There is kissing the ass of murderers, and then there is the full-on syrup salad toss.

Jimmy Carter takes to it like a champ.

Posted by: Ace at 12:28 PM | Comments (43)
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How many times do I have to return to this topic? I guess it's never-ending. The left wants to be credited as "patriotic," at least as they would prefer to define that term, while engaging in the most anti-American impulses and invective possible.

The latest offender is noted by Winds of Change. An "intellectual elite" holds forth on true "Amerocan idea" in The Atlantic:

If the American idea was to subdue Native Americans and place them at the disposal of European settlers, to import several million Africans to the New World and subject them to a lifetime of slavery, to impose on Asian immigrants a lifetime of discrimination, then perhaps the American idea was not so admirable.

If the American idea, once the Civil War had concluded, was to sentence the freedmen to a lifetime of racial segregation, discrimination, and humiliation, then perhaps the American idea was not so praiseworthy.

...

The American idea is the nation’s holiday garb, its festive dress, its Sunday best. It covers up an everyday practice of betraying the claims of equality, justice, and democracy. It calls for Thomas Jefferson to advise his young protégé Edward Coles to abandon his plan to emancipate his slaves and migrate to Illinois, and to reconcile himself to his country’s "unfortunate condition." While Coles did not accept Jefferson’s advice, many of his contemporaries did, thus strengthening the American idea of inequality and injustice.

It is fairly late in the game, but one hopes that there is still time to grasp the reality of American life for those of different racial and national backgrounds and to embrace the countryÂ’s professed ideals of freedom, equality, and justice.

Winds of Change likens this supposed "love of country" to the "love" of a mother who abuses her child. I've previously called this the Ike Turner Model of Patriotism -- "Baby, baby, come on now baby. You know I wouldn't beat the shit out of you every day if I didn't love you baby. Now cover that shiner up with some makeup and make me a sandwich."

David Thompson notes a review of Todd Gitlin's The Intellectuals and The Flag, which I have to assume is full of this sort of crap:

The left embraced the smug disassociation from existing society epitomized in the sweeping call by Herbert Marcuse for a ‘Great Refusal’ of the confining ideals and crass manipulations of the modern capitalist political economy. But the embrace of Marcuse's slogan has amounted in practice to a ‘great withdrawal,’ a narcissistic retreat into self-proclaimed ‘marginality,’ an obsession with ever more minute forms of identity politics and the infinite ‘problematizing’ of ‘truth,’ a reflexive opposition to America and the West, and an immurement in ‘theories’ whose radicalism is so pure that they never quite touch down to earth - follies all underwritten and protected by the perquisites and comforts of academia.

Jonah Goldberg weighs in as well:

Anyway, the point I'd been trying to make was that liberals routinely and righteously condemn the "questioning" of anyone's patriotism — until they have a chance to do it themselves....

John Kerry was the all-time champ of this sort of thing. He routinely insinuated that criticisms of his positions on national defense were tantamount to McCarthyism.... This in itself is a backhanded way to question the patriotism of your opponents. After all, to liberals, Joe McCarthy is synonymous with "un-American." So, by preemptively and wantonly declaring any criticism to be McCarthyite dirty pool, Democrats are questioning the patriotism of their opponents in order to silence dissent (they play a similar preemption game with charges of racism as well).

But Democrats did worse than merely question the patriotism of their opponents; they flat-out denied it. Sen. Bob Graham called Bush's war policy "antipatriotic at the core." Kerry dubbed Bush's "creed of greed" — you guessed it — "unpatriotic."

Howard Dean, the nearly invisible chairman of the Democratic National Committee, used to get himself into those I'm-turning-into-the-Hulk rages over the merest hint that Republicans questioned the patriotism of Democrats. But he saw nothing wrong with righteously proclaiming that John Ashcroft "is no patriot. He's a direct descendant of Joseph McCarthy."

And now with Limbaugh, Democrats, starting with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, are lining up to call the radio host "unpatriotic" and do whatever they can to discredit him.

There is some dishonesty here as conservatives fall over themselves to claim we're not questioning anyone else's patriotism. As the left compensates for their own hatred of America by constantly questioning the patriotism of the actually patriotic, it's well past time we dropped this rhetorical tic and simply said, "No, we don't question your patriotism so much as we assert, with a rash of citations, that you are unapologetically unpatriotic and in fact America-hating and often in sympathy with America's enemies."

Bonus: Meanwhile, the multimillionaire celebrity Bruce Springsteen whines that he's being repressed.

Dude, your albums suck. That's not repression. That's just you jumping the shark sometime around Dancing in the Dark.

Instapundit makes the comparison between Springsteen's narcissistic craving of martyrdom with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who's actually in danger of being murdered due to her expression of thoughts unpopular with certain people.

If Springsteen wants to brave real oppression on speech, maybe he should stop mumbling crap songs about how distraught he is that his candidates don't win and write an anthem to someone with real courage in the face of murderous rage.

Posted by: Ace at 12:15 PM | Comments (46)
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Not sure. I know Post Secret is popular, where people make up weird post-cards expressing their deepest secrets (shared only with an audience of several thousands), and of course the lolcats are still funny.

So how about a site combining the two, where people express their darkest secrets through lolcats?

A meta-step too far?

Thanks to PetiteDov.

Posted by: Ace at 11:53 AM | Comments (13)
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I seem to remember the left becoming very upset when the US was claimed to be doing this sort of thing.

Iraq the Model's Omar has a great piece in the WSJ about Al Qaeda's last desperate scorched-earth offensives, and how to counter them. Defeated on the battlefield, they seem determined to win some sort of propaganda battle in the media -- a much more favorable battlefield for them, of course.

The latest chapter in al Qaeda's war manual in their war against the Iraqi people and the Coalition is this: raiding remote peaceful villages, burning down homes and slaughtering both man and beast. It's a campaign of self destruction.

For about a year al Qaeda has been trying to build a so called Islamic State in Iraq. On several occasions al Qaeda has even declared parts of Baghdad or other places in other provinces the capital of this Islamic State.

But now that they are losing one base after another, their objective seems to have changed from adding more towns and villages to the "state" to destroying the very same towns and villages. Obviously, it's all about making headlines regardless of the means to do that.

As if the media needs any help undermining the war effort. From Howard Kurtz's new book Reality Show:

By the fall of 2006, an urgent tone began creeping into the anchors' coverage of Iraq. No longer were they describing the war as a difficult battle whose outcome was in doubt, or depicting the military struggle as part of a larger effort to rebuild the battered country. Now it was all about the violence, and they were framing the situation as an unmitigated mess. The anchors were giving real weight to what had once seemed unmentionable, the possibility that the United States might have to pull out.

They were, to be sure, reflecting the rapid erosion of support for the war, and a level of killing and chaos that seemed to grow worse by the day. But given their huge platform, they were also shaping public sentiment, reinforcing the notion that nearly four years after the invasion, the situation was all but lost.

"In plain English," Brian Williams said, "this has been a tough week to be hopeful about the prospects for victory in Iraq."

Charlie Gibson spoke of a "killing spree," a "horrific surge in religious violence, Iraqis killing Iraqis in unprecedented numbers." After correspondent Terry McCarthy reported that 50 to 60 bodies were turning up each day, Gibson could not remain silent. "Sobering to see people simply driving by a body in the streets," he said. "But such is life in Baghdad today."

Couric, in particular, appeared to openly yearn for a pullout. One night she spoke of "opposition to the war in Iraq growing and no end in sight." And at times she came close to describing the situation as hopeless: "The day everyone is hoping for, the day American forces can finally come home from Iraq, seems more and more elusive."

The anchors looked for ways to dramatize the grim statistics. Williams, noting "the bloodshed that has become an all-too-common fact of life there for so many people," highlighted a report on how Baghdad coffinmakers could not keep up with demand. Gibson, reporting a United Nations finding on Iraqi casualties in July and August, tried to bring the impact home: "And just to put the 6,600 Iraqi deaths over the past two months in perspective — if the U.S. lost an equivalent percentage of its population, that would represent 75,000 American dead."

The link has more of that excerpt/adaptation. Kurtz also reports that far from being a "fall guy" in the Memogate fiasco, Dan Rather actually threatened to leak one of his forgeries to the NYT to pressure CBS to rush the story and promote it before it was even vetted.

Thanks to CJ.

Posted by: Ace at 11:02 AM | Comments (9)
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JohnW sends this list of D&D's Lamest Hits.

Feel the heroic fantasy.

Even if you don't care about D&D, there's some lame real-world myth at the end:

1,930 years ago (77 AD), some famous Roman by the name of Pliny the Elder included something known as the Bonnacon in his list of animals found in Ancient (but at the time Modern) Greece. What was the Bonnacon, you ask? Here's an illustration from the 15th century (taken from the Bestiarius-Bestiary of Anne Wahl):

The Bonnacon is a bull that fires explosive, burning poop from its rear end. According to Pliny, it could "release a trail of dung 3 furlongs in length". And while I hate to admit it, that's even more retarded than anything the Dungeons and Dragons folks have come up with in the past three decades.

Posted by: Ace at 10:56 AM | Comments (28)
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Did you know that the US is hosting a ‘peace conference’ between the Israelis and Palestinians next month? Neither did I until I saw this story announcing that the Israelis were open to giving control of some parts of Jerusalem to the Palestinians. Because you know handing any territory over to the Palestinians has worked so well in the past.

But the Israeli transfer would not include the Old City and surrounding neighborhoods, (Deputy Vice Premier Haim Ramon) Ramon said. These are the key disputed areas, since the Old City contains the holiest site in Judaism, the Temple Mount, and the third holiest site in Islam, the Al Aqsa mosque compound.

Ramon was not clear about what areas would be transferred. But his opposition to relinquishing control of the Old City and neighboring areas with holy sites — known as the "holy basin" — falls short of Palestinian claims to all areas captured in 1967.

"I agree that all the Palestinian neighborhoods except the Arab neighborhoods in the holy basin ... would be transferred," Ramon told Army Radio. Instead, he suggested a "special administration" to oversee the holy basin. He did not elaborate, but past talks have raised the idea of turning oversight to an international body.

And so we will be witness to another round of negotiations where the Israelis offer nearly everything and the Palestinians reject it as insufficient. Or even worse, under US sponsorship, Israel will sit down with ‘President’ Abbas and agree to turn over parts of Israel’s ‘Eternal Capital’ for promises of peace that Abbas won’t or can’t deliver on.

I am not sure if this is some lame attempt by Bush and Rice to build a legacy or simply an idea that Abbas and the Israelis brought to the administration. Either way the history of these things isnÂ’t promising. And when you consider Hamas actually won the last round of Palestinian elections and controls Gaza, you have to wonder what good is any deal that doesnÂ’t, and by definition canÂ’t, include them.

For 7 years Bush has, to the chagrin of the left, refused to get bogged down in the illusion that is the Mideast ‘Peace Process’. He’s never really shown any interest in crafting the kind of grand bargain that will make editorial writers and foreign policy grandees swoon. You know, the kind of deal that ignores the realities on the ground. I hope he isn’t getting sucked into something likely doomed to failure in some kind of Clintonian bid for a legacy.

Posted by: DrewM. at 10:05 AM | Comments (29)
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Oxford Research Group study blames U.S. mistakes in Iraq for fueling increase in extremist Islamic activity, says "fundamental rethink is required" to deal with the global terrorist network.

Global. Terrorist. Network.

Does "global" mean something different in Brit English?

The report, "Alternatives to the War on Terror" recommends immediate withdrawal of all troops from Iraq, followed with "intense" diplomatic engagement, to include Syria and Iran.

If the al Qaeda movement is to be countered, then the roots of its support must be understood and systematically undercut," said Paul Rogers, the report's author and professor of global peace studies at Bradford University in northern England.

Seek first, to understand.

Then Al Qaeda can be minimized and contained. Worthy goals. Reach for the stars, dare to contain!

Also going to war with Iran would be a huge mistake, blah blah blah, which is the punchline and the objective of the "report" really, to persuade everyone that an armed conflict with Iran will just make everything worse.

I can think of something worse than that. I'll bet you can too.

Also war is bad. Ponies are nice.

UPDATE: SEEKING TO UNDERSTAND, a report from the field from Abu Usama al Tunis: “I have been surrounded in Al Awisat for two and a half months because the road has been closed by the Apostate (U.S. troops), and there is no other way,” the letter said. “I have tried many times to send letters thru the Brothers to our Father (probably Ayyub al-Masri), God save him, but I have not received anything.

“We are so desperate for your help.”

Posted by: Dave In Texas at 07:49 AM | Comments (34)
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Interpol sought public help Monday in identifying a suspected pedophile, revealing a technique to unscramble digitally altered images to show the face of a man seen in Internet photos sexually abusing young boys in Vietnam and Cambodia.

Specialists succeeded in producing identifiable images of the man from the original pictures, where his face was a digitally blurred whirl, the international police organization said

The tradeoff, of course, is that criminals now know that police are able to unscramble these images. Apparently this guy has been so sexually active with young boys that it was worth it to tip their hand.

Pretty good image. This fellow must be living in certain terror right now. Heh.
Happy hunting, officers.

UPDATE: Alice H. in comments tips us to more pics of this chinless wonder over at Interpol.

Posted by: LauraW. at 07:31 AM | Comments (32)
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Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.

Sura 9:29 of the Koran, the holy book, the direct word of God, of the Religion Of Peace.

Religion of peace my ass.

Posted by: Open Blog at 11:45 PM | Comments (50)
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Down 2 games to none in the best of 5 series with Cleveland, George told reporters that Joe's job is on the line. "I think we're paying him a lot of money. He's the highest-paid manager in baseball, so I don't think we'd take him back if we don't win this series."

Let's see, what else? Oh yeah, he dumped on umpire Bruce Froemming for not stopping play in Game 2 when bugs got all over the place, and declared he won't be umpiring any more games with the Yankees. But he was kinda talking out of his ass cause a) Froemming is retiring at the end of this season and b) the Yankees are done.

Posted by: Dave In Texas at 06:04 PM | Comments (18)
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