Sadly, No!

I think this one’s even better than “Should Bush Bomb Iran? Vote Now!”

I wonder if gay couples are eligible to win.

Adam Nagourney must have been a hall monitor in high school or something. I’ve never seen any professional journalist suck up more to the powers-that-be:

Republicans seized on the arrests of terrorism suspects in Britain yesterday to bolster a White House campaign to turn national security issues to their advantage this fall, arguing that the nation needs tough Republican policies to protect Americans from threats from abroad.

It’s funny how arrests in Britain are somehow a vindication of the GOP’s war in Iraq. AdNags never bothers explaining how this fun little piece of logic works. The best part is at the end, though (my emphasis):

A senior White House official on Air Force One, speaking on the condition of anonymity, dismissed the notion that there was anything wrong with these kinds of issues being mixed up in a political campaign.

“The issue is going to be discussed in the fall,� this official said. “Are you saying if the Democrats talk about the war, we shouldn’t? We will talk about the war, and we will talk about the consequences of the policies advocated by the Democrats.�

Gotta love it when journalists unwittingly use anonymous quotes to distribute GOP talking points! Nice work, AdNags! You loser.

“Please, Mr. Rove, don’t flush my head down
the toilet again! I’ll do anything you say!”

“A three-hour wait at the airport is its own form of terrorism.”

-Tucker Carlson, just now.

Incidentally, Democrats, do you guys have a message to give the public about how you’d make them safer? Y’all might wanna get on that. The White House is gonna hump this story for all it’s worth.

UPDATE: Ooop, ask and ye shall receive:

“The 9/11 Commission recommended improving security screening to detect explosives at the checkpoint four years ago. And knowing of al Qadea’s affinity for repeating patterns like this, we have had ample reason to screen for these threats. It’s time for a new direction in homeland security which includes next generation technologies at our airport screening checkpoints that detect liquid explosives and plastic explosives.

“It’s also time to assess how much progress we’ve made in the war on terrorism. With resources diverted to an ongoing civil war in Iraq, Osama bin Laden still at large, a nuclear arms race in Iran and North Korea, the Taliban regaining strength in Afghanistan and escalating violence in the Middle East, are we safer than we were five years ago?”

Not bad. I’d like to hear what some of our finer wonks think about this.

Knock-knock. Who’s there? It’s Watertiger.

Yep, GOP.com grabbed a picture of Howard Dean and ineptly Photoshopped a little Hitler moustache onto him, in an assemblage of ‘Defeat-ocrats.’

Achoo!

(The Shaolin are coming with many men. Their Kung Fu is excellent.)

K-Dru says that he didn’t have time to read this morning’s David Brooks column, but he imagines it must have been really bad based on the reaction he’s seen in the blogosphere.

Well, Kev, you’re in luck because I did read it and can provide you with a, shall we say, shorter summary.

Ready? And a-one, and a-two, and a-one-two-three…

Shorter David Brooks: “Third parties are always doomed to fail, but I should at least pay lip service to the idea so I’ll feel less guilty for supporting the GOP when they nominate Judge Roy Moore for Prez in 2008.”

Woop-woop, terror alert.

Code Red: Security Level at Highest Point

The U.S. homeland security level is at the highest “code red” level for the first time.

It was raised during the night Thursday for flights from Britain to this country, because of a reported plot to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight.

British Home Secretary John Reid says terrorists planned to kill people, by smuggling explosives in hand luggage aboard a flight from London’s Heathrow Airport to the U.S. Heathrow is now closed for most European flights.

The Department of Homeland Security is banning all liquids aboard U.S. flights until further notice.

Banning of liquids only (repeat) only in effect for air travel. All conservative commentators are hereby instructed to switch to Code Red.

Additionally, a condition of Crunchy-Twisted is in effect.

Stay tuned for further instructions…

Travis adds: This is more of a suggestion than instructions, but you could throw a dance party:

Basement Jaxx – ‘Red Alert’

Or you could just rock out if things calm down a little:

The Briefs – ‘Orange Alert’

Knock down the old gray wall, be a part of it all.

Shorter Austin Bay: It’s entirely possible to view the recent uptick in worldwide warmongering as a positive development. Just close your eyes and think of freedom…

Shorter Michael Medved: Anti-Semites merely hate the player, and his God-given game.

Shorter Rusty Shackleford: I’m perfectly willing to dismiss photographs of dead children on a technicality.

Shorter John Stossel: The marketplace is the safest, most efficient laboratory for new products. And I’ve got some industry-backed research to prove it.

Shorter Kathleen Parker: We would be foolish to dismiss conservative bloggers’ questions about press coverage of Lebanon because, in some ways, their questions are more interesting than the answers.

Shorter Walter Williams: If you give a man $7.25 an hour, he can eat for a day. But if you teach every single man to earn a million dollars a year, eventually the rising tide will lift an ocean full of million-dollar yachts.

Shorter Tony Blankley: We can attempt to win the hearts and minds of our Muslim foes once we’ve substantially reduced their number.

Shorter Thomas Sowell: The so-called experts should report any and all skepticism about their theories. Since they sometimes don’t, their information is not at all credible and you may choose to believe whomever you wish.

Shorter Michelle Malkin: The dhimmi media have been caught doctoring photos and have printed some staged shots. Therefore, any information they report is not at all credible and you may choose to believe whomever you wish.

Shorter Linda Chavez: I can think of at least one form of art that I’d like to see banned.

Shorter Paul Greenberg: A president should be able to express his disagreement with certain laws by issuing hundreds of signing statements. After all, that’s what freedom of speech is for!

Shorter Terence Jeffrey: President Bush and Congress should roll back the Clinton-era policies that make it easy for bureaucrats to spend money on laptops and home brewing kits.

Shorter Ben Shapiro: The truth? I can’t handle the truth.

Shorter Brent Bozell III: To atone for his drunken anti-Semitic outburst, Mel Gibson should launch an assault against the cosmopolitan forces amassed against Christianity.

Shorter Jacob Sullum: As a libertarian, I oppose laws that restrict assisted suicide.

Shorter Rebecca Hagelin: A Washington Post headline got me thinking about the immoral entertainment options crammed down our teens’ throats.

Shorter William F. Buckley: Recent news reports have got me thinking about my good friend, Brooke Astor, who also lives in my building.

Shorter Maggie Gallagher: Why don’t poor, uneducated men want to get married?

Shorter Roger Schlesinger: Eliminate your debt. Ask me how!

Shorter Rich Lowry: In some broader historical sense, I suppose one could blame urban violent crime on whitey.

I dunno if many of our regulars click through my set of links over there [points], the name of which, ‘Retardo Roll’ belies those sites’ quality. No, it is not a collection of mentally-challenged tubes of TP; it is, rather, a collection of mostly underappreciated (Blog King Atrios is an exception, of course) of mostly political bloggers (Fagistan and SavageMinds being exceptions as they blog overwhelmingly about literature and anthropology, respectively), one of whom is the criminally-overlooked James R. MacLean.

Take his post here, for instance, on the History of Hamas (and so much more). Excerpt:

..[T]he Washington community that favored a permanent global role for the USA would essentially engulf the polity of the Jewish state. The practice of unlimited support for Israel’s expansionism allowed a deviant faction in that country’s politics to capture the state; the one guarantee for survival was not peace, but collusion with a superpower. Rather than Israel controlling the West, as some demagogues would have it, a small group of empire builders have exploited the USA and Israel; neither country has serious democratic accountability for its foreign policy, and both were sucked in by the path of least resistance. Instead of agreeing (through messy, democratic processes) on a general vision of the future, both countries have been seduced into the day-to-day coping strategy of doing what they’ve done before, attacking reformers as unsympathetic or even traitors, and defending useless carnage as “self-defense.”

Read the rest of this entry »

What?

You aren’t sure? Maybe? C’mon, they’re cheap and everybody who is anybody among wingnuts is getting his own.

So how about it uh — Mr. Derbyshire, is it? Could you speak up?

I only wonder — as of course I would — if Stanley is gloomy enough. There is a nightmare here, lurking just out of sight behind all the thoughts and articles of the gloomy-cons. The nightmare is so appalling to any civilized person I cannot bring myself to mention it. I’ll just call it the g-word. Us or them. Please may it not come to that. I need a cup of coffee.

Sounds like you’re having doubts — or are you? What? Coupons?! You have to be kidding me.

Since Slightly-More Smokegate hit the major media, the talking bowling pins of the right-blogowhatsis have been obsessed with fake photos. Every single solitary photo of the bombing of Lebanon must have been faked by the liberal, terrorist-supporting MSM…somehow or another.

Body Shop Bombed?

This is just surreal:

The caption reads:

Lebanese civil defense rescuers, try to remove two blanket-wrapped bodies, found trapped under debris and concrete of the destroyed buildings, attacked late Monday by Israeli airstrike, in the southern Beirut suburb of Chiah, Lebanon, Tuesday Aug. 8, 2006. The raid on the Muslim southern suburb next to a Christian neighborhood killed at least 15 people, police officials said. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

The bodies were found already wrapped in blankets under the debris of the building.

I’m trying to think of rational reasons that Lebanese would keep pre-packaged corpses in their homes, and I’m coming up with nothing. Nada. Zip.

One irrational explanation is that some bodies are being saved by Hezbollah to use in photo ops at a later date, and that the Hezbollah Body Shop (for lack of a better term) got hit, and buried those that should already have been buried.

Um, one rational explanation is that, um, the caption says that the bodies were found trapped under debris, and also that the bodies were wrapped in blankets, but does not, er, in any way specify that they were already, um, wrapped in blankets when they were found trapped under debris.

Or wait, try it this way. This photo shows a cheeseburger with lettuce and tomato that I made on the grill and ate for lunch:

Confederate Yankee: “I’m trying to think of a rational explanation for how someone could put an object made of beef, lettuce, tomatoes, cheese, and a bun on a grill, yet somehow only the beef shows signs of frying. I’m coming up with nothing. Also, how is it possible to take a picture of a cheeseburger that is already eaten?”

There’s a Claremont fellowship in store for Mr. Yankee, no foolin’.