A bit of evolution in his rhetoric/positioning, but, to be fair, everyone's evolving in their rhetoric and positioning. Fred's illegals plan was a grand slam, but I assure you he did not have those thoughts this past summer.

Republican Mitt Romney said Thursday he would be willing to use a military blockade or "bombardment of some kind" to prevent Iran from gaining a nuclear weapon.

The former Massachusetts governor's comments came as the Bush administration announced new sanctions designed to isolate the government in Tehran. Romney applauded the move....

Romney, who has been advocating a hard line against Iran throughout his presidential campaign, said military action would be necessary if severe economic and diplomatic sanctions don't convince Iranian leaders to abandon pursuit of a nuclear weapon.

...

"If for some reasons they continue down their course of folly toward nuclear ambition, then I would take military action if that's available to us," Romney told a crowd of doctors and nurses during a question period that followed a health care speech.

He added: "That's an option that's on the table. And it's is not something which we'll spell out specifically. I really can't lay out exactly how that would be done, but we have a number of options from blockade to bombardment of some kind. And that's something we very much have to keep on the table, and we will ready ourselves to be able to take, because, frankly, I think it's unacceptable for Iran to have nuclear weapons."

The rest of the article is of course about the Democrats rushing to say what madness this all is.

And the media bias -- or cluelessness -- is evident here. Romney has not been particularly hardline on the Iranian question; may I suggest he's usually indicated more nuance than many other major Republican candidates in offering his policy prescriptions (which generally shied away from mention of direct military attack)?

The fact that this idiot doesn't know this -- or considered most of Romney's previous statements "hardline" -- just tells you what you need to know about our Very Professional And Scrupulously Fair media.

I'm glad Romney's gotten a little feistier on this question. Most candidates aren't really there yet, not the way I'd like them to be. A more hawkish Romney is a Romney I'm a little more comfortable with.

Thanks to polynikes, who wanted some Romney news to offset all the Fred and Rudy news. Fair enough. Romney's a hell of an executive and was a good manager for Massachusetts. I'm not really sold on him, but he's still in the hunt for my vote.

Posted by: Ace at 01:47 PM | Comments (9)
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Herr Kommissar notes the liberals' talking point on Beauchamp is that it's a distraction from the real issues, but they are also unwilling to discuss the "real issues" either now that the war is going rather well.

This is new. We're used to hearing that this or that news is a "distraction" designed to keep attention away from an issue they'd rather talk about, but this is the first time they've claimed a story they don't want to discuss is a "distraction" from another story they don't want to discuss.

And The Commissar should know -- if I remember right, he turned against the war long ago and gravitated towards the left side of the blog aisle. So he's got the lefty blogs on his blog roll, he reads them, and he knows they're also not talking about the issues they claim they're so eager to talk about.

From Allah's post, where (past the Yon thing I already posted) he wonders, along with Victor Davis Hanson, exactly what TNR just doesn't stop the bleeding and admit what everyone on the planet except for Ellie Reeves and Franklin Foer knows.

His suggestions are as accurate as they are obvious.

Foer, Chait & Co. are now in a Dan Rather Man-Trap of his own devising. If they do the right thing at this point, they will have to resign from TNR, and it's questionable what their future job prospects will look like. Would even Media Matters hire them afterwards? Probably not, as they'd be reviled by the left for conceding an inch to the Right Wing Noise Machine.

So they really can't do anything else except continue to lie and hope the left will continue believing (or pretending to believe) that they're not liars masquerading as newsmen.

"Truth" and "ethics" went out of their decision-making months ago. Now they're in simple survival mode. And people do things they didn't know they were capable of when in survival mode.

Posted by: Ace at 01:38 PM | Comments (11)
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This is real, folks:

AMARILLO -- A miniature horse given to a boy with brain cancer by the Make-A-Wish Foundation was killed by a pair of pit bulls who were found roaming in his yard, authorities said.

Michael Vick sent me this tip, writing, "See? See what I'm fuckin' talking about?"

No, really it was spongeworthy, who wants to know if laughing at this headline like a bonobo monkey, as he says, makes him a bad person.

Oh, no, no, no. No. Uh-uh.

Yes.

Posted by: Ace at 12:47 PM | Comments (26)
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John Podheretz will take over from his dad at Commentary, a hiring decision that will surprise no one at all.

Nepotism? Sure, but it's not as if J-Pod spends his days sailing in regattas or something. He is, I'm sure most know, sorta in the business.

But what is just precious is that that the NYT, now run by the drooling incompetent "Pinch" Sulzberger, the retarded offspring of "Punch" Sulzberger, actually dares to weigh in on this terrible neocon nepotism.

NYT, can I ask you a question?

You promise you won't be offended?

Okay--

Are you fucking kidding me? Are you serious? Did you just get your head smashed in with the Moron-Bat? Did somebody just skull-fuck you with the Crazy-Stick?

Posted by: Ace at 12:43 PM | Comments (30)
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I've been doing it wrong.

The advice is fairly unobjectionable. Except... well, they contrast the Old Rule, which is now revealed as stupid and counterproductive, with the New Rule, which they say gets better results. The trouble is the New Rule is pretty fucking obvious; were they really selling women on the Old Rule before?

Let's take an example:

Old rule: DonÂ’t fall all over him

You think heÂ’ll gag if you throw your arms around his neck and tell him every little thing you love about him. Besides, youÂ’ve been together long enough that he knows how you feel Â… or think.

New rule: Give in to your mushy side

One of the side effects of being nuts about a guy is the occasional overwhelming urge to lavish him with affection and act like, you know, a girl. Don’t hold back! Show him how much he rocks your world. “A guy needs and wants to be reminded again and again why you love him,” says couples therapist Jamie Turndorf, Ph.D., author of “Till Death Do Us Part (Unless I Kill You First).” Men might not admit that they’re into the romance stuff, but that difference is actually part of your allure in the first place. Give up on gushing and he may miss seeing that feminine trait.

Though you want to reaffirm your affection for him, don’t go too far overboard. The kind of things he’ll dig: Kiss his face all over, start lots of sentences with “I love it when you …,” or call him the pet name you gave him when you first started dating. Tell him he’s the barbecue/hard drive-debugger/bed-making master when he does something for you, or pine away for the things he does best when he’s not around (“I wish you were here to rub my back”).

Even if the comment seems minor, “the extra dose of loving is what keeps the feelings you have for each other stoked,” says Turndorf.

Um, let's put aside the basic structure of stupid advice like this where they set up two Straw Man Extremes (being cold and aloof versus hanging all over him) and tell you to, surprise!, choose the Happy Medium between these two.

But note the "New Rule" -- which basically boils down to "It's all right to let a guy you love know you love him."

This wasn't the rule before? What was the rule before? Treating someone you love like a sack of other, lesser sacks just to show you don't give a shit?

Eh.

I know. Not exactly big news.

I really have no fucking idea what I'm doing.

But really, guys should get together and write a magazine like this for women. We are the ones who know how women can look hot and turn guys on and stuff.

Women seem to take advice about men almost exclusively from other women (largely shrieking feminist harridans) and homosexuals who are not merely gay but supra-gay.

Here's some first thoughts on Old Rules/New Rules:

Old Rule: Don't Suck His Dick, No Matter How Much He Begs

You think his hog is radioactive. You could get mutated tonsils or something.

New Rule: We've All Got To Die Of Something

What, your mouth's so precious? You'd go down on Chuck Woolery, wouldn't you? So stop being a withholding prude and do something for you guy already.

This isn't rocket science, folks.

Posted by: Ace at 12:12 PM | Comments (76)
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As Hollywood continues to lose money hand over fist, quite predictably, in selling "back-breakingly liberal" anti-military agit-prop as supposed entertainments (query: as others have asked, who exactly is putting up the funding for this box-office poison?), Ed Driscoll reflects on Hollywood's reflexive anti-Americanism.

When Chetwynd was a successful Hollywood writer specializing in historical dramas, he told the Dieppe story during a Malibu dinner party — as a sort of tribute to the men who died there so people could sit around debating politics at Malibu dinner parties. One of the guests was a network head who asked Chetwynd to come in and pitch the story.

"So I went in," Chetwynd told me, "and someone there said, 'So these bloodthirsty generals sent these men to a certain death?'

"And I said, 'Well, they weren't bloodthirsty; they wept. But how else were we to know how Hitler could be toppled from Europe?' And she said, 'Well, who's the enemy?' I said, 'Hitler. The Nazis.' And she said, 'Oh, no, no, no. I mean, who's the real enemy?'"

You are.

Thanks to CJ.

Posted by: Ace at 11:54 AM | Comments (50)
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Rudy Giuliani must have been on fire at that townhall meeting in Davenport. In addition to his impressive answers about torture, he made some serious boasts about illegal immigration.

Rudy Giuliani said Wednesday that if elected president he would end illegal immigration in as few as three years by employing the same police tactics he used to reduce the crime rate as New York mayor.

"It can be done. It is not impossible," Giuliani told his audience at a town hall-style meeting. "You can do this, you can stop them at the border."

It sounds like he wants to increase the number of CPB agents and deploy a fence, although his fence is the "technological monitoring" idea that I have no confidence in. Giuliani also wants to reform the employment authorization programs by instituting a "tamper-proof ID."

UPDATE: Over at ImmigrationProf Blog, Kevin Johnson notes that Giuliani has been scooping up strong anti-illegal immigration Republican lawyers for his advisors group:

[Unsuccessful senate candidate Jan] Ting is working on the campaign of Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani. Delaware On-line reports that "Under attack from his GOP rivals for being soft on illegal immigration, Giuliani has tapped Ting and other anti-illegal immigration stalwarts for his campaign's immigration advisory board -- a move that many expect will boost his standing with hard-line Republicans concerned about the former New York City mayor's abortion- and gay-rights stances. Giuliani was familiar with Ting's U.S. Senate bid in 2006, when Ting ran on an anti-immigration platform, said Jeffrey Barker, spokesman for the Giuliani campaign."

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 11:42 AM | Comments (18)
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If these two kids can't make it work, what chance do the rest of us have?

A digest if you don't want to watch the video. A dude posing as a woman picked up one of those smolderingly dangerous drifters you see in William Faulkner novels. (At least he looks like a young Ray Liotta in my personal fantasy.)

Said dude then brings Knife-Armed Drifter to horse barn.

Said dude then invites Psychopathic Nomad to go down on him.

Hot-But-Dangerous Hobo reacts rather poorly when he sees his Lady Fair is hung better than he is.

The cops sum up the moral of the story: "Don't pick up hitch-hikers."

As Drew notes, there may be one or two other morals to this story.

Posted by: Ace at 11:15 AM | Comments (35)
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It's not that I doubt Larry Craig's gay. It's that I find it hard to believe this solid citizen...

...suddenly remembered he had sex with Larry Craig in 1987 because he heard his voice on TV.

I'm guessing this guy has heard the voices of a lot of men he's had sex with. Granted, Larry Craig has a particular way of speaking, but remembering a voice from one of a thousand anonymous hook-ups from twenty years ago?

Whatever.

As usual, no link for the Lavender Mafia over at Wonkette. Here's as much of the story I care to quote.

Phillips was recently in a bar minding his own business when he heard Craig’s voice on the television. “I went pale and nearly vomited,” Phillips says. It was the man he remembered from one of his creepiest sexual encounters twenty years earlier. “After a truncated meal I went back to my hotel room and began unwinding and jotting down the memories that the voice had opened. I recalled The Follies, the furtive groping and pawing there, the odd following of this man in my car….. Crap!”

He almost vomited? Really? The guy, as we will soon find out, sticks his joint into virtually anything that moves but over this he gets all creeped out?

Okay.

The rest of this is under the fold and with a fairly-serious content warning. more...

Posted by: Ace at 11:10 AM | Comments (31)
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Here's the situation as far as I can tell.* The lawyer (male), the client (male), and the client's girlfriend have a three-way in which the lawyer and the client both screw the girlfriend, but have no sexual contact with each other other than watching each other do the deed.

The lawyer then gets sued for a violation of the bar's ethics code which prohibits having sexual relations "with a current client." So when does a three-way not count as sex? The Wisconsin Supreme Court says "when the fellas don't actually touch"

there was no evidence that Attorney Inglimo and L.K. engaged in sexual intercourse or intentionally touched each other's intimate parts. *I'm sharing this with you because it involves lawyers and three-ways, two topics which always make me think of Ace's. I spotted it first at Professor Volokh's place.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 11:09 AM | Comments (15)
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