Well, not quite. But she's getting there.

A friend of mine was at a fundraiser for Rudy Giuliani in Los Angeles last night. His walkaway thought: “[Rudy] might have a tough time in the primary but he will crush in the general.”

Said friend says of last night: “I have to tell you the man is very impressive. When he talks about the war on terror he does so more clearly than anyone I have heard including the President. He doesn't bash the President ever and this was LA where he could really get away with it.”

Rudy did an immigration bit that was “to the right of everyone else except maybe Tancredo. He talked about immigration in terms of national security. He said we needed to revamp our entire system so that we can get good people. He also said that if the twelve million already here expected to get any type of citizenship they would have to prove that they could read, write, and speak English.”

Okay, well, that's nice enough. But is there some way he can convince the Republican right he won't undermine their social conservativism, even while not completely repudiating his famous social liberalism?

There just might be:

A reader points out this Rudy Giuliani quote from November 5, 2006: "Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito are models of what judges should be in this country."

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"Inconceivable!" said Democratic spokesman Vizzini.

Ynigo Montoya, Professor Emeritus of the Department of Vengeance at MIT, begged to differ.

Within a year, the U.S. missile defense system should be able to guard against enemy attacks, while testing new technologies, the deputy director of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency said on Monday.

The United States activated the ground-based system last summer when North Korea launched one long-range and six short-range missiles.

O'Reilly said there would be no formal announcement that the system was operational. He predicted the capability to defend against enemy missiles and to continue testing and development work would be achieved within a year.

"It's just a matter of maturation," he told reporters after a speech hosted by the George C. Marshall Institute, a public policy group.

O'Reilly said work by North Korea and Iran on long-range ballistic missiles underscored the need for a viable U.S. missile defense system.

...

O'Reilly said the missile defense system, which includes sea-based and ground-based interceptors, and powerful X-Band radar systems, achieved success in 14 of 15 flight tests.

Democratic spokesman Vizinni immediately objected that these tests "proved nothing," as the tests were "set-ups" in which the ABM system engineers "knew where the incoming missiles were." "In these tests, the ABM technicians used radar and supercomputer targeting systems to detect and aim at the SCUDs. I mean, come on, how fair is that? It's just inconceivable that we could possibly hit a missile with another missile!"

Professor Montoya, who's just finished an 800 word monograph on Bonetti's Defense, continued to dispute that characterization:

...

Through the end of 2007, the program will focus on protecting the United States from threats from the Middle East and North Korea, expanding coverage to U.S. allies and boosting protection against shorter-range threats.

In 2008 and beyond, there would be increased focus on countering unconventional attacks and increasing the U.S. inventory of interceptors and sensors, O'Reilly said.

Video via HotAir.

I've never gotten this theological certainty that it was "utterly, entirely, and in all other ways inconceivable" that a missile could be used to knock down another missile. As is often the case with liberals, it seemed fundamentally dishonest: They were claiming it couldn't be done (as if it were theoretically impossible, violating the Uncertainty Principle or something) when they really meant it shouldn't be done.

Well, it can be done. Eat it.

Posted by: Ace at 01:35 PM | Comments (39)
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Not exactly news, I guess. But it's a slow day.

Oh, wait-- the story is a little different than I first thought. Vaginal births may cause brain bleeding.

About a quarter of babies born in vaginal deliveries had a small amount of bleeding in their brains, while none delivered by Caesarean section did, according to a study published Tuesday.

But the researchers at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine in Chapel Hill said it was premature to view their surprising findings as an endorsement of C-sections.

They said the findings suggest brain bleeding in some newborns has been commonplace in vaginal deliveries throughout history, but is being detected now only because of highly sophisticated imaging technology.

Cthuluesque appearance + memories of vagina-induced brain bleeding as newborn = pretty decent reason I'm just scared of these damn things. Even having sex at all is, for me, an act of physical courage of a non-Hegelian variety.

Posted by: Ace at 12:07 PM | Comments (36)
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...in public places.

These people just don't have any meaning in their lives unless they're bullying and bossing others around.

Wasn't this all supposed to be about economic integration and joint military planning and suchlike?

How quickly bureaufascists jump to impose their beliefs on others, when given a chance.

Lesson: Don't give them the chance.

Posted by: Ace at 12:04 PM | Comments (39)
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Pretty funny stuff. Powerline reports on the Minneapolis Star-Tribune's staff's seething over the hiring of a conservative opinion writer to add balance. Apart from general cluelessness and nastiness, there's this gem:

Coleman (full disclosure: he is a longtime friend of mine) has been a Twin Cities columnist for more than thirty years. He, and nearly all of the other Star Tribune staffers with whom I spoke, have no objection to adding new voices to the paper—even an unabashed conservative voice. His problem is placing Kersten on the metro pages in an attempt to create a “balance” and respond to the regular accusations of liberal bias hurled at him and fellow columnist Doug Grow. “You find the last time some Democratic politician or liberal blogger referred to me as, ‘our good friend, Nick Coleman.’ It’s never happened. They all hate my guts, and that’s the way it’s supposed to be.”

In fact, there is no end of Star Tribune readers who agree with the description of Grow and Coleman as “liberals.”

Not sure what can explain this level of self-delusion. I've quoted his scary-important burblings before. You make the call.

Liberals tend to fall into two categories, and sometimes both.

"I'm Too Complex For Categorization And Labels" Liberals. These liberals are so enamored of their amazing complex and unpredictably maverick minds they simply will not countenance the suggestion their mode of thinking, or emoting, falls into rather common patters generally associated with left-liberalism. They fetishize their one or two departures from the liberal herdthink consensus ("But I'm not opposed to private social security accounts!"), as if having a pair of weakly heterodox positions is enough to auto-excommunicate them from the Holy Mother Church.

Got news for ya: This isn't called being "so complex as to defy categorization." It's called, simply, "being human."

The irony here is that this argument is so self-defeating-- they think they're not liberals because they imagine that conservatives are so robotically Borg-minded as to not have any heterodoxies of their own. Thus demonstrating that not only are they liberal, they're so goddamned liberal they've never even spoken to a single conservative.

"I Do Not Believe In 'Liberalism,' I Just Believe In 'Common Sense'" Liberals. Here a liberal simply takes what is, demonstrably, according to every poll and every election since 1980, a left-of-center politics and simply redefines it as "centrist." Only people to their far left are "liberals" (but they generally are never so impolite as to call them such).

If they're in "the center," that makes the majority of the country what, praytell? Well, they're "outside the mainstream," and ought not be included in the survey, as their opinions are so bizarre and hateful as to be not be worthy of consideration.

Again, the belief is self-defeating -- or self-mocking -- in its implicit claim that one can't be defined as "liberal" because anything further to the right is simply inhuman. There is no "liberalism" at all, for their is no worthy opposite by which to contrast it.

And of course many liberals subscribe to both of these beliefs at once, in which case they take pride in the labyrinthine complexities of their fiercely independent minds while they simultaneously comfort themselves as being believers in the "common-sense centrist consensus mainstream position that everyone knows is correct."

Good stuff. They keep us laughing, and that's something, I guess.

Posted by: Ace at 11:12 AM | Comments (18)
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If weddings had more choreographed 80's pop numbers, I might not be so annoyed by them.

Something tells me, though, that this is now going to become ubiquitious at weddings. And it will make them simply insufferable.

Thanks to whomever Andrew Sullivan lifted this from.

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Video, with pictures, which of course circulated on Facebook etc. Smart.

A print account.

Ranneice McDonald, another Clemson student, said she saw nothing funny about it.

"People painted themselves black. Put fake butts inside their pants to signify the big booty black-girl thing. Fake gold teeth in their mouths caps and jerseys -- depicted us as wearing such things as that are disgusting to me. It's disgusting. It makes me sick to my stomach," McDonald said.

"I was hurt that there were people who think that it's OK," she said.

Thanks to Wuzzadem.

Posted by: Ace at 10:08 AM | Comments (71)
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By which we mean "having the courage of the liberal MSM's convictions."

Why, exactly, is Sen. Chuck Hagel showing "courage" in conspicuously denouncing the Iraq War now that virtually the entire American establishment has reached that same conclusion--now that Hagel is virtually assured of getting hero treatment from Brian Williams and Tim Russert and long favorable profiles in the newsweeklies?

Posted by: Ace at 09:44 AM | Comments (15)
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If you want. Is there any damn news?

Posted by: Ace at 09:41 AM | Comments (38)
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