A bad day to be a bad guy.

Two battles killed more than 165 Taliban fighters and a U.S.-led coalition soldier in southern Afghanistan as President Hamid Karzai discussed the escalating violence with President Bush in New York on Wednesday.

One of the clashes began Tuesday when several dozen insurgents attacked a joint coalition-Afghan patrol with machine guns, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades near the Taliban-controlled town of Musa Qala in Helmand province, with Taliban reinforcements flowing in all day, a coalition statement said.

The coalition said it returned artillery fire and called in fighter aircraft, killing more than 100 of the Taliban fighters. One coalition soldier was killed and four wounded.

The coalition said there were no immediate reports of civilian deaths or injuries.

Give 'em time. Crones displaying pristine bullets just don't find themselves, you know.

Taliban militants overran Musa Qala in February, four months after British troops left the town following a contentious peace agreement that handed over security responsibilities to Afghan elders. Musa Qala has been in control of Taliban fighters ever since.

...

In neighboring Uruzgan province, more than 80 Taliban fighters attacked a joint Afghan and coalition patrol from bunkers near the village of Kakrak in a six-hour battle Tuesday night, the coalition said.

Coalition artillery and air support bombarded Taliban positions, killing more than 65 insurgents, it said.

No Afghan or coalition forces were hurt.

The battle took place near an area where more than three dozen insurgents were killed as they prepared an ambush six days ago, the coalition said.

Posted by: Ace at 09:06 AM | Comments (23)
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A House Energy and Commerce subcommittee met with two rappers today to discuss vulgar, violent, and misogynist lyrics in hip-hop music. One of them was, apparently, colorful:

But rapper and record producer Levell Crump, known as David Banner, was defiant as lawmakers pressed him on his use of offensive language. "I'm like Stephen King: horror music is what I do," he said in testimony laced with swear words. "Change the situation in my neighborhood and maybe I'll get better," he told one member of Congress.

The panel is considering establishing a uniform standard for labeling potentially offensive music (the RIAA Parental Advisory warnings are voluntary at the moment) and potentially criminalizing the sale of inappropriate material to minors. Typically, encroachments on the First Amendment will be justified by exhortations to "think of the children."

Rappers and industry executives have opposed congressional intervention. One rapper in particular, Ja Rule, thinks Congress is focusing on the wrong problem (and interestingly referenced the Jena situation before I'd ever heard of it):

"They got my man Doug Morris under fire and @#!*, they got him going down to go speak to Congress about hip-hop lyrics, are you @#*$ing serious?" Ja said. "There's a f--king black kid right now about to get 25 years for having a fight with some white kids over hanging the nooses over the white tree, let's get to that. Let's get into sh-t like that, because that's what's tearing up America, not me calling a woman a b--ch or a h-e on my rap songs."

"And if it is, then we need to go step to Paramount, and f--king MGM, and all of these other motherf--kers that's making all of these movies and we need to go step to MTV and Viacom, and lets talk about all these f--king shows that they have on MTV that is promoting homosexuality, that my kids can't watch this sh-t," he continued. "Dating shows that's showing two guys or two girls in mid-afternoon. Let's talk about s--t like that! If that's not f--king up America, I don't know what is."

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 08:59 AM | Comments (43)
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“There were a few who felt I undermined the message, but I could really care less... Some were mad at me that I was going off message. In fact, even some of the people who had been pro-war said that to me. ... They were so quickly jumping to criticism of someone with a different position. It’s unfortunate that we’re being driven by such an extreme wing right now.”

-- Formerly anti-, now pro-, surge Democrat Brett Baird on the attacks he's taking from the, ahem, Loyal Opposition.

More:

Baird argued that the anti-war faction of his party allowed no room for alternate appraches.

“They are driving the agenda far too much, and it’s the wrong direction for this country,” he said. “We all agree that we can’t stay forever there, but how we withdraw and when we withdraw and why we withdraw matters a great deal to our own security, the legacy we leave in Iraq and our public image internationally.”

Baird is not the first Democrat to return from Iraq with a new viewpoint. Two years ago, Pennsylvania Rep. John P. Murtha came back and reversed his earlier support for the war.

Murtha received a heroÂ’s welcome from Democratic leaders. He got a standing ovation at the caucus meeting.

He was allowed to speak for more than 20 minutes in a momentous speech on the House floor, a place where lawmakers are often limited to only one minute.

Baird’s reception was chilly. Few lawmakers have spoken to him about his change, he said. Some approached him with pointed fingers and barked, “We need to talk about this!” but never followed up.

His Washington state colleagues have offered dark humor as consolation as Baird faces a barrage of hostility from anti-war groups and lawmakers.

“I thanked Brian this morning,” Rep. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.) quipped to Rep. Rick Larsen (D-Wash.) last week. “‘You’re making us look pretty good!’”

Baird appreciated the levity. “Even if people don’t agree with me, they at least appreciate how tough it is.”

Posted by: Ace at 08:42 AM | Comments (11)
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Remember NASA scientist James Hansen who claimed the Bush Administration was censoring his dire predictions about Global Warming? Well, in addition to getting some historic temperature data wrong and having at one time been a Global Cooling alarmist, it seems the good doctor has received a few bucks from noted Bush hater George Soros’ ‘Open Society Institute’.

How many people, for instance, know that James Hansen, a man billed as a lonely "NASA whistleblower" standing up to the mighty U.S. government, was really funded by Soros' Open Society Institute , which gave him "legal and media advice"?

That's right, Hansen was packaged for the media by Soros' flagship "philanthropy," by as much as $720,000, most likely under the OSI's "politicization of science" program.

That may have meant that Hansen had media flacks help him get on the evening news to push his agenda and lawyers pressuring officials to let him spout his supposedly "censored" spiel for weeks in the name of advancing the global warming agenda.

Hansen even succeeded, with public pressure from his nightly news performances, in forcing NASA to change its media policies to his advantage. Had Hansen's OSI-funding been known, the public might have viewed the whole production differently. The outcome could have been different.

Gee, I wonder if this Soros funded ‘media advice’ had any impact on Hansen’s media campaign against the Bush Administration? That’s a real puzzler but I disagree it would have mattered to the MSM who bought Hansen hook, line and sinker. They don’t care that he’s part of the Soros attack machine.

Check out the whole Investors Business Daily story for more information on SorosÂ’ corrosive impact on politics.

Posted by: DrewM. at 08:22 AM | Comments (34)
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No gays in Iran? Heh. Very heh, baby.

The wife of one of the soldiers kidnapped by Hizballah last summer snuck into the big MSM confabulous organized by Ahmadinejad. For some strange reason, Mahmoud seems to believe he has fans in the MSM:

"He came in and started to smile at everyone. The reporters gave him great respectÂ… As he walked by me he said hi to me, because he still didn't know who I was. He thought I was one of the supporting journalists, and that he was walking into a place where everyone loved him. He seemed very pleased," Goldwasser recounted.

Details of this love-in are of course at Hot Air.

Bryan Preston notes liberals' reluctance to choose sides between Ahmadinejad and their own children. More nuance is needed.

Regarding Columbia's supposed commitment to free speech and an informed citizenry, scan down for the "Columbia Quiz" deleted scene from Brian Coyne Mahoney's finally-to-be-released Indoctrinate U.

Posted by: Ace at 07:50 AM | Comments (5)
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This is a switch. On the one hand, Democrats have been going on with their claim that military successes are irrelevant until political successes are achieved in Iraq (and ignoring the connection between the two). So I'm pleased that Prime Minister al-Maliki thinks that political progress is being made.

On the other hand, there is a real "no homosexuals in Iran" flavor to his comments:

Civil war has been averted in Iraq and Iranian intervention there has "ceased to exist," Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said yesterday.

"I can't say there is a picture of roses and flowers in Iraq," Maliki told the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. "However, I can say that the greatest victory, of which I am proud . . . is stopping the explosion of a sectarian war." That possibility, he said, "is now far away."

Maliki was speaking to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. He also claimed that Iran and Syria were not interfering in Iraqi internal affairs any longer.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 07:37 AM | Comments (8)
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Revised way down from 50% based on the law and facts, he concludes.

Eh. I think he's missing the key ingredient of politics. Maybe I'm just too cynical but sentences like this --

The only kind of judge who could grant this motion would be the kind who elevates procedural form over all substance, who cares nothing about whether procedural violations have even arguably prejudiced the defendant, and who is also remarkably unoffended by lawyers and litigants who lack fundamental candor.

-- seem kinda naive to me.

The judicial process is often outcome-driven, not process-driven. Reason backwards from where you know you want to go.

Thanks to Iceman, who can have my six anytime.

Posted by: Ace at 07:33 AM | Comments (6)
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Apparently members of the Taliban have decided that they want their virgins and they want them now. Their usual attacks on schools and other soft targets werenÂ’t generating enough opportunities to become martyrs so they have broadened their target list to include U.S. and Afghan forces. The results are, shall we say, predictable.

KABUL, Afghanistan - Two battles killed more than 165 Taliban fighters and a U.S.-led coalition soldier in southern Afghanistan on Wednesday as President Hamid Karzai prepared to discuss the escalating violence with President Bush in New York.

One of the clashes began Tuesday when several dozen insurgents attacked a joint coalition-Afghan patrol with machine guns, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades near the Taliban-controlled town of Musa Qala in Helmand province, with Taliban reinforcements flowing in all day, a coalition statement said.

This comes on top of another battle that left 65 terrorists dead.

Obviously the MSM spin is that we havenÂ’t pacified Afghanistan and these large scale attacks show how powerful the big, bad Taliban are. Bull. Afghanistan has always been a fractured country featuring warring groups. ThereÂ’s no way we were going to change that in 6 years and in reality we arenÂ’t likely to do it for a very long time, if ever. ThatÂ’s not the goal. The goal is to prevent groups like al Qaeda from having a safe haven to train for and plan attacks against us and we are clearly doing that. Of course, we arenÂ’t going to see that on the front page of the NY Times anytime soon.

Posted by: DrewM. at 06:58 AM | Comments (10)
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Eddiebear tracks down ace and blows the cover off of this "vacation" ruse.

The great taste of $150 Porterhouse steaks and lobster tail? It comes in a can!

Posted by: Dave In Texas at 06:13 AM | Comments (8)
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A mathematical argument that Parallel Universes are in fact real and explain some of the weird shit we can't quite explain about quantum mechanics.

Parallel universes really do exist, according to a mathematical discovery by Oxford scientists described by one expert as "one of the most important developments in the history of science".

The parallel universe theory, first proposed in 1950 by the US physicist Hugh Everett, helps explain mysteries of quantum mechanics that have baffled scientists for decades, it is claimed...

Its S.C.I.E.N.C.E

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 08:36 PM | Comments (64)
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