Stating the obvious. Something we conservatives aren't used to seeing.

[Pelosi's] comments are directly contradicted by a CIA timeline prepared by the Director of National Intelligence that indicates Pelosi and Porter Goss, R-Florida, then-Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, were briefed on enhanced interrogation techniques.

Specifically, the CIA timeline states that on Sept. 4, 2002, Pelosi and Goss received a "Briefing on EITs (enhanced interrogation techniques) including use of EITs on (alleged al-Qaeda operative) Abu Zubaydah, background on authorities, and a description of the particular EITs that had been employed."

That briefing came a month after the CIA began using Justice Department-approved enhanced interrogation techniques - including the drowning simulation technique known as waterboarding - on Abu Zubaydah, according to a Justice Department memo released last month.

...

In a May 5, 2009, memo submitted with the timeline, CIA director Leon Panetta acknowledged the differing accounts of the meeting that Pelosi and Goss attended. But he said the CIA's version is based in part on records created at the time of the meeting.

...

At PolitiFact, we normally would be reluctant to make a Truth-O-Meter ruling in a he-said, she-said situation, but in this case, the evidence goes beyond the competing accounts from Pelosi and Goss. We are persuaded by the CIA timeline, which the agency says is based on "an extensive review of (the CIA's) electronic and hardcopy files."

It's also important to note that the timeline that contradicts Pelosi was put together at the behest of an administration controlled by her own party. That document provides compelling -- albeit sparsely worded -- evidence that Pelosi's recollection is incorrect.

Add in the fact her aide was, apparently indisputably, briefed about this in February 2003.

Again, the press used to be interested when a Speaker of the House provably lied about national security in an effort to play politics.

In fairness, the media is generating some outrage. David Shuster, for example, says he's disgusted and may vomit.

Over Carrie Prejean. Shuster's focused laser-like on the big stories.

Meanwhile, liberal columnist Richard Cohen allows himself to ponder the possibility that Cheney might be right about torture, which is a dangerous thing to do, doing that whole "question your own deeply-held assumptions" thing that liberals are always urging on conservatives but rarely seem interested in themselves.

Amidst the snark, he asks:

Cheney says he once had the memos in his files and has since asked that they be released. He's got a point. After all, this is not merely some political catfight conducted by bloggers, although it is a bit of that, too. Inescapably, it is about life and death -- not ideology, but people hurling themselves from the burning World Trade Center. If Cheney is right, then let the debate begin: What to do about enhanced interrogation methods? Should they be banned across the board, always and forever? Can we talk about what is and not just what ought to be?

This is terrific, but it should be noted that non-liberals have been seriously considering this question since 11 September 2001. Still, nice for Cohen to finally acknowledge it.

And back to Granny Rictus McBotoxImplants, just because it's sort of fun:

In a similar vein, can we also find out what Nancy Pelosi knew and when she knew it? If she did indeed know about waterboarding back in 2003, that would hardly make her a war criminal. But if she knew and insists otherwise, that would make her one of those people who will not acknowledge that the immediate post-Sept. 11 atmosphere allowed for methods that now seem abhorrent. Certain Democratic politicians remind me of what Oscar Levant supposedly said of Doris Day: "I knew [her] before she was a virgin." They have no memory of who they used to be.

Heh.

It occurs to me that David Shuster's venom for Carrie Prejean -- dumb, disgusting, superficial, a winner of a "beauty pageant" -- applies more to Granny Rictus McBotoxImplants, who's sporting more molded plastic on her than a '73 Corvette Stingray.*

* An old Letterman gag, back when he was funny.

Whoa! DrewM points out this headline item: Steny Hoyer, the Dem's Number Two and the man who would, presumably, become Speaker of the House should Granny Rictus McBotoxImplants be removed from her post, wants any investigation into torture to include what Pelosi knew:

Interrogation Probe Should Include What Pelosi Knew, Hoyer Says

House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer said Tuesday that investigations into the Bush administrationÂ’s use of so-called enhanced interrogation techniques on terrorism suspects should look into what congressional leaders, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi, knew about the methods that have been criticized as torture....

“Frankly, information about what was said, when it was said, who said it, that ought to be on the record so the American public knows,” Hoyer said.

Hmmm... check out Steny Hoyer's bus! It doesn't have monster-truck wheels like Obma's, but I'm pretty sure it could roll over Nan-Nan without breaking an axle.

Posted by: Ace at 12:31 PM | Comments (75)
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I am a big soda drinker. (Coke Zero rocks, especially the vanilla version.)

But the difference between soda and iced tea isn't all that great. I make a lot of iced tea. I can make more of it.

Whenever these guys want to tax something into oblivion -- like coal plants -- they recognize that taxes change economic behavior. (A long-ago Marshall-penned Supreme Court decision was emphatic on the matter: "The power to tax is the power to destroy.")

But when it comes to just old-fashioned revenue theft, they imagine they can tax income and goods to their hearts' content without changing behavior, and destroying their revenue stream.

This is going to be far worse for Coca-Cola than it is for me.

Senate leaders are considering new federal taxes on soda and other sugary drinks to help pay for an overhaul of the nation's health-care system.

The taxes would pay for only a fraction of the cost to expand health-insurance coverage to all Americans and would face strong opposition from the beverage industry. They also could spark a backlash from consumers who would have to pay several cents more for a soft drink.

On Tuesday, the Senate Finance Committee is set to hear proposals from about a dozen experts about how to pay for the comprehensive health-care overhaul that President Barack Obama wants to enact this year. Early estimates put the cost of the plan at around $1.2 trillion. The administration has so far only earmarked funds for about half of that amount.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a Washington-based watchdog group that pressures food companies to make healthier products, plans to propose a federal excise tax on soda, certain fruit drinks, energy drinks, sports drinks and ready-to-drink teas. It would not include most diet beverages. Excise taxes are levied on goods and manufacturers typically pass them on to consumers.

In related news, 95% of the public will not pay an extra dime in taxes of any kind. Obama said so.

Thanks to Martin.

Posted by: Ace at 12:22 PM | Comments (102)
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Sucks to be under 45 or so.

Social Security and Medicare trust funds are expected to run out of money sooner than expected, a report released Tuesday shows.

The report, from the programs' trustees, shows that expenses will exceed tax revenues for Medicare's hospital insurance fund in 2017, two years earlier than was estimated in a similar report in 2008.

Social Security's trust fund is expected to be exhausted in 2037, four years earlier than last year's estimate.

Get ready to pony up more money.

And since our current entitlement system is going to go bust sooner than later, it's clearly the ideal time to take on the entire health care system of the country. What could go wrong?

BTW- I know the analogy between Social Security and a Ponzi scheme isn't perfect (at least participation in a Ponzi scheme is voluntary) but I found this defense of Social Security to be unintentionally hilarious. The writer's point is SS isn't a Ponzi scheme because A- people paying into know they are getting screwed B-the government will never run out of investors because it can force more people to pay in at higher rates and C-Social Security means well.

A and C may well be true but, so what? As for B, well you may think there's an unlimited supply of people and money to be sucked into the system but I doubt that's true. At some level of confiscation younger generations are simply going to say the hell with the old people. As the Baby Boomers begin to die off, so does their political clout. You just can't drain people dry forever, no matter how good you think your intentions are.

Posted by: DrewM at 11:50 AM | Comments (81)
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Thanks to the internet, the 30+ year old story of Christian the Lion has gotten new play. At my friend's house, their kids were just reading a new-ish book about it.

Even the re-discovery of the story is old; the below clip, for example, is from last year.

Still, really cute. Even if you think these guys are either crazy, callow, or misguided about nature and wild instincts, it's just irresistible.

I assume anyone with young kids knows all about it; but what about the rest of us?
more...

Posted by: Ace at 11:17 AM | Comments (48)
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This is from Showbiz Spy.

“I have no question in my mind about being bisexual,” the 22-year-old Transformers star tells Esquire magazine. “But I’m also a hypocrite: I would never date a girl who was bisexual, because that means they also sleep with men, and men are so dirty that I’d never want to sleep with a girl who had slept with a man.”

But she sleeps with dudes -- like, directly, without the middleman of a bisexual female partner -- so she scores bonus points for being sorta dumb, too.

Guys, this is the whole package right here.

Now, before you get too excited, bear in mind this story sounds a lot like a previous hoax. I'm being paranoid, I guess, but that Irish kid punks the press story has me more doubtful of the press than usual.

Hot young actress? Check. Claim to be interested in a taboo sex act? Check. New-ish internet gossip site of dubious credibility pushing the story? Check. Claim she revealed this in an interview for an upcoming but not yet published interview in Esquire? Check. [Actually, the issue's out, but I don't have it and can't check if the quote is genuine.]

A sorta similar story went around Anne Hathaway a few months ago.

And it's not exactly new, either, as Megan Fox has apparently made similar statements in the past. The trouble is that maybe she's not being completely on the level, and is maybe telling her male fans what they want to hear... whenever she's got a movie coming out. I dunno.

E! Online reports the same thing -- same quote, from Esquire -- which presumably they've actually checked, but you know what? I'm sorta not really comfortable trusting the media to go the extra mile and actually pick up a magazine and make sure the quote actually appears therein.

But, still: Hot.

Thanks to Joanna.

Pat O'Brien Weighs In: Pat O'Brien, of the out-of-control "I am so effin' into you" voice mails, offers his Twittered thoughts on Megan Fox:

omg i'm so ****in in2 u

u make me so *****in hard

megan u transform my **** into a giant **** with laser guns that shoot ***

I want to blow a **** in ur ***** while I battle the evil Decepticons and lick your AllSpark and burn u with cigarettes and rub your ***** and make it so ******in wet.

Posted by: Ace at 10:57 AM | Comments (99)
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Good story illustrating just how lazy and childish the press corps is.

I want to stress that this story isn't about how easy it is to insert a silly bit of nonsense into Wikipedia. Anyone can do that -- and the whole idea of Wikipedia requires it to have this vulnerability.

It is for this reason that high school teachers tell students around the globe that they can't cite Wikipedia in their term papers and essays.

What about adults who are supposedly professionals in the "information industry"? Surely they know better than to commit a sin that even high schoolers are warned against.

Nope. Hours after composer Maurice Jarre died, a Dublin college student decided to prove a point by how quickly the world's press would seize upon a fiction and turn it into a "truth" by sheer repetition of it.

Dozens of outlets printed his made-up quote. No one discovered the fraud -- even though Wikipedia kept scrubbing the entirely unsourced quote from Maurice Jarre's page. So the student began emailing the MSM to let them know they'd been punked -- and as of yet, only a single outlet has corrected the record.

The "quote:"

"One could say my life itself has been one long soundtrack," Fitzgerald's fake Jarre quote read. "Music was my life, music brought me to life, and music is how I will be remembered long after I leave this life. When I die there will be a final waltz playing in my head that only I can hear."

He made that up because he knew that obit writers would seize upon it. Even if it was "too good to not check." Even though he didn't even bother putting in an attribution for the quote. There wasn't even a made-up "source" here -- he just stuck it in, naked of any citation whatsoever.

They used the fabricated material, Fitzgerald said, even though administrators at the free online encyclopedia quickly caught the quote's lack of attribution and removed it, but not quickly enough to keep some journalists from cutting and pasting it first.

A full month went by and nobody noticed the editorial fraud. So Fitzgerald told several media outlets in an e-mail and the corrections began.

"I was really shocked at the results from the experiment," Fitzgerald, 22, said Monday in an interview a week after one newspaper at fault, The Guardian of Britain, became the first to admit its obituarist lifted material straight from Wikipedia.

"I am 100 percent convinced that if I hadn't come forward, that quote would have gone down in history as something Maurice Jarre said, instead of something I made up," he said. "It would have become another example where, once anything is printed enough times in the media without challenge, it becomes fact."

So far, The Guardian is the only publication to make a public mea culpa, while others have eliminated or amended their online obituaries without any reference to the original version — or in a few cases, still are citing Fitzgerald's florid prose weeks after he pointed out its true origin.

But they're professionals, you know. Don't question them.

As Abraham Lincoln so famously said, "Only trust half of what you read, and none of what you read on Wikipedia."

Steven Glass just emailed me: "I wasn't a disgrace. I was a revolutionary."

An Old Punking: According to Wikipedia (ahem), the NYT got punked nicely as they scrambled to catch up with the "grunge" phenomenon of the early nineties.

The reporter asked someone at Sub Pop records if there was a grunge lingo, I guess like the hippies and hepcats had. The representative eventually said yes, and gave the reporter the low-down on grunge-speak.

But she was making it all up as a goof.

Among the other bits of "grungespeak" the New York Times reported as genuine (based on a single source's say-so), were...

cob nobbler - loser

harsh realm - bummer

lamestain - uncool person

pain ride - bus trip

rock on - a happy goodbye

tom-tom club - uncool outsiders

And...

swingin' on the flippity-flop - hanging out

Swingin' on the flippity flop. Uhhh-huh. You can definitely imagine Kurt Cobain asking Eddie Vedder if he's up for "swingin on the flippity flop" tonight. No, he's not? Oh well. Harsh realm, dude.

Posted by: Ace at 09:43 AM | Comments (59)
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Apparently she saw a sign using Gary Coleman's 70's catchphrase, "Whatchyooo talkin' about Willis?"

The catchphrase, of course, was used to express profound skepticism about Willis' harebrained schemes, deceits, and self-serving illogic. In other words, it makes perfect sense for an opponent of Obama to ask the same question of him -- no hidden racist motive required to make sense of it.

But apparently even referencing another black person when discussing The One is racist. Because, like, he's different or something, I guess, and talking about other black people lowers him to "their" level? Or something?

Not sure.

In related news, Tea Partiers stand accused of slurring Obama as a 90 year old white woman by demanding to know "Where's the beef?"

more...

Posted by: Ace at 09:19 AM | Comments (82)
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And he had a bad history as a driver, too, getting three speeding tickets from 2002 to 2007 (in his own vehicle, not while driving the trolley).

Speeding is hardly a mortal sin, but these jobs are scarce -- there's a lottery for them. Shouldn't his driving history have disqualified him, given the large number of people fighting for these jobs?

Nope. Again, transgendered.

The Boston-area transit authority trolley driver who allegedly slammed into another train while text-messaging his girlfriend Friday was hired as a minority because of his transgendered "female-to-male" status and had three speeding tickets on his driving record in recent years, ABC News has learned.

Aiden Quinn, 24, was born Georgia Quinn and boasts on an Internet networking site that he was one of the first transgender hires by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority.

...

"[Quinn] was initially hired as a minority and used her transgender status,'' an MBTA source said today.

...

Three of four trolley cars were crushed and MBTA officials estimated the cost of damages from the crash at $9.6 million.

...

Quinn did not show up for a scheduled meeting Sunday between MBTA officials and National Transportation Safety Board investigators, claiming that he was sick, Pesaturo said.

Quinn could face criminal charges.

He was sick.

Posted by: Ace at 09:10 AM | Comments (58)
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Pushing the limits of plausibility, the White House claims that reducing "waste, fraud, and abuse" and other small-bore "reforms" will save $215 billion of the $2 trillion in "savings" Obama needs for his health-care takeover. (At least he needs those savings to avoid massive tax hikes on the middle class to pay for all of this.)

Megan McArdle:

This weekend, I was on a panel where the other economics journalist and I spent a great deal of time belaboring the obvious: Obama's health care plans are very, very expensive, and they mean higher taxes for everyone, not just that elusive klatch of greedy fools who are not in the 95% of working families now allegedly slated for stable or lower taxes. Otherwise, how could Obama hope to pay for it?

I think we found out today: magic!

...

This is all very well as political theater; politicians convene never-never working groups all the time. But, being perhaps too cynical, I suspect that the announced plan to save $2 trillion is going to be used to sell Obama's healthcare plan as if we'd already found it. Then when oh, darn, the SEIU doesn't agree to hold down wages or eliminate jobs, and pharma ratchets up the average price it charges the private sector to make sure it doesn't lose too much on its mandatory Medicaid discounts, etc, well, we'll all just have to dig into our pockets to pay for it, won't we?

Or, pace the gnomes in South Park:

1. Identify tiny reforms that will never happen and determine to find almost $2 trillion in new "savings."

2. ?

3. Profit!

Posted by: Ace at 08:15 AM | Comments (175)
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Yesterday Secretary of Defense Gates took the unusual step of firing a 4 star combatant commander in the midst of the war. In fact, it hadn't been done since Truman relieved MacArthur. Now there was no insubordination involved with Gen. McKiernan just a sense that things weren't getting better and there was a man (actually, men) better suited to get the job done that was ready and available.

Mr. Gates praised Gen. McKiernan's record and said no specific incident prompted his ouster. A senior Pentagon official said Mr. Gates and other top national security officials concluded in recent weeks that Gen. McKiernan had the wrong background and mind-set for the Afghan war. Gen. McKiernan, who was commissioned into the Army in 1972, spent his entire military career commanding conventional forces. He served in the Balkans, led the Army's 1st Cavalry Division, and then oversaw the U.S. ground war in Iraq in 2003.

Gen. McChrystal and Gen. Rodriguez bring a different set of experiences. Gen. McChrystal, who currently serves as the director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has spent most of his career in the secretive special operations community and oversaw the commando teams that captured Saddam Hussein and killed terrorist mastermind Abu Musab al Zarqawi.

Gen. Rodriguez, who serves as Mr. Gates's senior military adviser, commanded the 82nd Airborne Division in eastern Afghanistan last year and is seen as one of the military's leading experts on counterinsurgency. He will assume the newly created post of deputy commander for operations for the 45,000 American troops now in Afghanistan.

..."Gates has been thinking about this since the transition," said a senior Defense official. "When you have guys of the caliber of McChrystal and Rodriguez on the bench and rested, you need to get them into the fight."

I'm not even going to pretend I know enough about these men to render judgment. The fact is there are only a handful of people who are and they (Gates, Adm. Mullen and Gen. Petraeus) seem to on board with the change.

It's a hard fate for McKiernan who is obviously a capable and honorable man. It's just that there is a pair of officers that leadership thinks can do better. I expect the manager of my favorite baseball team to put the best players out on the field regardless of sentiment. We can expect no less from those responsible for prosecuting our nation's wars.

Two things in this article that are comforting. The first is Gates' delivered the news in person last week, McKiernan deserved that at the least. The second is this was something done with deliberate thought and not a reaction to recent civilian casualties.

Will the McChrystal/Rodriguez team be able to manage the war in all its complexity (fighting the enemy, getting the Afghan Army up and running, supporting the Afghan government, dealing with NATO allies, etc) better than McKiernan? No one knows for sure but Gates is going with the people who he thinks give us the best chance to succeed. That's all we can hope for.

(H/t for the WSJ article to Max Boot writing at Commentary. See his post for more on the difference between Gates and Rumsfeld's management styles.)

Posted by: DrewM at 07:31 AM | Comments (45)
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