Just so I'm not accused of being completely in the tank for Giuliani. (I am in the tank for Giuliani, just not completely so.)

Rudy's camp has replied that technology has now advanced to the point where statements he made last year are no longer operative. This is a fairly clever response, and by clever, I mean "transparently bullshit."

However, just to inject a little nuance into this: A year ago it was rather uncontroversial throughout the entirety of the Republican establishment to support the WSJ line on illegal immigration. In fact, it was considered racist to even dare to speak out against it. For what it's worth, I myself avoided this topic like the plague all through 2005 and 2006 when Michelle Malkin was regularly posting about it (in fact, setting up a separate immigration blog for it), and everyone knew they were supposed to call Tom Tancredo "nativist" or "too hardline," because that was the politically correct thing to say.

Even if you thought he sorta had a point.

Cowardly? I don't like the word "cowardly." I hardly think that's fair.

Let's say "craven" instead.

I only finally started posting about the issue when I was forced to, when the Grand Security-Compromise came together to foist the Comprehensive Piece of Shit on an unwilling nation. more...

Posted by: Ace at 04:59 PM | Comments (95)
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Outstanding. And this is just Part One.

INTRODUCING Newsweek's Aug. 13 cover story on global warming "denial," editor Jon Meacham brings up an embarrassing blast from his magazine's past: an April 1975 story about global cooling, and the coming ice age that scientists then were predicting. Meacham concedes that "those who doubt that greenhouse gases are causing significant climate change have long pointed to the 1975 Newsweek piece as an example of how wrong journalists and researchers can be." But rather than acknowledge that the skeptics may have a point, Meacham dismisses it.

"On global cooling," he writes, "there was never anything even remotely approaching the current scientific consensus that the world is growing warmer because of the emission of greenhouse gases."

Really? Newsweek took rather a different line in 1975. Then, the magazine reported that scientists were "almost unanimous" in believing that the looming Big Chill would mean a decline in food production, with some warning that "the resulting famines could be catastrophic." Moreover, it said, "the evidence in support of these predictions" -- everything from shrinking growing seasons to increased North American snow cover -- had "begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it."

Yet Meacham, quoting none of this, simply brushes aside the 1975 report as "alarmist" and "discredited." Today, he assures his readers, Newsweek's climate-change anxieties rest "on the safest of scientific ground."

And he's just getting started.

From Extreme Mortman, which has the actual Newsweek article, plus old video of Dennis Miller busting on Newsweek for it.

Posted by: Ace at 04:01 PM | Comments (60)
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When last we came across Monica Hesse, whose hobbies apparently including going on Queer Bar Guerilla Raids into straight bars (NTTAWWT... though I think it's safe to say she's not a political moderate), we found her wasting our time and trying our patience by writing a column that wouldn't pass muster in a college newspaper about the secret emanations of the name "Fred," as in Fred Thompson.

A mindlessly lint-picking belly-button spelunk of a hack-piece.

And now Monica attempts to do the hitherto unthinkable -- out-stupid, out-trivial the Vapid Vamp herself, the Doyenne of Ditz Maureen Dowd -- by writing typing a 1000 word opus on Karl Rove's rather unremarkable use of the word "mob." As in, he refused to be driven from office by the mob.

Here's some of her inanity:

Rove's 'Mob' Remark: An Age-Old Social Slur

In explaining the timing of his pending resignation, Karl Rove told the Wall Street Journal, "I'm not going to stay or leave based on whether it pleases the mob."

It's a three-letter grenade of a word -- so French Revolution, so frothy-mouthed peasants torching the streets.

Whether deployed innocuously or insidiously as a substitute for a neutral word like "people," it turns a statement into a putdown, a transformation immediately noted by Rove critics. From Gawker: "Only a mastermind could cast the voice of the people as a mob." Wrote Eugene Robinson in this newspaper: "Benighted fools who don't blindly trust his honesty or fully appreciate his genius are nothing more than 'the mob.' " The word is rooted in mobile vulgus, an ancient Latin phrase used by politicians, which translates into "the fickle crowd." Mobile (pronounced mo-bi-leh) referred to the crowd's tendency to change its collective, uneducated mind. In the 17th century, "mobile" was shortened to "mob." (Let us leave aside a discussion of that other Latinate derivative, la Cosa Nostra, or the opposition grass-roots group Mothers Opposed to Bush.)

The official definition of "mob" now:

(a) The disorderly and riotous part of the population.

(b) The common mass of people; the lower orders; the uncultured or illiterate.

"With most words you expect to have some change in semantics," says Ben Zimmer, the editor for Oxford University Press's American dictionaries. "This one has stayed surprisingly similar to its pejorative roots."

As in, "The mob has many heads, but no brains." (Thomas Fuller, British writer of the 17th century)

It is a word designed to rile, implying as it does that the people are not only (a) stupid, but (b) stupid in a collective cow-herd sense. (Americans would always rather be stupid in an independent way. It's a rugged-individualism thing.)

Perhaps proving this very cow-herdedness, however, many have tried to suggest our system of government is all mobbed up by brandishing a Thomas Jefferson quote: "A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine."

Sorry, guys. The esteemed founder never said it. The folks at Monticello's research library witheringly say that old saw has been dogging him for years.

Those who attempt to use the word today speak at their own peril -- and would do best to pay attention to their articles: "When people talk about a mob, they just mean a disorderly group of people," says Geoffrey Nunberg, a linguist at the University of California at Berkeley who has studied political language. The phrase " the mob," says Nunberg, has very different connotations. "It suggests undemocratic condescension. Nobody talks about 'the rabble' anymore, either. Nowadays we don't use words like that."

Ellen Goodman wanted to know why there weren't more female bloggers?

Well, perhaps because female bloggers couldn't get away with puerile pap like this. In a medium that relies upon traffic as its lifeblood, no blogger, male or female, could expect to survive long on a career of endlessly dissecting one-syllable words.

Bloggers, male and female, have to bring something a little more substantive to the table -- which means that all the idiots who would be blogging crap like this are instead on the payroll of the WaPo and NYT, having their Live Journal Lite blog-entries instead reformated for printing in national newspapers under the guise of "opinion columns."

Why aren't there more female bloggers?

Because all the lamest female bloggers have jobs in the MSM. Only the better ones actually remain in the blogosphere.

Next Up: Monica goes for a personal best in attempting to get seven hundred words analyzing another trivial word, this one with merely two letters, this time flashing back to 1997 to once and for all settle what "is" might really mean.

Posted by: Ace at 03:08 PM | Comments (29)
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No correction, no explanation.

The picture still appears to be hosted on whichever server it was on -- it's still showing up on my site, and that's a direct hot-link from Yahoo, where I got it.

However, the link to the picture -- with that caption -- now leads to an entirely different photo. Update: Actually it seem to lead to a "the page is you requested cannot be found" statement. Check it out.

Bryan from Hot Air wrote to them earlier in the day. I trust -- ahem -- that AFP won't merely be airbrushing this from their record without explanation or apology.

Or disciplinary action.

I'm afraid that simply deleting the photo does you no good, AFP. We all have copies of it, idiots.

On Getty Images... It's still there, now with a dishonest correction.

CORRECTS BULLETS TO UNSPENT An elderly Iraqi woman holds up two unspent bullets at her house following an early coalition forces raid in the predominantly Shiite Baghdad suburb of Sadr City, 14 August 2007.

Ummm... that's not all that was corrected, AFP. The old caption said those bullets hit her house.

Now that you acknowledge they were never fired, of course you admit they could not have hit their house.

Funny how you just omitted that part without actually acknowledging your error there.

Why not just let that caption remain? The woman claimed these obviously-unfired cartridges hit her house. Why protect a liar from being exposed?

Unless, of course, you have a some interest in protecting a liar.

The woman claimed these unfired bullets hit her house. That is what she claimed, and that fact -- the fact of her making that claim -- remains true, unless the photograher simply made that up.

If the photographer made it up, he should be fired and AFP should admit this.

If he didn't make it up, then the woman is a proven liar, and the evidence of her stooging for Sadr should remain on the record, rather than being whitewashed away.

Correction: Charles Johnson hunted down the photo. It's still proudly dispalyed on Yahoo with the AFP logo. The caption has not been changed there.

It has, however, been moved for unknown reasons, to this gallery headlined "Iraqi Oil."

Subtle.

Where Does AFP Go From Here? Having photographed just about every mouldering old crypt-trollop in Baghdad showing off her collection of unfired bullets, what can AFP now do to propagandize against the war?

Children? Eh, they're getting a lot of mileage out of that already, and that seems sooooo Israel-Hezbollah War.

Something... even cuter than children. What could that be?

Glad you asked. Suitably Flip has an exclusive of tomorrow's lead AFP photo.

Posted by: Ace at 02:19 PM | Comments (57)
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Good idea. Maybe we can start calling Jesus "Mohammad" and also start calling "The Holy Bible" the "Koran" while we're at it.

And then maybe we can begin calling the west "The Caliphate," to further this understanding.

Alas, we'll have to stop referring to ourselves as "men." But such adjustments in language are a small price to pay.

A Roman Catholic Bishop in the Netherlands has proposed people of all faiths refer to God as Allah to foster understanding, stoking an already heated debate on religious tolerance in a country with one million Muslims.

Bishop Tiny Muskens, from the southern diocese of Breda, told Dutch television on Monday that God did not mind what he was named and that in Indonesia, where Muskens spent eight years, priests used the word "Allah" while celebrating Mass.

"Allah is a very beautiful word for God. Shouldn't we all say that from now on we will name God Allah? ... What does God care what we call him? It is our problem."

You ever get the feeling that European establishment churches just don't care about religion all that much (particularly about the divisive Christ), and are more just social clubs and employers of last result for the drooling imbecile sons of the decrepit aristocracy?

Because I do. Just every once in a while. I know it's crazy, but I get that vibe sometimes.

You'll be happy to know that a poll about this nuanced idea drew an overwhelmingly negative response (92%), and a largely mocking one.

Sample letter to the editor:

"Sure. Lets call God Allah. Lets then call a church a mosque and pray five times a day. Ramadan sounds like fun," Welmoet Koppenhol wrote in a letter to the newspaper.

When do we get to start blowing up pizzerias? Will that be a year-long thing or only on Easter?

Posted by: Ace at 02:06 PM | Comments (75)
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Not sure if this is good news, bad news, or just attempting to achieve as much as is politically plausible (a continued large presence in Iraq for a longish but not indefinite period of time).

Smart or foolish? Guess we have to dance with the girl that brung us. He seems to know what he's doing.

The top American commander in Iraq said Wednesday he was preparing recommendations on troop cuts before he returns to Washington next month for a report to Congress, and believes the U.S. footprint in Iraq will have to be "a good bit smaller" by next summer. [Emphasis added.]

But he cautioned against a quick or significant U.S. withdrawal that could surrender "the gains we have fought so hard to achieve."

...

Petraeus listened intently as the so-called Freedom Fighters' 40-year-old leader, who uses the nom-de-guerre Abu Abed, explained his transformation and said he switched sides because al-Qaida was ravaging the neighborhood and trying to impose its austere version of Islam.

Members of the neighborhood volunteer army milled about, U.S.-supplied pistols strapped to their hips and AK-47 automatic rifles at the ready. Petraeus reviewed a short line of the auxiliary force and shook hands with each man.

...

Petraeus, who wrote the Army's book on counterinsurgency, said he and his staff were "trying to do the battlefield geometry right now" as he prepared his troop-level recommendations.

"We know that the surge has to come to an end, there's no question about that. I think everyone understands that by about a year or so from now we've got to be a good bit smaller than we are right now.

"The question is how do you do that ... so that you can retain the gains we have fought so hard to achieve and so you can keep going. Again we are not at all satisfied where we are right now. We have made some progress but again there's still a lot of hard work to be done against the different extremist elements that do threaten the new Iraq."

Perhaps is idea is to throw a sop to the anti-war movement by promising a reduction in a year or so (maybe beginning in nine more months), while using the surge-troops and additional troops redeployed from now pacified area in a long final blitz against Al Qaeda -- and Sadr.

If so, he's actually buying an additional nine months or year of the current, apparently-effective troop strength.

Posted by: Ace at 01:50 PM | Comments (12)
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I'm pretty sure I've linked this same story thirty-seven times by now. And everytime I do the physics geeks say that the speed of light was not really broken, and, furthermore, this is a fairly old-hat thing by now.

I forget why they say that. It's nuanced. But hopefully they'll re-explain it. I'll of course forget it again by next time.

So, speed of light broken, again.

wo German physicists now claim to have forced light to overcome its own speed limit using the strange phenomenon known as quantum tunnelling.

They set up an experiment in which microwave photons, energetic packets of light, appeared to travel "instantaneously" between two prisms forming the halves of a cube placed a metre apart.

When the prisms were placed together, photons fired at one edge passed straight through them, as expected. After they were moved apart, most of the photons reflected off the first prism they encountered and were picked up by a detector. But a few photons appeared to "tunnel" through the gap separating them as if the prisms were still held together.

Although these photons had travelled a longer distance, they arrived at their detector at exactly the same time as the reflected photons. In effect, they seemed to have travelled faster than light.

...

Quantum tunnelling is a well known phenomenon that occurs as a direct result of the strange uncertainty which pervades nature at very small scales. It allows sub-atomic particles to break apparently unbreakable barriers.

The German scientists mused upon the strange paradoxes of time-travel. "Imagine if you could go back in time to the moment right before Hitler came to power," one physicist hypothesized, before asking the famous question: "How cool would that be? You know, just to say 'What up, G?' And maybe just chill with him a couple of hours."

Posted by: Ace at 01:37 PM | Comments (31)
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Must be a fan of Sylvia Plath.

Thanks to Iowa Voice.

Posted by: Ace at 01:27 PM | Comments (8)
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MWAAA HA HA HAAA! You'll never prove it was me!

ASHLAND, Ky. - An out-of-work sub-atomic psychokinetic fissionist accused of being the "Duct Tape Bandit" has gotten into a sticky situation. The man, who had his head cleverly wrapped in duct tape to conceal his identity, walked into a liquor store on Friday, Ashland police said.

Shamrock Liquors store manager Bill Steele, though quaking with terror in the presence of this diabolical genius, had some duct tape of his own, but his was wrapped around a wooden club that inexplicably sent the brilliant fiend fleeing.

"I didn't know he was trying to rob us. I just looked at him and knew I needed to hit him with the club," remarked Steele.

I may have taken some liberties with the text.

Posted by: LauraW. at 01:20 PM | Comments (17)
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This reminds me of the Passion of the Toys. Once the foreign stringers find out the western anti-American news agencies are hot for a particular sort of photo, suddenly they're all taking near-identical shots.

What are the European douchebags hot for now? Oh, now it's crones showing off strangely intact bullets? Oh, okay, I can get a few pictures of those. Sadr's got a whole stable of ugly witches and whole warehouses full of ammo. Twenty five American dollars a shot. Whoo-hoo! Photojournalism is easy!

Reuters, this time, from photographer/stooge Kareem Raheem.

A woman displays bullets after a raid in Baghdad's Sadr City
August 12, 2007. Two men were killed while nine others were
arrested during a joint raid by the U.S. and Iraqi military forces
in Sadr City early on Sunday, police said. REUTERS/Kareem Raheem (IRAQ)

Dan Riehl provides this close-up on the bullets.

I can't tell, but they look like bullets to me (i.e., not unfired cartridges). So the bullets seem real, though the posing seems staged, like so much "photojournalism" coming from sensationalist Arab/Muslim stringers.

The slavish imitation of Arab/Muslim stringers is interesting -- as is the see-no-evil attitude of western photo editors.

Do the Western news agencies not notice that when they start paying cash for a particular sort of shot they are suddenly inundated with similar photos? Do they think that's an accident?

As with the Passion of the Toys photographic morality tale, what's hot in Arab propaganda photography is poignant juxtaposition. It's not enough to show a bombed-out building; to put the picture over the edge, you need a child's plush Minnie Mouse toy to contrast the innocence of childhood with the horror of war. Or of course a child's tricycle, in order to poignantly illustrate The Schwinns of War.

And here you need to contrast the well-armed extraordinarily-violent young able-bodied American soldiers with the frail, harmless targets of their aggression, defenseless old Sadrist hags. A picture of bullets on the street gets you nothing -- who cares about bullets on the street? Dime a dozen in Iraq.

But bullets in the hand of a saintly old witch of great-grandmother... ahhhh, there's the money shot.

Arab stringer photographers seem to specialize in staged melodrama. But AFP, Reuters, and -- as I'm sure we'll soon be seeing -- AP just keep paying for such absurd pictures, incentivizing their corps of photographers/stooges/hustlers to keep taking more until the fad is exhausted.

At some point the "We were duped" defense become inoperative. They know damn well these photos are staged. But they want them anyway. Because AP, AFP, and Reuters are willing participants in the jihadis' crude-but-effective psyops division.

Update: Commenters are telling me that these bullets, too, look like intact, unfired full cartridges. Again, I don't know, and I don't think the resolution of the insert is high enough to know for sure.

Either way, the photo is still staged. Children and toys and tricycles are so 2006; this year the hot-seller is fragile swamp hags.

Update: Do I Think Debunking Sadrist Staged Propaganda Pictures Has Won the War in Iraq? Actually, yes, this time.

I believe the war was officially won at 9:45 ET last night when these photos first hit the blogosphere.

I believe, now that yet another cadre of foreign stringer hustlers has been exposed, everything "is now going great in Iraq" and "there are no more problems whatsoever" and furthermore "we are now being greeted with chocolates and flowers."

This is what I believe. Just in case anyone is wondering.

Yahtzee!

That one actually back from the Israel-Hezbollah War. That guy right there was a real innovator. Like Andy Warhol, except with bullets and swamp-hags.

More... Like I said: Slavish, faddish imitation. This one is also from last year. A harbinger -- just slightly ahead of its time.

Iraqi Shi'ite women hold empty bullet shells
in the al-Sheala district of Baghdad, August 1, 2006,
after a raid by Iraqi and U.S. troops
against suspected insurgents.
REUTERS/Thaier Al-Sudani

Note well that military-aged men are never photographed holding these bullets. It is always decrepit hags who are selected for the shots. Why? Well, if military-aged men were holding the bullets, obviously one might infer that 1) maybe these military aged men were doing more than just holding the bullets and 2) maybe there were some actual jihadist "warriors" killed in the engagement.

Apparently there's not a single military-aged Iraqi who's so much as touched a bullet. Or at least there's no photographic evidence of that. (Unless, of course, the jihadis are posing for staged Islamic Hero Portraits, which is just another sort of propaganda pic.)

With the parade of pestilent lich-whores, however, the point is crudely made: Americans have declared open warfare on Granny Sweethag.
more...

Posted by: Ace at 12:08 PM | Comments (62)
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