He does admit there's terrorism afoot, though. He castigates the Bush Administrations attempt to "'terrorize' Americans with phony threats," for example.

That's an OlbyWatch link, btw.

Pretty standard stuff. The dudes over at Wonkette snarked it was all phonied up yesterday, too.

They're simply incapable of accepting that terrorism is real, because admitting that would force them to re-assess their no-external-enemies, no-enemies-to-the-left mantra.

We thought that 9/11 would change everything. It didn't. The left is still angry about 9/11, but not because Islamist maniacs murdered 3000 innocent civilians.

They're angry that 9/11 gives their non-pacifist opponents a talking point.

Related: Fred Thompson notes that while the media is only interested in George Tenet's Bush-bashing, he's got a lot to say that repudiates their metanarratives about terrorism and Saddam:

Naturally, the media emphasis is not on that. Its attention is on any differences Tenet had with the administration. The mediaÂ’s premise is that Iraq should not have been considered a real threat to us and that the administration basically misled the country into war. While one may take issue with Tenet on several things, I was intrigued that on some very important issues, Tenet did not follow the media script when answering RussertÂ’s questions.

On the issue of al Qaeda’s relationship with Iraq, for example, Tenet said that the CIA had proof of al Qaeda contact with Saddam’s regime; that the regime had provided safe haven for al Qaeda operatives and that Saddam had provided training assistance for al Qaeda terrorists. He went on to say that the CIA had no proof that the relationship was operational or that they had any ongoing working relationship — that it could have been that each side was just using the other. Maybe my recollection is faulty on this, but that doesn’t seem to be inconsistent with what folks in the administration said. In other words, there was clearly contact and a relationship, but no one knew exactly what it meant.

On the issue of weapons of mass destruction, although Iraq undoubtedly had such weapons in the past, Tenet acknowledges that everybody got it wrong as to whether they would have them at the time of the invasion. On the nuclear issue, he said that the CIA thought that Saddam was five to seven years away from a nuclear capability — unless he was able to obtain fissile material from another source.

A couple of things occur to me here. In the first place, is five to seven years that far away? Since four years have passed since the invasion, that would be only a year from now if we had not invaded. If he had been able to obtain fissile materials, the time could have been much shorter. There are over 40 countries in the world with fissile material sufficient to make a nuclear bomb and much of it is unguarded.

It's interesting to note that the media and the left have hardly been content in arguing that Saddam wasn't a threat -- increasingly they feel comfortable declaring what they've always believed, that Al Qaeda and Islamist terrorism generally were never a threat, either.

Is anyone else kind of thrilled by Fred Thompson merely because he bothers to state what the Bush Administratiohn should have been saying for four years?

More Terrorism: By the Bush Administration and US intelligence, I mean. Credible reports of imminent terrorist attacks on US citizens and soldiers in Germany.

The left has rode the Bush-didn't-connect-the-dots argument for a long time. Just curious -- given the left's constant denigration of the terrorist threat, will they be willing to cop to the fact that they refused to "connect the dots," and in fact made it harder for the American government to act against terrorism, when the next large-scale terrorist against America attack proves successful?

Posted by: Ace at 03:02 PM | Comments (15)
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Wait, that's not the Rolling Stones? My bad.

Thanks to Bob.

Posted by: Ace at 02:41 PM | Comments (7)
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This isn't a photoshop, T-web tells me. He actually saw it (and copied it) as he was browsing the internets.

Is this a threat?

Which personalized message would you like to send? Choose from any of the exciting choices below:

Congratulate friends on the birth of a new child: "I'm going to fly out there to straighten your ass out."

For Mother's Day: "I'm going to let you know just how disappointed in you I am. You've made me feel like shit."

Is a friend feeling blue? Cheer her up! "You're a thoughtless, rude little pig."

Are you Wood Allen, and is it the anniversary of your marriage to your daughter-slash-wife Soon-Yi? "You have insulted me for the last time. You don't have the brains or the decency of a human being. I don't care if you're eleven or twelve years old, or a child, or that your mother's a thoughtless pain in the ass..."

Not As Badly Timed As I Thought! It's old, from this past December. Shoulda known. But apparently it's still occasionally popping up on the internets.

Here's the weird thing: That site used the widget to make their own personalized Alec Baldwin phone call last Decemeber -- and it features Alec Baldwin threatening to visit you, and commenting about your ass.

Posted by: Ace at 02:36 PM | Comments (42)
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Rosie's on to something.

Lucille Clifton, the poet and childrenÂ’s-book author, is the winner of the 2007 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, which brings not only considerable prestige but also a $100,000 stipend.

Here is part of the oevure that put her $100,000 to the good:

homage to my hips

by Lucille Clifton

these hips are big hips
they need space to

move around in.
they don't fit into little
petty places. these hips
are free hips.

they don't like to be held back.
these hips have never been enslaved,
they go where they want to go
they do what they want to do.

these hips are mighty hips.
these hips are magic hips.
i have known them
to put a spell on a man and
spin him like a top!

Coming in second place? Fergie.

"My Humps"

by Sarah "Fergie" Fergussen

What you gon' do with all that junk?
All that junk inside that trunk?
I'ma get, get, get, get you drunk,
Get you love drunk off my hump.
What you gon' do with all that ass?
All that ass inside them jeans?
I'ma make, make, make, make you scream
Make you scream, make you scream.
What you gon' do with all that junk?
All that junk inside that trunk?
I'ma get, get, get, get you drunk,
Get you love drunk off this hump.
What you gon' do wit all that breast?
All that breast inside that shirt?
I'ma make, make, make, make you work
Make you work, work, make you work.

Personally, I think Fergie got massively boned.

And I also think she should have won the award.

Thanks to Slublog.

Posted by: Ace at 01:50 PM | Comments (52)
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The Fed is troubled by inflation, but also troubled by a soft economy, and so is leaving the fed interest rate alone. And those two troubles put together are pretty troubling.

But for now -- the markets have no trouble reaching, or closing on, record highs.

Wall Street wobbled, then regained its stride Wednesday after the Federal Reserve told investors what they expected to hear: that inflation is still too high for comfort, but the central bank is holding interest rates steady. The Dow Jones industrials rose to another record close.

The central bank's Open Market Committee as anticipated left interest rates unchanged at 5.25 percent, as it has done since last summer. The statement that accompanied the decision was little changed from the one the Fed released after its last meeting in March; the assessment said policy makers are keeping their inflation watch the priority despite a slower economy.

...

The Dow Jones industrial average rose 53.80, or 0.40 percent, to 13,362.87, after reaching a new trading high of 13,369.29. It was the blue chip index's 21st record close since the beginning of the year.

The Standard & Poor's 500 index advanced 4.86, or 0.32 percent, to 1,512.58 -- a new six-and-a-half-year high. The index is near its closing record of 1,527.46, reached March 24, 2000.

Posted by: Ace at 01:39 PM | Comments (9)
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Brown on brown -- I'm not sure what my rooting interest is here, exactly. The brown Christians or the brown Muslims? Talk about a Hobbesian choice.

Whoever wins, I just hope the victors offer me a quick death.

In all seriousness, I suppose the Christians here are behaving badly. Muslims have the right to practice their religion, the same as anyone else.

But.

Even putting aside terrorism, and fairly widespread terrorist sympathetics -- which is, you know, kind of hard to put aside -- Muslims seem to be exacerbating tensions more than previous immigrant/minority communities have. Whereas previous immigrant/minority groups have sought to accomodate themselves with the prevailing culture -- or, at least, so it seems to me -- Muslims are particularly aggressive in pushing for the prevailing culture to accomodate itself with Islam.

I don't know of many other religions that force one into taking some kind of political stance so frequently. The live-and-let-live ethic -- the glue that holds together a pluralistic society -- becomes difficult when a minority culture so frequently requests or demands the majority culture to adapt to better suit it.

Sort of embematic of this is the Imam's statement in that video that the mosque will serve the purpose of "creating a better understanding" of Islam. I think I speak on behalf of approximately 95% of the population when I say we are tired of "understanding" Islam, and would very much like to treat Islam the same as any other religion we do not practice, that is, with an attitude of benign ignorance and benign irregard.

We don't care. Please allow us to go on not caring. True tolerance of an alien religion is usually marked by simply not caring about it either way.

Oh, and PS, not every jihadist bombing should be taken as an opportunity to lecture the rest of us about the Islamic religion. To be honest, I think that's rather the worst conceivable time to go about proselytizing on behalf of the faith that animates so many terrorists.

As I've said before, my first thought after hearing a CAIR official instruct me that I must go out of my way to learn more about Islam is "Good God, how many did they kill this time?"

Let me just suggest that a better time to "educate" Americans about Islam would be, say, after Muslims do something charitable or otherwise positive. That would probably be a scenario in which Americans are more receptive to learning about Islam, no? (It would also help if this charitable effort was in fact pure charity -- feeding the hungry, clothing the poor, etc. -- and not blatantly linked to spreading/promoting political Islam, as is so often the case with Islamic "charity.")

In other words, we'd like to go back to enjoying every American's penumbraic right to be left the hell alone. Muslims can increase their acceptance and tolerance not by "educating" Americans about their religion, but allowing the rest of us to go back to a 9/10 sort of thinking about Islam, which is to say, not thinking about it terribly much at all.

Thanks to Ari Goes Down.

Posted by: Ace at 01:15 PM | Comments (20)
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Brown on brown -- I'm not sure what my rooting interest is here, exactly. The brown Christians or the brown Muslims? Talk about a Hobbesian choice.

Whoever wins, I just hope the victors offer me a quick death.

In all seriousness, I suppose the Christians here are behaving badly. Muslims have the right to practice their religion, the same as anyone else.

But.

Even putting aside terrorism, and fairly widespread terrorist sympathetics -- which is, you know, kind of hard to put aside -- Muslims seem to be exacerbating tensions more than previous immigrant/minority communities have. Whereas previous immigrant/minority groups have sought to accomodate themselves with the prevailing culture -- or, at least, so it seems to me -- Muslims are particularly aggressive in pushing for the prevailing culture to accomodate itself with Islam.

I don't know of many other religions that force one into taking some kind of political stance so frequently. The live-and-let-live ethic -- the glue that holds together a pluralistic society -- becomes difficult when a minority culture so frequently requests or demands the majority culture to adapt to better suit it.

Sort of embematic of this is the Imam's statement in that video that the mosque will serve the purpose of "creating a better understanding" of Islam. I think I speak on behalf of approximately 95% of the population when I say we are tired of "understanding" Islam, and would very much like to treat Islam the same as any other religion we do not practice, that is, with an attitude of benign ignorance and benign irregard.

We don't care. Please allow us to go on not caring. True tolerance of an alien religion is usually marked by simply not caring about it either way.

Oh, and PS, not every jihadist bombing should be taken as an opportunity to lecture the rest of us about the Islamic religion. To be honest, I think that's rather the worst conceivable time to go about proselytizing on behalf of the faith that animates so many terrorists.

As I've said before, my first thought after hearing a CAIR official instruct me that I must go out of my way to learn more about Islam is "Good God, how many did they kill this time?"

Let me just suggest that a better time to "educate" Americans about Islam would be, say, after Muslims do something charitable or otherwise positive. That would probably be a scenario in which Americans are more receptive to learning about Islam, no? (It would also help if this charitable effort was in fact pure charity -- feeding the hungry, clothing the poor, etc. -- and not blatantly linked to spreading/promoting political Islam, as is so often the case with Islamic "charity.")

In other words, we'd like to go back to enjoying every American's penumbraic right to be left the hell alone. Muslims can increase their acceptance and tolerance not by "educating" Americans about their religion, but allowing the rest of us to go back to a 9/10 sort of thinking about Islam, which is to say, not thinking about it terribly much at all.

Thanks to Ari Goes Down.

Posted by: Ace at 01:15 PM | Comments (20)
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You'd think that someone with a Messiah complex as profound as Andrew Sullivan would avoid publicizing the results of this quiz.

Or even publicizing the fact he took this one in particular -- he hasn't run the various "Which Superhero Are You?" or "Which My Pretty Pony Character Are You?" quizzes, now has he? Those he passes up on. The one about his (His?) own divinity? That one he goes for.

On one hand, he's Messianic narcissist and should know better to stay away from stuff like this. But on the other hand, he's also shameless and lacking any sense of irony or self-awareness.

And so he proudly announces he's God. Not a god. The God. His results:

Which God or Goddess are you like?

Your Result: The Christian God

You are the Holy Lord. You are the shepherd and those that follow you are your lambs. You are kind and patient, but when need be, you are vile and creul. You are often asked for advise or wisdom, and you willingly give it. Congratulations!! You are God!!

Surprisingly, he ranked low for the result You are your own God or Goddess, but I have to think he was deliberately avoiding answers that would lead to that quite apppropriate finding.

The Church of Andrew: Coming to a Starbucks near you. Have you read the New Bible, a.k.a. The Conservative Soul, by the way? It's like Dianetics, only a tad more latitudinarian as regards psychoactive drug use.

Credits, as usual, to Allah for the first and McGurk for the second.

Posted by: Ace at 12:49 PM | Comments (30)
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"someone" wants an explanation as to the big add just under/part of the banner.

It's the new Pajamas Media requirement. I've got to take down all other ads, and also include that big ad at the top of the page.

I'd like to fiddle with it -- maybe it's less obtrusive above the banner -- but I'm contractually required to run it.

If you notice, all Pajamas Media blogs are now including that, or will soon. Curiously, Charles Johnson at LGF doesn't have his up yet, and he's a partner in PJM. But then, I was pretty late in putting mine up. I was supposed to get it up back in April.

It's not a voluntary ad, or a bonus ad, or something like that. It's just PJM's new, non-negotiable ad package. Either I put that up or I bail out of PJM entirely.

Just so you know.

I've removed the Google ads from *most* templates -- I seem to have missed some here and there -- and there won't be any more BlogAds, at least not until this contract is up. I apologize if the ad is obtrusive, but it's really not my idea.

Posted by: Ace at 12:22 PM | Comments (33)
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Mein Voigt-Kampf:

A Harvard professor believes we are born with an instinctive sense of right and wrong, and has subjected adults to a series of moral dilemmas, while scanning their brains. He noticed that certain parts of the brain that are traditionally associated with emotion tended not to react until after a moral judgment had been made. The author has a brain scan in order to test the professor's theory.

...

The purpose was to test the radical assertion of professor Marc Hauser that all of us are born with an instinctive sense of right and wrong. Hauser is a biological anthropologist at Harvard and the author of "Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong."

And Hauser has been using brain scans, along with other experimental tools, to support his thesis.

Hauser, who uses the model of Noam Chomsky's theory of generative grammar, believes that just as humans have evolved a particular quality that enables us to acquire language, we've also developed what he calls "moral grammar."

He has subjected adults to a series of moral dilemmas, while scanning their brains. Hauser noticed that certain parts of the brain, which are traditionally associated with emotion, tended not to react until after a moral judgment had been made.

Not really sure how proving that certain areas of the brain are associated with moral reasoning proves moral reasoning is instinctive or evolved. I'm pretty sure that solving complex calculus lights up some section of the brain, but I don't see how one jumps from "This part of the brain is active during mathematical reasoning" to "This part of the brain evolved to instinctively solve integrals."

Still, it's interesting. I'm curious if the scans from psychopaths, sociopaths, and the simply habitually criminal show little activation in these areas -- indicating their moral centers are disengaged -- or light up as much as anyone else's -- indicating their moral centers are either ignored or, as they say, "just hooked up wrong."

Posted by: Ace at 12:17 PM | Comments (19)
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