Christmas at Arlington photo swiped from Isaac Shroedinger, "pakistani-born ex-muslim refugee-claimant pro-american."

IN FLANDERS FIELDS the poppies blow

Between the crosses row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

And if you see any of John Edwards' carefully-instructed pretend-to-support-the-troops Memorial Day protestors, take pity on them. It's a day of recognizing a courage they won't even permit themselves to imagine.

Posted by: Ace at 11:25 AM | Comments (14)
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...and again from Sinistar.

This one's a side-scroller, moving at an unexpectedly fast pace. With a death-ish metal soundtrack.

And a big fat roly-poly hero who runs 30mph and jumps twenty feet in the air.

Posted by: Ace at 10:54 AM | Comments (10)
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Can't say I haven't had this thought myself. I don't know that he's right; just saying it's occurred to me.

While not intimately involved in decisions on Iraq, Bolton said his close observation of the situation leads him to some tough conclusions.

"It is what has happened in the last four years that's made our involvement in Iraq unpopular" throughout the world, said Bolton, "not the original overthrow of Saddam Hussein."

"If we had said shortly after that statue (of Saddam) came down in Baghdad, 'Here are the keys to the Green Zone, Iraqis — you have our best wishes and whatever support we can give as we are packing up and leaving, or at least moving out of Baghdad,' then I think public opinion in our country might be different.

"Having overthrown Saddam, we had an obligation — it was a short-term obligation — to provide security until some kind of government of Iraqis could have gotten back up, for us to hold the reins for a short time for them to start forming a government," he said.

But the notion that America had to occupy Iraq or guarantee the country's security for a protracted time, or indeed indefinitely: "I just think that's a mistake."

The U.S. properly acted to protect itself from the external threat of Hussein, Saddam, Bolton said.

However, it is the Iraqis' responsibility to decide for themselves what kind of government they will have, even to the extent of whether Iraq should be broken up into two or more countries, he said.

"We didn't have any responsibility to provide tutorage for them," said Bolton, adding that he didn't have a lot to do with Iraq policy because former Secretary of State Colin Powell "excluded me from it, probably the best favor he ever did for me."

Two things precluded that sort of quickie handover of power:

1) The failure to find of WMDs, which kept the US committed merely to searching for them far longer than I believed anyone imagined we'd have to. And then, having failed to find WMDs, we also failed to find Saddam for a long time -- leaving two key war-goals unsatisfied, making it more or less impossible to do a quick-and-dirty exit on the third (stabilizing Iraq towards decency and democracy).

2) Colin Powell's "You break it, you bought it" dictum. Which contradicts his "have a clearly defined exit strategy" dictum, incidentally, but no one bothers pointing out the Sage of Bureaucratic Asscovering isn't much of a deep thinker, because he's buddies with all the liberal politicians.

I never really understood that "you break it, you bought it" idea, as if we have an obligation -- independent of our own security interests -- to repair a country and nuture it into good health simply because we'd acted to remove a dictator from power. If it's in our own security interests to nation-build after a war, fair enough. But Colin Powell's rule didn't seem to be open to an evaluation based on self-interest. He seemed to be saying that no matter what our own interests and no matter what the costs, we have an anbsolute morality-based responsibility to commit oursleves to lengthy nation-building after every war.

Whatever the outcome of the Iraq War, I'd say that's another bit of discredited Powell wisdom. If we have to take out the government and military of Iran -- which we almost certainly will be forced to do -- I doubt very much the US will take a "you break it you bought it" position, nor that the public would permit them to even if they were so inclined.

Once we accomplish what needs to be accomplished in Iran, the operative rule will be "You made your bed now lie in it."

Posted by: Ace at 10:50 AM | Comments (28)
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Until recently, I'd never heard of Rick Mercer. Mercer is a political satirist in Canada who hosts the "Rick Mercer Report." It's like "The Daily Show" but Mercer manages to do what Jon Stewart cannot (or will not) - use his sharp wit with relative equality on politicians from all of Canada's approximately 237 political parties.

Mercer is a funny guy who gets to do a lot of interesting things - drive a tugboat, run a tank over a car, and go skinny dipping with a former Liberal Premier. In one segment of his show, he convinced the leader of the Canadian Green party to cut down a tree.

He's also a strong supporter of the military, so when Noreen Golfman, a women's studies professor in Newfoundland, wrote a column in which she complained that her holidays were ruined by sad stories about injured soldiers ("poor sods" she called them) in Afghanistan and questioned Canada's mission there, Mercer got angry. Especially since the "poor sod" she wrote about was a friend of his - Master Cpl. Paul Franklin.

As you can read, this is not a guy you want to get angry. His column is a great exercise in smackdown. Sure, it's a few months old, but it's good stuff.

Personally, I would have thought that as a professor of womenÂ’s studies you would be somewhat supportive of the notion of a NATO presence in Afghanistan. After all, it is the NATO force that is keeping the Taliban from power. In case you missed it Noreen, the Taliban was a regime that systematically de-peopled women to the point where they had no human rights whatsoever. This was a country where until very recently it was illegal for a child to fly a kite or for a little girl to receive any education.

To put it in terms you might understand Noreen, rest assured the Taliban would frown on your attending this year’s opening night gala of the St. John’s International Women’s Film Festival. In fact, as a woman, a professor, a writer and (one supposes) an advocate of the concept that women are people, they would probably want to kill you three or four times over. Thankfully that notion is moot in our cozy part of the world but were it ever come to pass I would suggest that you would be grateful if a “poor sod” like Paul Franklin happened along to risk his life to protect yours.

...

You end by saying you personally cannot envision that peace can ever be paved with military offensives. May I suggest to you that in many instances in history peace has been achieved exactly that way.

The gates of Auschwitz were not opened with peace talks. Holland was not liberated by peacekeepers and fascism was not defeated with a deft pen. Time and time again men and women in uniform have laid down their lives in just causes and in an effort to free others from oppression.

It's kind of sad, though, that a Canadian entertainer can speak out more strongly on issues of war and the need for force than most American politicians.

Funny skit from Mercer below the fold: more...

Posted by: Slublog at 10:04 AM | Comments (43)
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If this weren't an amateur film, I would swear that unscrupulous people had set this up.

It's not great, but it is odd how much action and conflict between different species is caught here.

And there's a huge suprise twist at the end. Stay with it.

I figure most people who go on safaris don't see much of anything at all, except maybe a hippopotamus scratching its balls on a wildebeest or something. These people seem to have won the Safari Action Theater lottery.

Thans to CAD Daddy.

Posted by: Ace at 09:57 AM | Comments (41)
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Actually, the current fad doesn't even involve sprucing up the pooter per se. It's more of a lip clip.

Rising numbers of women are asking the NHS to provide cosmetic surgery on their genitals, doctors said on Friday.

Writing in the British Medical Journal, they said the number of "labial reductions" carried out in NHS hospitals had doubled to 800 a year over five years.

"More and more women are said to be troubled by the shape, size or proportions of their vulvas", wrote Lih Mei Liao and Sarah Creighton from London's UCL Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Institute for Women's Health.

...

The authors said women seeking surgery were being influenced by idealised images of genitalia shown in pornography and on private genitoplasty Web sites.

Another article:

One of the world's most prestigious health journals has lashed a fast-growing trend in the United States and Britain for "designer vaginas," the tabloid term for cosmetic surgery to the female genitalia.

The fashion is being driven by commercial and media pressures that exploit women's insecurities and is fraught with unknowns, including a risk to sexual arousal, the British Medical Journal (BMJ) says.

...

Known as elective genitoplasty, the surgery usually entails shortening or changing the shape of the outer lips, or labia, but may also include reduction in the hood of skin covering the clitoris or shortening the vagina itself.

...

"Our patients sometimes cited restrictions on lifestyle as reasons for their decision," they say.

"These restrictions included inability to wear tight clothing, go to the beach, take communal showers or ride a bicycle comfortably, or avoidance of some sexual practices.

"Men, however, do not usually want the size of their genitals reduced for such reasons. Furthermore, they find alternative solutions for any discomfort arising from rubbing or chaffing of the genitals."

Patients who sought genitoplasty "uniformly" wanted their vulvas to be flat and with no protrusion, similar to the prepubescent look of girls in Western fashion ads, they found.

"Not unlike presenting for a haircut at a salon, women often brought along images to illustrate the desired appearance," say Creighton and Liao. "The illustrations, usually from advertisements or pornography, are always selective and possibly digitally altered."

The usual shrieking harridans are going to blame this on The Oppressive Patriarchy.

So as a member in good standing, let me disavow responsibility for this, and suggest it's not a good idea.

This is all very similar to women getting their nails done. Women don't do that for men; they do that for other women and themselves. No guy on earth has ever noticed a woman had "pretty nails" and a "nice pedicure" until she told him to compliment her on it.

And no guy in the world is even noticing labial size. Unless they're enormous Dumbo-flaps or something. In which case, they may be noticed, but guys being guys, we probably find it to be a turn-on just because it's somewhat unusual.

So don't pin this one on us, Marcotte.

At some point the feminist movement is going to have to recognize the contradiction in their dogmas that women are individual human beings with their own free wills and drives but that every single stupid-ass they they do to themselves is due to the destructive influence of men.

PS, there's not much you can really do to fix the thing up anyway, given that a woman's ladybusiness pretty much looks a pastrami salad topped with fresh Sarlacc pit creature.

(This tossed out there just to guarantee the links from the lefties.)

Thanks to Blacksheep and, get this, "Phineus Noseflute," if that is his real name.

Posted by: Ace at 09:20 AM | Comments (68)
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Not good news.

Not unless we do what needs, finally, to be done.

Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr appeared in public for the first time in months on Friday, delivering a fiery anti-American sermon to thousands of followers and demanding U.S. troops leave Iraq.

The U.S. military also announced that six U.S. soldiers were killed in a series of attacks across Iraq in recent days. The deaths put May on pace to be one of the deadliest months for U.S. forces here in years.

...

Also Friday, the leader of al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia in the southern Iraqi city of Basra was killed by British forces, Iraqi police said. The British military said in a statement that "a militia leader" was killed by Iraqi forces in what they called a "precision strike" on his car.

Thanks to Michael.

Too Dangerous To Take Him Out? Allah thinks we missed our chance in 2004 and now simply have to live with him and hope we can strengthen the struggling Decent Class enough to diminish him.

See-Dub thinks we have to exterminate this cockroach.

A cynical but somewhat plausible scenario occurs to me: First, we can't permit to allow Sadr to live. He will take the country if (when, really) we leave and turn it into a homicidal messianic terror state.

So he has to be killed, at one time or another. Preferably on our way out, I suppose.

Bush has restated that we will leave Iraq when asked.

If the surge isn't working -- there does appear to be some evidence it is, but things could change, as they always do -- then Bush might take the option of engineering our exit via the request of the Iraqi government to depart. We've always said we'd honor such a request.

And what could more surely prompt such a request then finally killing the terrorist Sadr?

It's a cynical plan -- creating a fig-leaf of a mission-accomplished departure ("We always said we'd leave when they asked us to, and now they have; we have done our jobs") by deliberately taking an action sure to prompt that departure.

However, we can't let this maniac live. And if we can't stabilize Iraq, we can't permit Sadr to stabilize it as a bastion of terrorism.

So if the situation deteriorates and we're unable to make progress, if we really are faced with an all-against-all civil war, and if we need a peace-with-honor pretext for abandoning Iraq -- it makes sense to me that the best way to do so is to kill this prick and at least give Iraq a chance to become a decent state in our absence.

Cynical, yes, but I'm speaking of last-resort last-gasp efforts, should it come to that.

Posted by: Ace at 08:31 AM | Comments (32)
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Your [redacted] billion dollar intelligence community at work.

Goldstein makes a couple of key points:

1) This precise-same intelligence was also provided to all the Congressmen who voted for the war (and that minority that voted against it). If Bush is to be charged with not taking this kinda-maybe "prediction" seriously enough -- why, exactly, should Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and John Kerry be excused for their similar cavalier attitudes?

2) The intelligence community also stated, much more conclusively, that Saddam Hussein had an active WMD program and the capability of developing nuclear weapons within a decade or less. So the current crop of critics are simultaneously charging that Bush should have ignored the former finding while taking very "seriously" the kinda-obvious and not-terribly-firm "prediction" about possible ethnic mayhem in Iraq.

He also makes a third point:

3) Joy Behar is a fucking moron.

Let's face facts -- there are a lot of funny female comedians. And by "a lot," I mean "a handful." They're genuinely funny and deserve all the accolades they receive. (In the case of Maria Bamford, they deserve the accolades they have yet to receive.)

But then there are a lot of female "comics" who have never had the funny their whole life, and most likely wouldn't even recognize the funny if it sat on their faces and farted out the theme from Magnificent Seven. They are affirmative-action comics, unfunny people whose career is owed to the simple embarrassment of their being so few very funny female comics.

No wonder Behar and Rosie get along so well. They've both come up through the same we-need-a-woman-in-this-set so-we'll-stick-her-in-the-middle-during-waitress-service
comedy ranks.

Posted by: Ace at 07:28 AM | Comments (18)
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Thanks to someone.

A deleted scene -- I've seen stills from it, and it was in the novelization "by George Lucas" (actually by Alan Dean Foster) -- showed Luke going into a local town, Anchorhead, and hanging out with his gearhead buddies. He also spoke with Biggs Darklighter, who would briefly appear in the Battle of Yavin as Red Three.

Biggs told Luke he was deserting the Imperial army to hook up with the rebels.

This is where Biggs warns that the galaxy is on the road to serfdom:

What good's all your uncle's work if the Empire takes it over? You know they've already started to nationalize commerce in the central systems? It won't be long before your uncle is just a tenant, slaving for the greater glory of the Empire.

In his characterization of Imperial economic policy, George Lucas was most likely thinking of National Socialism; few viewers miss the resemblance between Imperial and Nazi uniforms. But the flat assertion of the fundamental injustice of nationalization is striking when one considers the state of global politics in 1977. Not only was half the world under the yoke of Communism, nationalization was a perfectly respectable policy even in the West. U.S. railroads were nationalized in 1970. Between 1975 and 1977, Britain nationalized much of its automobile, aircraft, and shipbuilding industries; British Steel had been nationalized in 1967. One wonders if a different cut of Star Wars would have become a rallying cry for Thatcherites.

Ever wonder why Marxists so frequently spew venom on the bourgeoisie? Attitudes like this.

Of course as one moves far enough away from ever having to really earn money again the attitudes of the bourgeoisie often fade. The extraordinarily rich, like the 2007 George Lucas, has essentially forgotten the basic rules of wealth creation that the 1977 knew so well.

Posted by: Ace at 06:29 AM | Comments (27)
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Rudy leads, Romney shows.

...there's this new poll (again, PDF) out of Florida, by a firm named Datamar. It shows John McCain having plummeted to 12% in the polls down there, in fourth place, behind Rudy Giuliani at 27%, Fred Thompson in a shocking second place at 22%, and Mitt Romney in a strong third at 18%. Now, this poll is a major outlier from other recent polls in Florida — but it's also the first one taken during a time period that encompasses the immigration compromise (May 14-18 ... the compromise was announced on the 17th). The second most recent poll was by Strategic Vision, way back on May 11-13. It had Mr. Giuliani out front with 32%, Mr. McCain at 20%, Mr. Thompson at 10%, Newt Gingrich at 7%, and Mr. Romney in fifth with 5%.

Speaking in Connecticut on illegal immigration:

Posted by: Ace at 04:55 AM | Comments (43)
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