No wonder he thought he saw the devil when he visited the UN. He probably sees the devil every time he goes to pick up his dry-cleaning. Bugs, too.

Venezuela's controversial President Hugo Chávez has revealed that he regularly consumes coca -- the source of cocaine -- raising questions about the legality of his actions.

Chávez's comments on coca initially went almost unnoticed, coming amid a four-hour speech to the National Assembly during which he made international headlines by calling on other countries to stop branding two leftist Colombian guerrilla groups as terrorists and instead recognize them as ``armies.''

''I chew coca every day in the morning . . . and look how I am,'' he is seen saying on a video of the speech, as he shows his biceps to the audience.

Chávez, who does not drink alcohol, added that just as Fidel Castro ''sends me Coppelia ice cream and a lot of other things that regularly reach me from Havana,'' Bolivian President Evo Morales ``sends me coca paste . . . I recommend it to you.''

It was not clear what Chávez meant. Indigenous Bolivians and Peruvians can legally chew coca leaves as a mild stimulant and to kill hunger. But coca paste is a semi-refined product -- between leaves and cocaine -- considered highly addictive and often smoked as basuco or pitillo.

''It is another symptom that [Chávez] has totally lost the concept of limits,'' said Aníbal Romero, a political scientist with the Caracas Metropolitan University. ``It shows Chávez is a man out of control.''

Coca leaf, as far as I know (and I don't know much), isn't such a big deal. It's a drug, and almost certainly at least mildly addictive, but there aren't horror stories about tribesmen selling their children to feed a coca leaf addiction.

But the paste? As the article says, that's refining it towards the potency of cocaine.

Thanks to AliceH.

Related: Here's suspected crack-whore Amy Winehouse smoking crack on camera.

Link fixed, I think... the direct link I copied for that led to some American Idol clip. Hopefully this one works.

Posted by: Ace at 11:00 AM | Comments (43)
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David Brooks. He's the only man in America named David Brooks offering us these liberal pieties.

The Voters Revolt

The Reagan administration had its pragmatists and its so-called ideologues. It had James Baker as well as Ed Meese. Reagan carried moderate states like Connecticut, Wisconsin and Washington, as well as conservative ones like Wyoming and South Carolina.

But then a great tightening occurred. Conservative institutions and interest groups proliferated in Washington. The definition of who was a true conservative narrowed. It became necessary to pass certain purity tests — on immigration, abortion, taxes and Terri Schiavo.

An oppositional mentality set in: if the liberals worried about global warming, it was necessary to regard it as a hoax. If The New York Times editorial page worried about waterboarding, then the code of conservative correctness required one to think it O.K.

Apostates and deviationists were expelled or found wanting, and the boundaries of acceptable thought narrowed. Moderate Republicans were expelled for squishiness. Millions of coastal suburbanites left the party in disgust.

And still the corset tightened. Many professional conservatives do not regard Mike Huckabee or John McCain as true conservatives. “I’m here to tell you, if either of these two guys get the nomination, it’s going to destroy the Republican Party,” Rush Limbaugh said recently on his radio show. “It’s going to change it forever, be the end of it.”

Some of the contributors to The National ReviewÂ’s highly influential blog, The Corner, look to Fred Thompson and Mitt Romney to save the conservative movement. Their hatred of McCain is so strong, itÂ’s earned its own name: McCain Derangement Syndrome.

Yet a funny thing has happened this primary season. Conservative voters have not followed their conservative leaders. Conservative voters are much more diverse than the image youÂ’d get from conservative officialdom.

In South Carolina, 34 percent of the Republican voters called themselves “very conservative,” but another 34 percent called themselves only “somewhat conservative” and another 24 percent called themselves “moderate.” Only 28 percent of the primary voters there said that abortion should be “always illegal.” This, I repeat, was in South Carolina, one of the most right-wing places in the country.

And John McCain, the great hope of the Republican Party, won 33% of the vote, a whole third. Much less than he received in 2000.

One might say that that the voters did in fact revolt -- against McCain.

Posted by: Ace at 10:30 AM | Comments (80)
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Heh.

Straight-talk indeed. McCain's vast knowledge of foreign affairs must have come as quite a shock to the Germans.

Posted by: Jack M. at 10:05 AM | Comments (14)
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Gee, fellers, what tipped you off?

The barb comes near the end of this clip. It's a good point, worthy of a clap but not a genuine laugh, as most of Jon Stewart's not-technically-funny schtick is.

Posted by: Ace at 09:45 AM | Comments (30)
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And of course he easily beats McCain on the question as to which candidate best represents the values of the Republican Party, but that's a gimme.

McCain only up by 2? Wow.

UPDATE (Hugh M. Hewitt): If I may paraphrase Ace, I believe that what he is saying here is: "You know who leads in California? McCain. You know who that benefits? Mitt Romney."

Posted by: Ace at 09:01 AM | Comments (16)
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In the Middle Ages. So long as the right conquering empire won, of course.

Hint: A peaceful conquering empire.

Thanks to CJ.

Posted by: Ace at 08:46 AM | Comments (76)
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Secretary of State Rice has had a rough time at the State Department. I doubt she has much time to spare to deal with interference from rogue administration officials.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Tuesday sharply rebuked a fellow member of the Bush administration who criticized international negotiations aimed at persuading North Korea to scrap its nuclear weapons program.

Rice said that Jay Lefkowitz, President Bush's special envoy on North Korean human rights, "doesn't know what's going on in the six-party talks, and he certainly has no say on what American policy will be in the six-party talks."

Lefkowitz said Thursday that the North is not serious about disarming and probably still will have its nuclear weapons when the next U.S. president takes over in January 2009, despite four years of nuclear disarmament talks by the United States, the Koreas, Japan, China and Russia.

Sources inside the State Department report that when Rice heard about Lefkowitz's dis, she demanded that he present himself in her office at once. She declared, "I will pop his head right off his scrawny neck and use his skull as a margarita glass at the signing ceremony for the six-party talks. Since he's so desperate to be a part of things. Punk."

She still scares me.

[TEST]

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 01:16 AM | Comments (33)
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In case you missed it, Instapundit linked this NY Times article on the "fatosphere" today. I had never heard of this particular corner of the blogosphere in which fat people argue for "fat acceptance." I'm bringing it up only because some of the things that these folks are saying in their attempt to celebrate obesity are pretty funny:

The Big Fat Deal blog (bfdblog.com) suggests 10 ways to be a “body positivity activist,” including “Be yourself,” “Understand that a lot of people are hateful morons” and “Don’t be afraid to order the cheesecake.”

Many of the bloggers are women whose writing has a distinctly feminist flavor, but there are male fat-acceptance bloggers like Red No. 3 (red3.blogspot.com), who says: “See, I don’t have a problem with fat. My body is simply adorned, and I’ll take that.”

But some experts say this sort of message is dangerous and undermines public health efforts to rein in obesity. “We do have to be careful not to put all the blame on the individual,” said Dr. Walter C. Willett, professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health. But he added, “The large majority of people who are overweight are overweight because of lifestyle.”

To put it more bluntly, "obesity is caused by one thing in the vast majority of the obese: stuffing one's fat face." I saw that somewhere last year and it stuck with me because it was both heartless and true.

Of course, there is a difference between being obese and being merely overweight. The former comes with a whole host of medical problems that the second does not (and see the article for some good news for moderately overweight people). However, abandoning "exercise more, eat less" for "don't be afraid to order the cheesecake" sounds like a recipe for obesity to me.

Addendum: And, yes, I know I should be the absolute last person to talk about weight issues. My posting of this article and observations about it should not be construed as an attack on anyone. Except fat people. Heh.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 12:41 AM | Comments (103)
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The Washington Post has noticed that as President Bush and Congressional Democrats try agree on an economic stimulus package, the Democratic presidential candidates are on the attack. The stock market jitters have caused the president and congressional leaders to get serious about taking some action.

It looked for a while that this would take the form of a $300 to $600 tax rebate, but that was loudly criticized on both the Right and the Left for not actually reaching our economic problems. The latest news is that we might see as much as $800 rebates for individuals, $1600 for couples, with unemployment and food stamp extensions and some business tax breaks.

Meanwhile, Democratic candidates Clinton, Obama, and Edwards are taking the opportunity to run against President Bush. That'll be good for a few votes from BDS sufferers.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) placed the world's economic jitters squarely on Bush's shoulders. "As we look at what's happening in the economy, it's very important to recognize how the policies of the last seven years have contributed," she said.

Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) made no mention of the apparent outbreak of bipartisanship during a speech on the economy in South Carolina. Instead, he excoriated Bush as "a president who's done more to contribute to this country's widening inequality than anyone since Herbert Hoover, a president whose tax breaks for wealthy Americans who didn't need them and didn't ask for them have only encouraged the mind-set in Washington and on Wall Street that 'what's good for me is good enough.' "

Edwards took the criticism one step further, urging party leaders to end talks with Bush.

Obama's attack convinces me that I was on the right track the other night when I observed in the debate thread that Democrats are retooling their campaign strategies to echo that of Franklin D. Roosevelt's 1932 campaign now that the economy is sliding into the spotlight. It's all they know now that they can't rely on bad news from Iraq.

Moreover, as far as the Democratic candidates are concerned, the economy can tank. The worse things look, the more ambitious will be the claims that they're just the right person to fix things. The sad part is that Democratic constituencies are likely to believe them. And why not? Everyone wants to go back to the sweet life of the late 1990s.

I'm not an economist, so I don't know what we do next. But I'd like to see Congress take some firm action, if for no other reason than individual confidence is so important in making economic decisions and there's no other good way to tell people not to panic.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 12:24 AM | Comments (32)
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The death of CBP Senior Patrol Agent Luis Aguilar on Saturday is focusing attention on increased violence along the southern border. Aguilar was attempting to stop a suspected smuggler's vehicle near the California-Arizona border when the vehicle ran him down. DHS Secretary Chertoff said that he was "killed deliberately," which I take to mean it wasn't an accident.

Chertoff blamed the escalating assaults on three factors: an increased presence of law enforcement on the border, turf battles among criminal cartels and criminal resistance to the law enforcement crackdown.

"Is this violence a deliberate effort to target the Border Patrol? The answer to that is yes," Chertoff said.

Chertoff and Deputy Border Patrol Chief Ron Colburn said agents are assaulted with an arsenal of weaponry that includes bottles, knives, bats, ball bearings, steel pipes, cinder blocks, slingshots and vehicles.

The FBI is investigating, but I would be very surprised to hear that they find Aguilar's killers. There's just no good way to track them down. If they do manage to catch them, this is not an occasion for deportation. These guys need to experience the American justice system before they go.

In the meantime, Chertoff is talking tough on illegal immigration, which is quite a switch from his pro-comprehensive reform stance this summer. I'm not sure I buy his change in attitude after years of wishy-washy and downright rude responses to criticism. But sounding like he's serious about cracking down on illegal immigrants and the people who employ them is better than nothing, especially since the states (Oklahoma and Arizona, anyway) are starting to scare the bejesus out illegals.

And there's some reason for hope. Operation Streamline and its various progeny, replacing "Catch and Release" with "Catch and Prosecute," is ongoing. DHS is continuing its legal and regulatory effort to begin issuing no match letters to employers. And DHS has begun proceedings to acquire land for the long-awaited border fence, which Chertoff promises to build by the end of the year. Here's hoping.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 11:43 PM | Comments (18)
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