Conservatism: The ideology of diversity. [Tushar]
— Open Blog

Aren’t you sick of Democrats claiming forever that they are the party of diversity, and tolerance? They talk and talk, and the crusty old GOP delivers. We don’t care about the identity of the person, as long as he/she shares our values and principles. We don’t care about the gender, sexual orientation or a few unorthodox ideas in a person. All we ask is, “Is the person capable of doing the job at hand? Does he/she share a good portion of our values?” more...

Posted by: Open Blog at 07:55 AM | Comments (40)
Post contains 642 words, total size 4 kb.

Rice seals Libyan reconciliation
— Purple Avenger

Yet another foreign policy debacle for the Bush administration to hang its head in shame over.

TRIPOLI - US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice held a landmark meeting with Libyan leader Moamer Gathafi to seal a reconciliation with the former US enemy.

Rice said Saturday before leaving that the United States and Libya had decided "to move forward in a positive way" and deal "as well as we can with issues of the past."

The first US secretary of state to visit Tripoli in 55 years exchanged gifts with Gathafi -- he gave her a lute instrument and she presented a shield with the department's coat of arms.

Rice declared: "After many, many years it is a good thing that the US and Libya found a way forward." She praised some "strategic choices" made by Libya.

Last year, Gathafi proclaimed his love for "Leezza," telling Al-Jazeera television: "I support my darling black African woman. I admire and am very proud of the way she leans back and gives orders to the Arab leaders."

Solid props and a Lute gift? Shit man, just come out and say it, you want to marry Condi.

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 04:00 AM | Comments (36)
Post contains 198 words, total size 1 kb.

UN: give up meat to stop global warming
— Purple Avenger

End to end animal product production is claimed worse than vehicle transport when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions...or so says the IPCC chairman.

People should consider eating less meat as a way of combating global warming, says the UN's top climate scientist.

Rajendra Pachauri, who chairs the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), will make the call at a speech in London on Monday evening.

UN figures suggest that meat production puts more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than transport...

Time for all of us to do our part for gaia folks. We're gonna have to slaughter those herds and put in tofu farms instead. PETA (people eating tasty animals) spokeswoman, Sarah Palin heartily endorsed the mass slaughter angle a good fun, but was dismayed that the herds would not be replaced and said people should stock their freezers now because pickings will be lean in the future with the world's animal life being sacrificed on the gaian altar. A spokesman for the dinosaurs chided "we told those dumbasses to watch out for that crazyass hairless ape tribe"

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 03:00 AM | Comments (62)
Post contains 193 words, total size 1 kb.

Anatomy of a Smear
— Ace

Correction: Contrary to the assertion made below, Andrew Sullivan was not the first to report the motion to seal divorce records -- at least one obscure blog beat him to it by a day.

Still, I'd like to know how it is that Kos and Sullivan are coming across their smears. How did Sullivan come across this? Just stumbled across it? Tipped? If tipped-- who tipped him?

....

Weekly Standard Dean Barnett asking a very important question.

One that needs to be answered: Now.

Yesterday on a blog hosted by the prestigious magazine the Atlantic, a post popped up at 11:49 a.m. with the breathless title, “Here We Go.” The post read in its entirety, “Todd Palin's former business partner files an emergency motion to have his divorce papers sealed. Oh God.” The post linked to the Alaskan court system where you could see the motion if you cared to click through.

"The author" here is, yes, RAWMUSLGLUTES himself. WS isn't saying so because they're so repulsed by this vile thing they avoid even naming him anymore.

Although the author didn’t care to make his innuendo explicit, the insinuation was clear – the National Enquirer had previously reported on what it called “a rumor” that the former business partner in question had had an affair with Sarah Palin. The breathless title and the brevity of the post implied that the smoking gun for the affair laid in the court filings that the former business partner wished to conceal. Naturally, because the purported scoop had the imprimatur of the prestigious Atlantic, many other news sources picked it up in rapid order.

Quicker than you can say “conspiracy theory lunatic,” this particular lunatic theory jumped off the tracks. The Court denied the motion to conceal the papers, allowing the curious to sniff through them. Shock of shocks, Sarah Palin’s name wasn’t even mentioned in the filings. Nor was there anything regarding an affair with her. In this particular wild goose chase, the goose flew free.

See Hot Air. The guy didn't ask to have his records seal to protect Sarah Palin, but himself -- he didn't want legions of media creeps and confirmed jock sniffers like Andrew Sullivan pouring through the broken pieces of a failed marriage.

Anyway, back to Dean:

Thus, the method of the smear mechanism reveals itself – print a lot of speculative crap, all while maintaining a malign indifference as to whether or not you can prove said speculative crap. Actually nailing down a story before running it? That’s so 20th century, at least in the virtual pages of the Atlantic. Doing actual reporting to confirm life-damaging rumors before circulating them? Such quotidian tasks are obviously beneath an Atlantic blogger’s pay grade.

One more thing of journalistic interest occurs: The “news” about the motion to seal the divorce papers appeared in the virtual pages of the Atlantic first, not the National Enquirer or the Daily Kos as one might expect. Obviously, Atlantic field reporters haven’t trekked up to Alaska to monitor every random court filing. Therefore, someone had to tip off the Atlantic’s chief rumor spreader about the motion to seal the divorce papers. It would be interesting to know at whose bidding the Atlantic staffer in question is spreading unfounded smears.

IÂ’m sure in the interests of full disclosure, the magazine and its chief rumor spreader will rush this information to the public. Right after they apologize for yesterdayÂ’s smear du jour turning up empty.

Andrew Sullivan is known for many things -- general histrionics, "excitability," intellectual shallowness that requires him to blog about the only things he's marginally capable of discussing (emotion and scandal), unquenchable vanity, a guileless passion for conspiracy theories of all sort, "gobsmacking" outbursts of hypocrisy and inconsistency so laughable he's chiefly read for his inadvertent entertainment, casual antisemtism that was all the rage at British boarding schools but doesn't play as well in America, power glutes, seeking anonymous three-way sex, and an endless stream of insults that sound vaguely "smart" but are really just variations of "fascist" and "hater" tarted-up with a thesaurus and some memories of introductory-level college classes. (For example, we're all "foaming at the mouth Caesarists," which is cute, but it's really just saying "crazy fascist." Oooh, burn.)

I could go on and on. Oh, look there, I did.

But one thing is decidedly not known for is reportage, nor, in fact, for moving his fat ass much further than the local Starbucks.

So how did Sullivan land this scoop?

The most likely answer is that he was fed it by the Obama campaign, the same Obama campaign whose strutting Narcissus of a candidate (see, Andrew, I took Introduction to the Classical World too) piously calls for a ban of all personal attacks on his opponents' family while smugging political pornography to disgracefully amoral partisans who then inject it into the mainstream, like the hydra-poisoned arrow of Heracles. (See, Andrew -- got that one from high school. Not really that fucking impressive.)

There are other possibilities, including fellow Messiah cultists in the media whose ethics would prevent them from publishing such trash without first actually looking at the documents; if that's the case, it reflects rather badly on The Atlantic that they've become the Too Hot for TV to the media's Jerry Springer Show.

But the most likely candidate seems either Obama's camp or the DNC, which are functionally unite at this point. Certainly it fits with Obama's behavior:
Obama has claimed that he would not tolerate such attacks being made by any of his staff. And yet we have his National Finance Chair smearing Sarah Palin as a selfish, unfit mother on national radio without reprimand.

And bloggers we know as a fact are in communication with the Obama campaign -- Sullivan, Kos -- are pushing the positively insane and cruel "Trig is really Bristol's baby" claim into the national media.

Obama's campaign remains in close communication with these defamers. It seems he "tolerates" a lot more of this than he claims publicly, no?

And now we have Andrew Sullivan, who hasn't actually reported a goddamn thing in his whole life except his HIV status, suddenly in possession of a scoop (which went nowhere, but a scoop nevertheless) which he quite suspiciously does not even call a scoop.

Forgive me for generalizing, but Andrew Sullivan hasn't missed an opportunity for shameless self-promotion once in his entire grubby, starfucking life.

Why the sudden onset of modesty? Why not proclaim his scoop for what it was?

Because he didn't want to draw attention to the question of how he'd come to have the information, of course. Call it libel laundering -- disguising the source of a smear.

As a little button to this story. It's not much, but it does demonstrate how relentlessly nasty this parasite is, and how far The Atlantic has fallen since it hired this hysterical homofascist. (Makin' up new words is easy, too, Andrew.)

After pushing this latest smear, after so many others, into the national media, Sullivan not only took his sweet old time noting his nasty insinuation had proved false (Hot Air had it 8:59 AM today; despite being awake and blogging before nine, Sullivan waited until 12:03 to link the Smoking Gun's debunking), but note the petty and grudging manner in which he "retracts" the story, as if he's angry at Sarah Palin for not having obliged him with infidelity:

That's right -- after all the breathless, eye-catching insinuating that the divorce records would prove an affair -- a post, incidentally, that soon caused the Alaska court system to which he had linked to become inaccessible due to traffic overload -- Sullivan not only fails to note the retraction in the headline (which is par for the course for him) but actually keeps his main page entirely pristine of any retraction at all.

In fact, as you can see, on the main page, not only does he not clearly retract the story, but the only information posted there is actually just a reassertion of the original smear.

His "retraction" -- at least on the main page -- simply defames Sarah Palin anew.

If you click "read more" you'll see a quote from TSG indicating the sad news that St. Andrew was wrong, but of course he ads no comment of his own to the post, no apology, not even a regret for misleading his readers.

What the hell, man? I offer far more generous corrections than that, especially when I've really wronged someone. And I'm not a representative of a (once) respectable magazine.

Is that the manner by which The Atlantic magazine suggests making corrections/retractions ? Particularly for such scandalous personal innuendos that even the National Enquirer is more circumspect about?

Is it The Atlantic's policy that one of its salaried writers, and surely the one who appears the most frequently on television (starfucker he), can smear someone with an unsourced innuendo of such a personal sort and then, when evidence is presented that that smear was entirely unfounded, "retract" in such a grudging and stealthy fashion?

Is that what the Atlantic is now? Andrew's personal little hate-site and slam-diary by which to peddle gay rumors, conspiracy theories, smears against 17 year old girls (and 1 year old boys, for that matter) along with the occasional spice of Jew-baiting?

Well, congratulations, Atlantic. You are, without doubt, now the toniest gay gossip site and antisemitic conspiracy newsletter available in America. And, at 151 years, surely the most historied.

I'm sure you have a colorful and wide-ranging future ahead of you as a Bircheresque successor to Us Weekly, as I'm sure we'll all find out.

Bleg: Any PUMAs or other politicos out there who know the personal emails or phone numbers for high-ranking Obama staff, please send them my way. I want to get these bastards on the record as to the extent of their contacts and coordination with Kos and Sullivan. On the off chance they're willing to admit any connection with such creatures, I want to know why it is that obama's supposed ban on these personal attacks is suspended with regard to them.

How Does Sullivan Keep Getting Work?: The Other McCain suggests that Sullivan, despite having little by way of restraint, judgment, talent, or psychological stability, does have one thing no other blogger has (to my knowledge): A permanent link from the Drudge Report in its news links.

Therefore he has the equivalent of ten Instalanches a day -- even without writing a blessed thing; even random clicks off Drudge are worth 50 thousand hits per day -- and any media outfit looking to establish an online presence will want that Sullivan Drudge link feeding the site traffic.

They might not want Sullivan, per se, but they want that Drudge link. Alas, it's a package deal.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 10:27 PM | Comments (76)
Post contains 1813 words, total size 12 kb.

Quote of the Week
— Ace

You must understand printing lies about Republican candidates is OK. It’s called “vetting.” Printing the truth about liberals - that’s called “swift-boating.”

Howie Carr. Another read-the-whole-thing.

Yet Another Great One: Diana West in the WashTimes:

[L]ast week's media torpor and this week's journalistic wilding are part of the same phenomenon: the media's uncontainable passion to elect Mr. Obama.

I say this having mentally stacked the questions the media have already asked Mrs. Palin in two days of intrusive and pointless questions against the glaringly obvious questions the media have never asked Mr. Obama in two years. Mr. Schmidt noted that "the media is asking more questions about Palin's pregnant daughter" than about Tony Rezko, the Chicago fixer and Obama patron who was recently convicted on corruption charges. But that's just the first item on a long list of passes the media have given Mr. Obama — passes on vital matters of character, judgment and political belief.

These range from the media's protective hesitation on his long-term relationship with former Weather Underground leader William Ayers, to their near-total absence of interest in his recent campaign choice for Muslim outreach, a young man with affiliations to not one, but four organizations with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood....

But no one, and I mean no one, is taking the bait. And certainly not now. Not when a conservative Republican woman's amniotic fluid is in the water.

The media justifies savaging the Palin family as necessary "vetting."

Fair enough. "Vet" away. You only have nineteen months of backlog to take care of before moving on to Trig Palin.

Posted by: Ace at 09:19 PM | Comments (29)
Post contains 272 words, total size 2 kb.

UK Guardian Chides American Leftist Media: See, Here's What You Did Wrong, Dummies
— Ace

Great piece. Must-read.

My colleagues in the American liberal press had little to fear at the start of the week. Their charismatic candidate was ahead in virtually every poll. George W Bush was so unpopular that conservatives were scrambling around for reasons not to invite the Republican President to the Republican convention. Democrats had only to maintain their composure and the White House would be theirs.... But instead of protecting their precious advantage, they succumbed to a spasm of hatred and threw the vase, the crockery, the cutlery and the kitchen sink at an obscure politician from Alaska.

For once, the postmodern theories so many of them were taught at university are a help to the rest of us. As a Christian, conservative anti-abortionist who proved her support for the Iraq War by sending her son to fight in it, Sarah Palin was 'the other' - the threatening alien presence they defined themselves against. They might have soberly examined her reputation as an opponent of political corruption to see if she was truly the reformer she claimed to be. They might have gently mocked her idiotic creationism, while carefully avoiding all discussion of the racist conspiracy theories of Barack Obama's church.

But instead of following a measured strategy, they went berserk. On the one hand, the media treated her as a sex object. The New York Times led the way in painting Palin as a glamour-puss in go-go boots you were more likely to find in an Anchorage lap-dancing club than the Alaska governor's office.

On the other, liberal journalists turned her family into an object of sexual disgust: inbred rednecks who had stumbled out of Deliverance. Palin was meant to be pretending that a handicapped baby girl was her child when really it was her wanton teenage daughter's. When that turned out to be a lie, the media replaced it with prurient coverage of her teenage daughter, who was, after all, pregnant, even though her mother was not going to do a quick handover at the maternity ward and act as if the child was hers.

Hatred is the most powerful emotion in politics. At present, American liberals are not fighting for an Obama presidency. I suspect that most have only the haziest idea of what it would mean for their country. The slogans that move their hearts and stir their souls are directed against their enemies: Bush, the neo-cons, the religious right.

...

When a hate campaign goes wrong, however, disaster follows.

Posted by: Ace at 08:59 PM | Comments (43)
Post contains 440 words, total size 3 kb.

How Powerful Is Palinmania? PT. II [Another Moron With A Login]
— Open Blog

As if you think that Oprah isn't hypocrite enough, she also produces the Rachael Ray Show. Guess who's appeared on it?

Barack and Michelle Obama.

Bill Clinton.

To be fair, she did have Laura Bush on once. Also to be fair, there's no word yet on who will be on the shows in the new season to come.

But, that's not the point. As has been shown in Ace's post, Oprah is just plain fucking stupid for claiming her show isn't "political" when she's had the Messiah on. And, the former President, and the current First Lady.

All have appeared on Rachael Ray's show, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Harpo Productions. Nice try, Oprah, but Karl Rove, you are not.

So Oprah is a hypocrite not just once, but twice.

Update:> Well, this post was to further the notion that Oprah is a hyprocrite by claiming she doesn't do politics, but it seems to have turned into a Rachael Ray bashfest.

I LOVE YOU MORONS!! YOU FUCKING ROCK!! more...

Posted by: Open Blog at 08:42 PM | Comments (42)
Post contains 182 words, total size 1 kb.

Western Anbar Progress Report
— Purple Avenger

Straight commentary from a PRT leader who is there. We all know the broad strokes, but he goes into a greater level of detail for those interested. Its a long post, with nothing soundbitey, just a hard data dump that will tell you more in 5 minutes than watching 6 months worth of TV news.

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 07:52 PM | Comments (3)
Post contains 63 words, total size 1 kb.

How Powerful is Palinmania? How About Powerful Enough to Doom Oprah Winfrey (?!?)
— Ace

Wow.

It's the comments, the comments. The comments from long-time Oprah fans.

(BTW: I actually don't think Oprah's doing anything wrong here -- she did, technically, not put Obama on the show when he was running, so she is keeping it nonpartisan. Technically. But that's good enough, really. A lot of rules about ethics and fairness we follow that way-- technically.)

I don't fault her for this decision; I just hate her in general. She sucks. And I'm amused that the Queen of TV is catching flack from her audience due to the power of Palinmania.)

The way this always works is that the celebrity wins. Celebrities have established long-term bonds with their audience, and are seen as "real" and "human" and of course usually powerfully charismatic; politicians seldom have any chance in a spat with a celebrity. Particularly a very powerful celebrity like Oprah who is so well "known" by her audience, almost as if she's a real person in their life.

But there's a warning label on Sarah Palin:

Do not taunt happy fun governor.
more...

Posted by: Ace at 07:38 PM | Comments (84)
Post contains 1208 words, total size 7 kb.

OODA and what The Hell Is This?
— Dave in Texas

It's what the McCain camp has been throwing at Obama, big time.

For those of you who are wondering, it's an aerial dogfighting discipline, outlined by USAF Col. John Boyd, splained here by new NRO contributor Bill Whittle, who I want to meet and purchase a brew for.

It goes like this: Observe. Orient. Decide. Act.

or thusly:

Observe. Dorkwit.
Orient. Flank.
Decide. Upset.
Act. Palin.

This is working so well that Obama has made the supreme mistake of taking her on instead of McCain (as ace has noted today).

Anyhow, for those of you who are unfamiliar with the OODA thingy, there you go.

It's about shootin down commies. I likes that.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 06:50 PM | Comments (59)
Post contains 127 words, total size 1 kb.