics of the Flight 93 Rebellion whatsoever?

In his own mind it diminishes their courage, because he needs physical courage to be denigrated and exposed as futile. His entire worldview depends upon this.

For the rest of us, the planes crashed into the WTC, the Pentagon, and a field in Shaksville, Pensylvania.

For the left, the planes crashed into their entire worldview, collapsing it as surely as the Twin Towers were collapsed.

And since then, they've made a determined and relentless effort to substitute in their own preferred narrative, in which the WTC was destroyed in a controlled demolition by the CIA, the Pentagon was simply blown up with an American missile or planted American bombs, and the first soldiers in the Greater War on Terror shouldn't even have bothered, because the Sidewinder missiles were on their way no matter what they did.

What links all these conspiracy theories? The unshakable belief that there is no enemy except the US Government (except, perhaps, for the Mossad), and that heroism, patriotism, and a physical defense of one's country and one's very own life is a doomed venture hardly worth the candle.

Admitting there is an external, implacable, and deadly threat to us strongly implies we need to fight it.

But they've decided a priori that fighting is never the correct response.

Ergo, somewhere the syllogism must be flawed. They focus their attention on the premise-- that there is in fact a deadly external threat. That must be demonstrated as incorrect if their preferred conclusion -- pacifism at any price -- is to remain viable.

In their own minds they've rebulit the Towers so they were never destroyed that day, but they now stand on a foundation of magical thinking and a childish retreat into dreamworlds and fantasies.

For some, the choice between adapting one's worldview to the real world or adapting the real world to one's worldview is a fairly easy call.

Thanks to Asher.

Posted by: Ace at 07:55 AM | Comments (95)
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That's the claim-- that a technique has been developed to extract stem cells from an embryo without destroying it, or, assumedly, harming it.

If this is real -- and who knows yet if it is -- then this debate, I hope, should be over.

I hope. I hope those who want to harvest stem-cells from embryos do not have a secret preference to destroy them, as some sort of thumb-in-the-eye to social cons.

And I hope social cons do not also have a secret objection to the very notion of using stem cells for research in principle, for reasons not directly related to the destruction of the embryo.

Posted by: Ace at 07:42 AM | Comments (39)
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Hokay. Let's come up with five important issues that may be in TAPPED's top two or top three.

1) The Israel-Hezballah fake ceasefire

2) Iran likely to announce it has successfully learned to mass-process weapons-grade uranium, or something equally troubling, in the next few days

3) SkyBomb/Al Qaeda/Terrorism

4) The economy -- which is strong, but liberals say it isn't, and, honestly, there are problems with it, despite its overall strength, including the high price of oil and a nagging lagging in wage increases

5) Iraq/Afganistan (which liberals insist are "separate issues" from terrorism, so I have obliged them and separated them out)

So: Which several of those gets bumped off the short list of the nation's most pressing problems to make room for the economic terrorist organization called Wal*Mart?

Answer, please, Tapped.

I have a feeling all the Hezballah/Iran/Al Qaeda stuff are the likely suspects for being downplayed, because, of course, they're all "fictitious threats" "hyped" by Republican "fearmongering."

I prefer Goldberg on the apocalyptic evil that is Wal*Mart.

Again, thanks to Memeorandum, which is a great "front page" for reading the blogosphere.

Posted by: Ace at 07:30 AM | Comments (39)
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Some people have trouble getting directly to the mu.nu server.

It sometimes helps to go through the redirect up at www.aceofspadeshq.com. It sometimes creates a different path to the server.

Or something. I don't know. It works for some people.

Posted by: Ace at 06:40 AM | Comments (28)
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