Stupid Lefty Journalist Tweets
— andy

I know that headline is awfully redundant, but ... wow.

First up, Her Ponceness:

'A black man will win Masters at Augusta' > RT @HuffPostMedia REALLY? MT @GolfChannel: Tweet your ‘golf’ dream on 50th anniv of MLK speech

— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) August 28, 2013

It's like he knows he's supposed to be angry at Augusta National for something, but he can't remember what it is. So his great dream is that a black man will someday break through in the White Man's Game of golf and win "The Masters at Augusta", a phrase damned near as redundant as my headline.

Tiger Woods has only won the Masters (at Augusta, natch) four times, but maybe one day a black woman will be allowed to join there and break that green grass ceiling.

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The President Is Apparently "Evolving" Once Again
— JohnE.

From today's interview with PBS:

Obama to PBS: "we send a shot across the bow and say stop doing this, that can have a positive impact."

— Rick Klein (@rickklein) August 28, 2013

Well, that's odd because he seemed to tell the New York Times precisely the opposite in 2007:

I would meet directly with Syrian leaders. We would engage in a level of aggressive personal diplomacy in which a whole host of issues are on the table. WeÂ’re not looking at Iraq, just in isolation. Iran and Syria would start changing their behavior if they started seeing that they had some incentives to do so, but right now the only incentive that exists is our president suggesting that if you do what we tell you, we may not blow you up.

My belief about the regional powers in the Middle East is that they don’t respond well to that kind of bluster. They haven’t in the past, there’s no reason to think they will in the future. On the other hand, what we know, is that, for example, in the early days of our Afghanistan offensive, the Iranians we’re willing to cooperate when we had more open lines of dialogue and we were able to identify interests that were compatible with theirs.”

Maybe it's Syria that has evolved and now they do respond well to this type of bluster. It was probably the Cairo speech that did it.

Posted by: JohnE. at 02:30 PM | Comments (291)
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MOTHER JONES MAGAZINE: EMAILS OF NIDAL HASAN, WELL KNOWN TO FBI AND PENTAGON OFFICIALS, SUGGEST THAT OBVIOUS VIOLENT THREAT AND SECURITY RISK WAS SIMPLY IGNORED
— Ace

13 (14) people dead is an awfully high price to pay for Political Correctness.

I'm as shocked as you are that this is in Mother Jones. I should also note that the headline is my headline, not theirs.

But theirs is nearly as forward-leaning:

Internal Documents Reveal How the FBI Blew Fort Hood

Nearly a year before the massacre, the bureau intercepted emails between Nidal Hasan and radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki that officials called "fairly benign." They are anything but.

Be prepared to be enraged, and enraged in the worst possible way: Enraged and powerless, because you know damn well, no matter how many people die, they will keep on doing this.

Because NoH8 you guys.

I can only excerpt this. Be aware, the article is fairly brief (2 pages) and packs a lot into those pages. So you should read the whole thing.

But in the interests of having something here besides a link...

Last Thursday, as the jury in the trial of Nidal Hasan was deliberating, outgoing FBI Director Robert Mueller appeared on CBS News and discussed a string of emails between the Fort Hood shooter and Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical Islamic cleric with ties to the 9/11 hijackers. The FBI had intercepted the messages starting almost a year before Hasan's 2009 shooting rampage, and Mueller was asked whether "the bureau dropped the ball" by failing to act on this information. He didn't flinch: "No, I think, given the context of the discussions and the situation that the agents and the analysts were looking at, they took appropriate steps."

In the wake of the Fort Hood attacks, the exchanges between Awlaki and Hasan—who was convicted of murder on Friday—were the subject of intense speculation. But the public was given little information about these messages. While officials claimed that they were "fairly benign," the FBI blocked then-Sen. Joseph Lieberman's efforts to make them public as part of a two-year congressional investigation into Fort Hood. The military judge in the Hasan case also barred the prosecutor from presenting them, saying they would cause "unfair prejudice" and "undue delay."

As it turns out, the FBI quietly released the emails in an unclassified report on the shooting, which was produced by an investigative commission headed by former FBI director William H. Webster last year. And, far from being "benign," they offer a chilling glimpse into the psyche of an Islamic radical. The report also shows how badly the FBI bungled its Hasan investigation and suggests that the Army psychiatrist's deadly rampage could have been prevented.

Hasan first appeared on the bureau's radar in December of 2008—nearly a year before the Fort Hood massacre—when he emailed Awlaki to ask him whether serving in the US military was compatible with the Muslim faith. He also asked whether Awlaki considered those who died attacking their fellow soldiers "shaheeds," or martyrs.

I could end the excerpt right there. Again, you have to read it all. There's also a bit about some run-of-the-mill bureaucratic bungling; that's not such a big deal, as bureaucratic bungling is the chief output of a bureaucracy.

It's the decision to ignore a man asking a radical terrorist preacher if it's okay to murder his fellow army soldiers that is the infuriating, heartbreaking, hair-tearing part here.

...

Meanwhile, Hasan kept writing Awlaki. Between January and May 2009, he sent the radical cleric more than a dozen emails, and received two relatively benign responses. In one message, ostensibly about Palestinians firing unguided rockets into Israel, Hasan asked Awlaki whether "indiscriminately killing civilians" was acceptable. Two days later, he sent another message answering his own question: "Hamas and the Muslims hate to hurt the innocent but they have no choice if their going to have a chance to survive, flourish, and deter the zionist enemy. The recompense for an evil is an evil." (Hasan's emails contained a number of typos.)

Let me point out the obvious: This man is a commissioned officer in the United States army, with a security clearance, asking a terrorist leader if it's okay to murder civilians, seeking his wisdom on slaughter.

And the FBI, and the Pentagon, say Meh.

They're ignoring this type of thing.

And yet we need the NSA spying on everyday citizens?

...

Meanwhile, the Washington-based DCIS agent assigned to investigate Hasan put off his inquiry for another 90 days, the maximum allowed under joint task force rules, before conducting a cursory investigation.

...

[T]he DCIS investigator concluded, based on Hasan's file, that the Army psychiatrist had contacted Awlaki in connection with his academic research and "was not involved in terrorist activity." The DCIS investigator and a supervisory agent in the Washington field office debated interviewing Hasan or his superiors. They ultimately decided doing so could jeopardize the Awlaki investigation or harm Hasan's career.

Remember why John Kerry returned to work the suspended State Department employees...? Because they were "real people" with "real careers."

Advocates for Fort Hood victims find this decision puzzling. "A US Army major is writing to this imam and essentially asking for religious sanction to kill American soldiers," said attorney Reed Rubinstein, who represents a group of victims who are suing the federal government. "And the FBI's Washington field office doesn't even interview the man or make a phone call to his superiors. It's utterly incomprehensible."

There is more. There is so much more. At every turn, the FBI cleared him, almost always after a very perfunctory (hours long) review. They gave him such a short inspection that people began wondering if he was a Confidential Informant -- how could an obvious terrorist threat be ignored by the FBI, if he were not a CI undercover?

But he wasn't.

The FBI kept giving him clean reviews for no reason.

Except, maybe, for the obvious reason.

See no evil. Don't rock the boat. The real rule coming down from the brass is not "find terrorists," but "don't insult Muslim sensibilities," and sometimes that means clearing a man who is asking a terrorist cleric if he can go to Heaven if he murders his fellow soldiers.

Institutions have a Paper Rule and a Real Rule.

Everyone knows to follow the Real Rule and ignore the Paper Rule.

The government's Real Rule is to promote possible terrorists, not investigate them and intervene.

There will be another 9/11.

And this time, the government really will have been in on it from the beginning.

Posted by: Ace at 02:46 PM | Comments (239)
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Nidal Hasan Theoretically Sentenced to Death
— Ace

And if Obama leaves office without commuting this sentence to a life term, I'll eat my hat.

But for now, he's sentenced to die. Hypothetically.

Finally, we're stopping his salary. The jury ruled it is now forfeit.

The Army psychiatrist's behavior has only stoked suspicion that his ultimate goal is martyrdom, in the form of a death sentence that would allow him to fulfill what prosecutors have described as a "jihad duty" under his Islamic faith.

The lead prosecutor, Col. Mike Mulligan, told jurors Wednesday morning that history was full of instances of death in the name of religion. But he said it would be "wrong and unsupportive" to tie Hasan's actions to a wider cause

"You cannot offer what you don't own; you cannot give away what is not yours. He can never be a martyr because he has nothing to giveÂ…..Do not be misled; do not be confused; do not be fooled. He is not giving his life. We are taking his life. This is not his gift to God, it's his debt to society. He will not now and will not ever be a martyr. He is a criminal, a cold-blooded murderer. On 5 November he did not leave this earth, he remained to pay a price. To pay a debt. The debt he owes is his life," Mulligan said.

Yeah, you tell 'em. Just because he wants to die doesn't mean we shouldn't also want him to die.

And by the way: A looootttt of tough guys have broken down crying and begging as they're led to the gas chamber.

We'll see how this fat, soft, unqualified man promoted in academic circles due to Affirmative Action winds up handling the actual End of Things.

Posted by: Ace at 12:35 PM | Comments (403)
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Q&A With Andy Barkett, The RNC's New Chief Technology Officer
— JohnE.

After the 2012 election, it became pretty clear that the RNC had fallen badly behind Democrats in their digital and marketing abilities. In an effort to change that, this past June the RNC hired Andy Barkett, who had been working at Facebook. Andy took some time to speak with me last week and answer some questions about the RNC's new digital direction.

JE: What was your previous position with Facebook and how long were you there?

AB: I was there for over two and half years. I think I started in December of 2010 or January of 2011. Around Christmas, right around that time. I was a senior manager of production engineering, which is an infrastructure engineering group.

JE: What, specifically, is your technical background?

AB: I have an extensive technical background, as a software engineer, as a systems engineer. I was a software engineer at a start-up in the semiconductor industry a long time ago. I worked at Google on the infrastructure side building data centers and designing networks. I worked at a consumer electronics company called Livescribe for a while designing hardware and software. Also hardware, embedded software and web software all in one big system. You can think about it almost like an iTunes type system where you have an iPod, iTunes and then a store that goes with it. The product was actually called Livescribe and it's a device that was sold at Best Buy and Target and a bunch of other places.

So, I'm a big nerd. Basically.

JE: Do you have an interest in politics in general and do you have any particular interest in conservative and Republican politics or is this just a new opportunity for you?

AB: Oh, I'm certainly committed to the cause. I've not been very active in politics, but ever since I took an economics class, I've been a Republican. I studied political science and economics in college at the University of California Berkeley. I also, later, got an MBA at UC Davis and I studied economics more there, including behavioral economics and behavioral finance. Through all of that, especially the economics, I came to believe very much in limited government, lower taxes and a role for government for making markets work instead of interfering with them. Those were the core issues that started me down the path of being a Republican.

JE: What do you think are some realistic goals for the GOP moving towards the 2016 election in terms of matching Democrats in their technical and digital abilities?

AB: Well, first, I'd say we're going to be working on things for the 2014 midterms, but whether it's in 2014 or 2016, I think a realistic goal for us is to move the needle and do a little better with the under-30 crowd. So definitely work on doing a better job reaching those people who are moving around, going to college, relocating to different states. Maybe they don't have a land line, maybe they don't have a permanent mailing address. We didn't do a great job of communicating to some of those people the last time, so that's definitely a goal. Also, another one is to move the needle in some of the niche markets. So, if it ends up being, y'know, Filipino people who speak Tagalog in Daly City, California, that's a group that we need to do a better job of communicating with. If there's a group of Protestants who are willing to support a candidate in upstate New York, but haven't historically been actively engaged Republicans, we need to do a better job of finding that group first, then engaging them.

So, I think the way I would measure it is two things. How we do with under-30 voters and how we do with getting really specific in reaching a lot of very targeted groups within the country. more...

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HuffPo "Contributor" Directs Sex Fantasy Attack at Dana Loesch
— Ace

Of course.

The attack involves degredation via anal sex and Allah's vengeance for the unrighteous. Kind of like the Reeces' Peanut Butter Cups of hate.

Progressive blogger Pascal Robert, known online as “THOUGHT MERCHANT,” launched a vile attack against conservative radio host Dana Loesch on Tuesday.

Here is what I have learned:

Anyone who claims to be "funny!" or "witty!" in their Twitter profiles is neither.

Anyone who proclaims he will deliver THE TRUTH has none to share.

And anyone proclaiming his profundity of THOUGHT is borderline retarded, and I apologize for the derogatory use of the word "borderline."

We don't really have to advertise the things we are, only the things we wish we were.

Top Ten Translations For Self-Brags In People's Twitter Profiles

10. "professional writer" = "I have a blog. Also, I aspire to craft Percy Jackson jailbait fanfic"

9. "Funny! Witty! Snarky!" = "I say the f-word a lot because that's comedy. I also use exclamation points because they're super-funny too!"

8. "PREPARE FOR THE TRUTH!!!!!!!!!" = "I am on a cocktail of haldol and Zoloft and murder fantasies"

7. "I've got NO TIME for STUPIDITY!!!!" = "I have a great deal of time for stupidity"

6. "pro-sex feminist" = "I talk online about how much I love sex as political propaganda but actually I have issues and I don't even mean the fun sexy issues that strippers have"

5. "freeminded atheist on a personal mission to probe the truth in all its forms" = "I was once retweeted by Penn Gilette"

4. "progressive male" = "i might rape you. also, ur a fag"

3. "#NoH8" = "I hate nearly everybody, but particularly those I come into contact with which, thanks to my anti-social personality disorder and crippling social anxiety, is mostly limited to twitter and having disputes with delivery boys"

2. "nyc" = "the most interesting thing is my zip code, which I mention with no capitals like I'm casually dropping the name 'Steven Spielberg,' and, by the way, it's really not even my zip code, because even though I say 'nyc,' if I'm being honest, it's Montclair, NJ"

...and the Number One Translation of a Twitter Self-Brag...

1. "I'm Meghan McCain" = "Deny it all you want but you'd hit this sh*t. I mean, look at these. They're like cantaloupes made of Joy and Dreams"

Update: Scott M. decides to play the "racism" card. Let's see how that turned out for him.

Where's the rape part of that quote? He asked her if she would like to
have a brother give it to her up the ass. The only way that's rape is
if it's assumed that Dana would only take it up the ass (using the
quote) from a brother would be over protest, ie, non-consensual sex.
That says more about the assumption than the quote, doesn't it?

Posted by: Scott M.

hm. well-played.

Except I didn't say "rape," idiot. I said "sex fantasy."

YOU said rape.

so what's that say about YOUR assumptions, chief?

Posted by: ace

Posted by: Ace at 11:26 AM | Comments (436)
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14 Reasons to Not Bomb Syria
— Ace

Great post.

And The Onion is relevant again, suddenly. CDRSalamander links this article, which he calls "almost good," and that leads the reader to this also almost good article, which relies on the the unexpected singular form of nouns for humor. Yeah, it's funnier than I made it sound.

Over at Hot Air, a bipartisan group of 81 Congressmen have written a letter to Barack Obama, insisting that he seek Congressional authorization before beginning his third Nobel Peace Prize War of Choice. How quaint.

“While the Founders wisely gave the Office of the President the authority to act in emergencies, they foresaw the need to ensure public debate — and the active engagement of Congress — prior to committing U.S. military assets,” the group, which so far includes 69 Republicans and 13 Democrats, writes. “Engaging our military in Syria when no direct threat to the United States exists and without prior congressional authorization would violate the separation of powers that is clearly delineated in the Constitution.”

But Obama doesn't want to do this. Why? Because he fears Congress might, after the debating the issue, say No.

So of course that's what the Constitution's war-making clause means: You have to get Congress' authorization, so long as you know they'll say yes, but if you think they'll say no, then of course all war-making power vests in One Man Alone.

This is his same reasoning on domestic policy, too. Sure, he'd prefer to have actual laws passed which execute his preferred policies into law, but since Congress disagrees with him, naturally all law-making power flows into his singular person.

Obviously that's what the Constitution means. I mean, duh. How can you read The Federalist Papers and come away not realizing that?

Also over there, some additional reporting on when the Democrats threatened impeachment should George Bush launch airstrikes on Iran. Among the persons noting that the president does not have the unilaterally attack a country absent the justification of urgent self-defense was onetime guest lecturer on constitutional law, Sen. Barack H. Obama.

The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.

Oh, that's funny, because now you say, like, he does?

@johnekdahl got this ball rolling yesterday, by the way. Not the Real Reporters of the media -- but Just a Blogger who did some searching on Ancient Archival Records from, you know, 2007.

Posted by: Ace at 10:21 AM | Comments (437)
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Peabody Award Alert: ABCNews Proudly Runs Headline, "Twerking: A Scientific Explanation"
— Ace

Parody is dead. You can't parody them.

An ABC Health/Science correspondent wrote this.

If this appeared in the Onion, you'd say "too silly."

Twerking is such a complex, technical subject, only a Ph.D. researcher can explain how the body does what it does to make it happen.

Twerking is a combination movement involving a deep squat and a pelvic tilt, Michelle Olson, a professor of exercise science and a certified strength and conditioning coach at Auburn University in Montgomery, Ala., explained.

“You take a wide stance with your legs turned out at 10 and 2 so your hips are externally rotated,” she said. “Then you pulse up and down as you thrust the pelvis bone forward and back.”

Olson said the booty dancing move is a good “twerkout” for your butt and thighs.

And etc. I'm glad ABCNews' science correspondent is up on all the medical lingo, like "butt."

Via Twitchy, which collects up a lot of goofing on #ABCreports.

There's Levels to this Sh*t: Local Elementary School Revisits Food Pyramid in Lunch Program. #ABCReports

— Rich Jones (@IAmRichJones) August 27, 2013

"Oh No She Didn't!: What To Do If She Did" #abcreports

— Thugnificent (@ArmedPropaganda) August 27, 2013

Oh and speaking of not being pardoizable, The Onion attempted to parody CNN, writing a column explaining why Miley Cyrus was their Big Top Story all day yesterday, but the parody guest editorial is simply the straight truth.

Now, let's get back to why we put the story in the most coveted spot on our website, thereby saying, essentially, that Miley CyrusÂ’ suggestive dancing is the most important thing going on in the world right now. If you clicked on the story, and all the slideshows, and all the other VMA coverage, that means youÂ’ve probably been on CNN.com for more than seven minutes, which lowers our overall bounce rate. Do you know what that is? Sorry for getting a little technical here. The bounce rate is the percentage of visitors to a particular website who navigate away from the site after viewing only one page. If we can keep that bounce rate low, and show companies that people donÂ’t just go to CNN.com but stay there, then we can go to Ford or McDonaldÂ’s or Samsonite or whatever big company you can think of and ask for the big bucks.

So, as managing editor of CNN.com, I want our readers to know this: All you are to us, and all you will ever be to us, are eyeballs. The more eyeballs on our content, the more cash we can ask for. Period. And if weÂ’re able to get more eyeballs, that means IÂ’ve done my job, which gets me congratulations from my bosses, which encourages me to put up even more stupid bullshit on the homepage.

I donÂ’t hesitate to call it stupid bullshit because we all know itÂ’s stupid bullshit. We know it and you know it. We also know that you are probably dumb enough, or bored enough, or both, to click on the stupid bullshit anyway, and that you will continue to do so as long as we keep putting it in front of your big, idiot faces. You want to know how many more page views the Miley Cyrus thing got than our article on the wildfires ravaging Yosemite? Like 6 gazillion more.

ThatÂ’s on you, not us.

Well it is on them too.

Via @rdbrewer4, from the sidebar, Camille Paglia diagnoses the malady in pop culture. She's still ga-ga for Madonna -- she will never get over that silliness -- but otherwise she's clear-minded about shock without value.

Pop is suffering from the same malady as the art world, which is stuck on the tired old rubric that shock automatically confers value. But those once powerful avant-garde gestures have lost their relevance in our diffuse and technology-saturated era, when there is no longer an ossified high-culture establishment to rebel against. On the contrary, the fine arts are alarmingly distant or marginal to most young people today.

Unfortunately, the media spotlight so cheaply won by Cyrus will inevitably spur repeats of her silly stunt, by her and others....

What was perhaps most embarrassing about Miley Cyrus’ dismal gig was its cutesy toys — a giant teddy bear from which she popped to cavort with a dance troupe in fuzzy bear drag. Intended to satirize her Disney past, it signaled instead the childishness of Cyrus’ notion of sexuality, which has become simply a cartoonish gimmick to disguise a lack of professional focus. Sex isn’t just exposed flesh and crude gestures. The greatest performers, like Madonna in a canonical video such as “Vogue,” know how to use suggestion and mystery to project the magic of sexual allure. Miley, go back to school!

Pornography has always existed in society, but what might be called "mainstream porn" -- thrills and naughtiness that might appear in respectable venues -- used to require merit to excuse it. A Henry Miller book might be trashed as pornographic, but its defenders would point to its literary merit as a reason to keep it off the banned lists.

Incidentally, the fact that it was both pornographic and meritorious made it interesting, as it existed in two categories usually thought to be contradictory; this makes such things compelling, that they actually do "challenge our preconceptions" about the boundary between trash and treasure.

We have now officially dispensed with that requirement. Did Miley Cyrus challenge any preconceptions? Oh Hellz no. She reinforced them. She didn't make things more complicated, and therefore interesting; she made them simpler, and therefore less.

But of course this isn't really Miley Cyrus' fault. There will always be deranged people willing to behave in lunatic fashion in public. The problem is that the... oh, they've called themselves The Gatekeepers before, haven't they? Let's use that word then. The Gatekeepers, the executives and flunkies who have made pop culture their lives, and therefore should be experts in such matters, are simply stupid and without taste or standards.

That Miley Cyrus wanted to perform analingus on a Teddy Bear does not have broader implications. There have always been flashers. There have always been pornographers.

What has a very broad implication is that MTV -- a unit of Viacom, which also owns CBS, once and nevermore called "The Tiffany Network" (update: Nope, Viacom and CBS split in 2006; thanks, BrokenNewsMikey) -- decided this would be a splashy, ratings-boosting bit of naughty fun for the Children of the World.

And make no mistake, adults do not watch MTV; children do. Tweeners. Even when MTV was "cool" -- it was never cool, by the way -- but even when it was new enough that kids thought it was "cool," they learned, as they departed their tweener years and became older teenagers, that the channel was for kids and not for them. And they moved on to stuff that older kids and grown ups liked.

MTV can say "we've always had our critics." Indeed you have. Everyone 16 or older was a critic. Everyone 16 or older soon realized that when MTV called itself a "youth channel" they meant youths of 12 years old. No self-respecting 16 year old wants to be all ga-ga over something his 11 year old kid sister loves.

I wrote about this general, terrible trend over at Breitbart some time ago.

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President Daddy Issues Wants To Attack Syria In A Way That's "Just Muscular Enough Not To Get Mocked"?
— andy

You have got to be shitting me.

White House officials cautioned that Obama was still considering the options, but the administration appeared positioned to act quickly once he chooses a course. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said during a visit to Brunei that the Pentagon was prepared to strike targets in Syria and hinted that such a move could come within days.

Some experts said U.S. warships and submarines in the eastern Mediterranean could fire cruise missiles at Syrian targets as early as Thursday night, beginning a campaign that could last two or three nights. Obama leaves next Tuesday for a four day trip to Sweden and Russia, which strongly supports Assad's government, for the G-20 economic summit.

One U.S. official who has been briefed on the options on Syria said he believed the White House would seek a level of intensity "just muscular enough not to get mocked" but not so devastating that it would prompt a response from Syrian allies Iran and Russia.

This is how we plan military action now?

We've already thrown acting in our national self-interest out the window, apparently for "Because the French and the UN want us to do it For the Children™. Or Something." and now we follow on by walking the tightrope of shutting down lèse-majesté on the one hand and not pissing off Iran or Russia on the other? I'd love to see the formula for the exact number of cruise missiles required to execute this plan.

Smart Diplomacy really is a sight to behold, isn't it?

Posted by: andy at 08:22 AM | Comments (481)
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