Sadly, No!

Fareed Zakaria, while managing to make some valid points, offers a “question” so stupid it answers itself, and describes the alternate reality of the world he lives in. First things first:

George W. Bush is fond of describing himself as a “war president.” And he has made many decisions involving soldiers and battle. But does this make the description an appropriate one? For many people the answer is obvious. We’re engaged in conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, after all. But Bill Clinton initiated hostilities in the Balkans twice, George H.W. Bush invaded Panama and Iraq, and neither president ever described himself as a “war president.”

Someone else can handle Clinton, but as far as 41 is concerned: maybe the reason he didn’t describe himself as a war president, or isn’t thought of as one, is that the invasion of Panama lasted a few weeks, and that the invasion [!] of Iraq in 1991 lasted 15 minutes.* Does that really seem so hard to figure out?

The best, however, is this:

By any of these criteria, we are not at war. At some level, we all know it. [Emphasis added]

No, we don’t. Zakaria does, I do, our readers do, but all it takes on the internets is 30 seconds to see that “we” don’t know that:

[Kathryn Jean Lopez]
McCain may not rally a trial, but there’s there there that could plausible be commander-in-chief of a nation at war (really, we are, remember? It’s not just over there.)

Say, and believe, what you want about Bush, the NR crowd, the right-wing blogs we link to, the 30% of the population that still supports Bush, etc…: The War on Terrah is a war they believe in.

* I keed, I keed. But 100 hours of ground war doesn’t amount to a whole lot. Zakaria’s formulation is especially unfortunate, to put it kindly, given that:

The rebellions were encouraged on 2 February 1991 by a broadcast on CIA run radio station The Voice of Free Iraq broadcasting out of Saudi Arabia. The Arabic service of the Voice of America supported the uprising by stating that the rebellion was large and that they soon would be liberated from Hussein.

K-Lo link via Roy.

Shorter Selwyn Duke:

Judgmentally Impaired Should Get Off Michael Savage’s Back

• Liberals have criticized conservative radio host Michael Savage for saying that childhood autism is “[a] fraud and a racket,” and telling autistic children, “Don’t act like a moron. You’ll get nowhere in life. Stop acting like a putz. Straighten up. Act like a man. Don’t sit there crying and screaming, idiot.” However, it is clear that Savage was merely expressing his deep compassion for the mentally ill.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

Surprise, surprise! Mark A. Kleiman still doesn’t understand the difference between civility and decency.

McMegan Mc2x4, a horrible, indecent person, approvingly quotes this riff (about PZ Myers’s sacriliciously awesome agitprop) by her long-time pal, Kleiman:

It’s hard for non-believers in the doctrine of Transubstantiation to grasp the emotional impact on believers of mistreating the consecrated wine and wafer, just because the doctrine itself seems so impenetrable: unlike the corpse-and-gravesite examples, you can’t just imagine that it was your own mother’s corpse or gravesite. But “hard” shouldn’t mean “impossible.”

Naturally, PZ Myers is being a jerk about it, begging someone to steal him a consecrated wafer so he can desecrate it on camera. For someone who loves calling the dearly-held beliefs of other people “childish,” Myers has an astonishing capacity for infantile behavior.

Equally predictably, Bill Donohue of the Catholic League is being an equal and opposite jerk, trying to get the University of Minnesota, where Myers teaches, involved in the controversy.

Myers and Donohue deserve each other, but what did the rest of us do to deserve either of them?

Some things never change: Kleiman is still clueless. Of course we’ve been through all this before, and I only return to the topic to make the point of principle. Kleiman will tolerate any amount of indecency so long as it’s ‘civilly’ presented. This of course has things completely backwards.

McArdle, a truly awful human being, is nonetheless a worthy personage in Kleiman’s moral heirarchy. Because, see, she is ‘civil,’ and therefore — no matter her sociopathic tendencies and Randroid ideology (but I repeat myself) — is subject to Kleiman’s masterly powers of argument and persuasion. Meanwhile, Myers, who is uncivil but thoroughly decent, and whose position is intractable, is deemed morally equivalent to Bill Donohue (who is uncivil and being indecent, by trying to shut Myers up), and both rank way below various literally psychopathic wingnuts with whom Kleiman likes to engage in cheery, G-rated dialogue.

So let’s take cumulative score of this episode and the previous ones. Since Myers threatens to disrespect a communion wafer, Kleiman has washed his hands of Myers, consigning him to the ash can of incivility. Meanwhile, the following people who’ve advocated violence against human beings, are still, for Kleiman, worthy of respect: McArdle (pro-2x4s-upside-peaceful-protesters’-heads), Eugene Volokh (pro-torture), Glenn Reynolds (pro-assassination, pro-genocide). Blargh. Obviously then, to uncivilly make the decent point: Mark A. Kleiman is a moral cretin and, as it were, a total fucking pukeface asshelmet fucktardious shitsicle.

Gavin adds: Every time I’m up for a really great job, someone does a ‘green slimy goat balls’ post, and I’m like, “Aaaaagh! It’s not always like that around here, I swear to God!” And then I go back to rattling my tin cup on the streets of Boston.

But I have matured now, and I hereby give up and accept my fate.

Ink-Stained Wretchedness

• The reason the U.S. economy is in the toilet is that David Beckham and Amy Winehouse have too many tattoos.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

Somebody needs to say something about a certain slow-motion trainwreck taking place over at (ahem ahem), but after my somewhat overheated Powerline post below, I’m out of neologisms and odd visual metaphors.

I will say, however, that KERNERS ARE GO!!!

ATLAS EXCLUSIVE: FINAL REPORT ON OBAMA BIRTH CERTIFICATE FORGERY CHANGE YOU CAN BELIEVE IN

Techdude delivers a final report that exceeds my wildest expectations. It is irrefutable, empirical evidence – Obama’s birth certificate is a forgery. Why? Why a COLB (certificate of live birth) forgery? That is the question.

My deepest thanks and appreciation for Techdude’s unwavering commitment to the truth despite the threats and harassment, the slashed tires and the dead animal on his porch.

Insofar as “techdude’s” credentials, he is an active member of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, American College of Forensic Examiners, The International Society of Forensic Computer Examiners, International Information Systems Forensics Association – the list goes on. He also a board certified as a forensic computer examiner, a certificated legal investigator, and a licensed private investigator. He has been performing computer based forensic investigations since 1993 (although back then it did not even have a formal name yet) and he has performed countless investigations since then.

Here is his analysis:

It must be calculated that the odds of this being a gobsmackingly epic fail, with scandal, squabbling, and recriminations echoing into the distance, exceed one million percent.

Obama’s Birth Certificate – CHANGE you can believe in.

I have decided to leave out the low level technicalities and the how-to section of this report due to a lack of time and more importantly I want to get the facts out as quickly as possible. As some of you may or may not know some asshat decided to track me down and vandalize my car and hang a dead mutilated rabbit from my front door in a lame attempt to intimidate me from proceeding with releasing any details of my analysis. They did succeed in delaying the report by a few days but instead of deterring me they just really pissed me off. To their credit, if I had not taken a few days off from the analysis I would have missed the most damning piece of evidence – the remnants of the previous security border. So to the demented retard who slaughtered an animal to make a point – f*ck you and thank you. And because of the amazing number of violent psychopaths who seem to be drawn to this issue, I am not going to use or supply any details that can be used to identify the owners of the COLBS used in the analysis except for those which have already been publicly disclosed. If the owners want to come forward on their own that is entirely their decision. Now let’s get to the summarized report.

Next up on the Art Bell Show, a former MK-ULTRA assassin and Navy SEAL takes his life in his hands and blows the lid off a top-secret Bilderberg Group plan to kidnap Lyndon LaRouche.

Update: Odds rise to nearly two million percent.

ABOVE: One of the reasons the show isn’t called ‘Informed Sources’

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Amidst the torrent of busted kites, unstrung tennis rackets, mateless galoshes, and shoeboxes full of once-interesting stones cascading out of Powerline in the past day is the following typical statement — which they will never in a million years correct, because if they were to set such a precedent, they would have to correct every stupid and wrong thing they say (i.e., erase their entire six-year oeuvre, post by post and word for word, and then evaporate, leaving nothing but a staring white page and a note in tiny-faced MS Comic saying, “Powerline: Time Magazine’s 2004 Blog of the Year”):

“Misunderstood and mistranslated”

Some have made much of an alleged statement by Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki to the effect that he agreed with Barack Obama that U.S. troops should withdraw from Iraq on a 16 month timetable. The statement appears in an interview Maliki gave to the German magazine Der Spiegel.

However, a spokesman for Maliki has said that the Prime Minister’s remarks “were misunderstood, mistranslated and not conveyed accurately.” The spokesman explained that the possibility of troop withdrawal was based on the continued improvement of security.

Also bla, and bla, and oh yes, yatter-yatter and bla:

This is the position of the White House as set forth following a meeting last week between Maliki and President Bush. It is also the position of John McCain. Obama’s position (to the extent he has a consistent one) is different. He favors withdrawal pursuant to a timetable without regard to whether security continues to improve, though he might be willing to push back the exit date a bit.

As Max Boot explains, Maliki’s nebulous call for a “time horizon” for our departure, made by a politician attempting to navigate his way through Iraqi politics, is not the same thing as a call for the U.S. to be out of Iraq in 16 months, give or take, regardless of the situation on the ground. Nor is it the same thing as a call for the U.S. to begin effectuating such a pull-out.

Say, how about some nice, delicious coconut creme bla?

JOHN adds: It also appears that Der Spiegel has published two different versions of the Maliki interview. In the first one, the exchange went like this:

SPIEGEL: Would you hazard a prediction as to when most of the US troops will finally leave Iraq?

Maliki: As soon as possible, as far as we’re concerned. US presidential candidate Barack Obama is right when he talks about 16 months. Assuming that positive developments continue, this is about the same time period that corresponds to our wishes.

Spiegel apparently dropped that key qualifier from its Maliki quote after it was first published. Spiegel is a pretty hard-core left-wing publication, and its attitude toward our election is summed up pretty well on the cover its current issue, featuring the “Superstar” Barack Obama:

Meanwhile, amidst the fascinating… Oh wait, who ordered the double-super bla-ppuccino?

This is sort of a teapot tempest, I think. It’s easy to understand why Maliki wants to be seen as pressing for the departure of U.S. troops, now that things are going well. Further, it’s entirely reasonable for the Bush administration to be talking to Iraq’s government about a plan for withdrawing American troops. In fact, it would be rather absurd, given the progress now being made, not to do so. But there is an important difference between setting an arbitrary deadline for ridding ourselves of Iraq (or vice versa) regardless of conditions there, and…

But hold on, they’re almost done:

…and drawing down troops–as everyone wants to do–as it becomes possible to do so because we have won.

The even more important point is that Obama has been demanding a more or less immediate withdrawal from Iraq since at least October 2005. If his counsel had been followed then, or at any time up to the present, the results would have been disastrous. It is only because Obama’s defeatist position did not prevail, and the administration instead implemented the opposite strategy as urged by John McCain, that it is now reasonable to talk about withdrawing most or all troops by late 2009.

Meanwhile, we shockingly and joltingly find that they are just yakkity-yakking about the usual Republican yakkity-bla which they oorgle and yarble about to such uncorrected extent, year after year, with nobody ever taking a big paintbrush and painting their extremely wrong blog with a big ‘They Are Wrong,’ so that reasonable people can happen by and not be fooled by the fusty-crusty chatter which is all they have ever produced in their entire silly, useless public lives of yobbity-yobbing and hummana-hummaning — i.e., tirelessly pointing out with every yawp of breath in their lungs, while wearing ties and respectable-looking jackets, that a titanically compromised administration or Republican Party source said X, and that dumb crap is therefore true, and clear thinking and good information is therefore false. For look out, here we are again:

Iraqi Leader Meets Obama, Calls For U.S. Troops Out by end of 2010
By Nancy A. Youssef and Nicholas Spangler | McClatchy Newspapers

BAGHDAD — After talks with Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on Monday, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki reaffirmed that Iraq wants U.S. combat troops to withdraw from Iraq by the end of 2010, a few months later than Obama had proposed.

[…]

“Barak Obama showed his support to this government,” Dabbagh said. “He came to listen to our views and the views of the prime minister. And the prime minister gave him his point of view about the presence of U.S. forces and . . . what we want from the forces.”

“We had a very constructive discussion,” Obama said upon leaving the meeting at the prime minister’s private residence in Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone.

Dear Powerline, We will cover for you if you ever wish to escape the pressures of celebrity and live again as humans, with evenings and weekends and grassy barbecues with dogs catching Frisbees, etc. LET US KNOW.

ABOVE: Andrew Breitbart (left)

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It seems like it was just yesterday that Andrew Breitbart was over at the Moonie Times lamenting that the liberals in Hollywood were using their car keys to scratch the Beemers and Bugatis of Mel Gibson and all the other Hollywood conservatives who, for fear of further car damage, now stay locked up in their homes in Brentwood, occasionally calling Breitbart to detail another indignity visited on them by Hollywood liberals. Yards tee-pee’d. Invitations to gay weddings maliciously stuffed in their mailboxes. Gay teenagers driving by their homes and yelling “Breeder” at them.

Well, he’s baaaack. Today’s column from Breitbart at the Moonie Times proposes perhaps the dumbest idea since France parked its entire Navy in the Bay of Aboukir while Napoleon took a tour of the pyramids. That idea — are you ready? — is affirmative action for young Republicans in Hollywood.

Surely there’s an affirmative-action program that can put Republicans to work in the entertainment industry at ratios similar to our numbers in the general population.

I think that program is called Fox News.

Or how about a “Fairness Doctrine” that extends beyond talk radio to TV, film and music?

But, which, of course, wouldn’t apply to Fox, because it’s already fair and balanced enough.

If we encouraged our young to consider careers in the arts, … we’d have a new generation of players pushing their scripts – and truth be told, their reality-show gimmicks – through the development process right now. The College Republicans, Young America’s Foundation and the Leadership Institute, not to mention countless alternative campus newspapers, all exude a rebel spirit that greatly resembles the motivations and enthusiasms of the liberal counterculture of the ’60s and ’70s.

Film and television scripts from College Republicans: imagine the excitement and box office success that these ventures would engender. Consider some of the possibilities:

What about a historical pageant about how manly men overcome an effeminate gay prince. You could even have the effeminate gay prince’s effeminate gay boyfriend defenestrated by the king! Two thumbs up! Oops. Been there, done that.

Or a television show about how all the Arabs are conspiring to blow us up with nukes. Been done. Twice in fact.

Or a made-for-TV movie about how 9-11 was all Clinton’s fault. That too?

Dimbart not only wants the CRs to write the new scripts for Hollywood, but he wants returning war vets to be hired for actors:

There are tons of low-level jobs that lead to greater opportunities for industrious young adults. Our armed forces coming home from Afghanistan and Iraq provide us with a source to replenish the Hollywood creative bloodstream, too. Soldiers should vie for leading roles – especially with all those Laguna Beach swimming-trunk-laden shows.

At least the soldiers who returned with all their limbs could vie for those swimming-trunk parts.

Shorter Tom Kovach:

California’s ‘Quake Crescent’

• My predictions were fulfilled last Thursday when, according to US Geologic Survey data, God caused a series of California earthquakes in a Muslim crescent shape — only upside-down and backwards — with (I told you so) the camp of an elite Mesopotamian-demon-worshipping cult at the ‘star.’

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

Also see:

California: Still Bakin’, Soon Shakin’

O-Bonics, And Other Lessons

Michelle Malkin Presents: The Crescent… The Crescent… The Crescent…

A Third Version of Maliki’s Remarks

• These straws are a lot harder to grasp at than they were a few years ago.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

UPDATE: MORE KERNERS!!!! MY KINGDOM FOR MORE KERNERS!!! ON THE DOUBLE, PEOPLE!!!!

After talks with Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on Monday, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki reaffirmed that Iraq wants U.S. combat troops to withdraw from Iraq by the end of 2010, a few months later than Obama had proposed.

Ali Dabbagh, the prime minister’s spokesman, said Maliki and Obama didn’t discuss specifics during the hour-long meeting. But he said the Iraqi government would like to see all American combat troops out of the country by the end of 2010, a bit later than Obama’s proposal to draw down all combat brigades within 16 months after he’d become president.

“Barak Obama showed his support to this government,” Dabbagh said. “He came to listen to our views and the views of the prime minister. And the prime minister gave him his point of view about the presence of U.S. forces and . . . what we want from the forces.”

UPDATE II: Shorter Andy McCarthy:

Re: Maliki’s “Inartful” Statement

• We’ve spent more than 4,000 lives to empower a government in Iraq that has long-standing ties to Iran and Syria, that has has expressed support for Hezbollah and that has given no credit to or thanks for the efforts and sacrifices of the United States and our armed forces, much less the surge. God, this war has been awesome!

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

Shorter Daniel “Crack” Pipes:

Above: Ming the… Humanitarian?

‘Will Washington Betray Anti-Regime Iranians?’

• Now’s the time to remember our pledge to uphold the Geneva Conventions and various subsequent conventions on outlawing the use of torture, if only to protect the terrorist MEK, because doing so will have the effect of a giant middle finger in Iran’s face.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

Additional points:

• I too hope that the MEK is afforded protection from Iran. But then the decision should be made by the government of Iraq, which Pipes (refreshingly, for a neoconman) doesn’t even pretend is sovereign.

• Pipes is, shall we say, an inconsistent friend of the Geneva Conventions and international law. Elsewhere, Pipes has advocated sticking American Muslims in concentration camps. He’s also recommended that Israel collectively punish the Palestinians by razing their villages. And, of course, he was for the illegal Iraq War (for humanitarian reasons, natch), which would be some evidence of a high-minded ideals-above-law mindset had he not before advocated that the United States strengthen ties to Iraq at the same time Saddam was gassing the Kurds.