Debate Blogging

Kerry just said that he's heard that we are planning long-term bases in Iraq and that this is wrong. Bush butchered the answer. the answer should have been:

Senator Kerry is wrong. We currently have bases in Germany & Japan that have been crucial to our national security. They have been there since we defeated those nations in 1945, which in Germany's case toook seven years. We have been involved in security issues in the Mid-East since Iranian students took hostages for 444 days starting in 1979. we do not have enough bases in the Persian Gulf region and we always need forward strategic bases to react to critical situations and to protect our interests.

Freudian Slip

Jim Lehrer in the debate at approximately 2145 (9:45) and I paraphrase:

Was the war in Iraq worth 10,057...er...1,057 lives?

Bias?

Scary

My former city is in the midst of a scary situation:

A man arrested by U.S. authorities in Iraq had a computer disk in his possession containing a public report downloaded from a U.S. Department of Education Web site on crisis planning in school districts, including San Diego Unified.
The man was described as an Iraqi national with connections to terrorism and the insurgency that is fighting U.S. forces in Iraq. Officials in San Diego said the man's intentions were unknown.
San Diego law enforcement officials said there was no indication of any terrorist plot against schools in San Diego or elsewhere in the country. They did not publicly release the information because there appeared to be no threat. The information was relayed to the San Diego FBI office last week and then to the school district Friday.

San Diego is the most military-inhabited town in America. Think about that.

Ouch

Mark Steyn puts the wood to my church:

I was reading a news item in the Guardian the other day. Didn't get very far. This was the first sentence: "The Church of England said yesterday that police counter-terrorism operations were directed disproportionately against Muslims and risked alienating them."
At that point, I fell off the chair, howling with laughter. Not because of the strikingly non-ecumenical character of the infanticidal thugs at Beslan, the bombers of the Australian embassy in Jakarta, the murderers of the 12 Nepalese workers, the terrorist suspects arrested in north London on Friday, or the beheaders of two American hostages and impending beheader of a third British one.
No, what's hilarious about the C of E's intervention is that it felt the need to make it.
Look forward to, say, 2020. Can anyone doubt that there'll be far more practising Muslims in Britain? And, by the same token, that there'll be far fewer practising Anglicans?
There will be more mosques, full of lively young men, and fewer C of E churches, with the surviving ones catering to a dwindling band of tribal Anglicans, enough to pepper a pew or two but too old and frail to man a full-service church.
I say "tribal Anglicans", because anybody in Britain who gives serious thought to the Christian message will be either a Catholic or evangelical Protestant.

My church is in a serious schism and has been for several years. Unfortunately it's because of homosexual issues which should not divide any theological body.

Hitting Zarqawi

Our military is going hard after Zarqawi and his followers:

FALLUJA, Iraq - U.S. forces launched a "precision strike" on Thursday on a building in Falluja said to be used by fighters loyal to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and Iraqi doctors said at least three people were killed. "Several intelligence sources reported that Zarqawi terrorists were using the safehouse at the time of the strike to plan attacks against Iraqi citizens and Multinational Forces," the U.S. military said in a statement.

Spin, Spin, Spin

In Kos' world, anything can be spun:

Gallup: Kerry leads Ohio, PA; Bush leads Florida

Let's look a little deeper into this. Among likely voters, Bush is leading in all three (and gained in two of three). In the category of registered voters Kerry does indeed lead in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

This is spin in excess. The usual reference for leading an election is likely voters not registered voters. Kos, as usual, is reaching.

No Wonder Timberlake Dumped Her

How much of an idiot is Cameron Diaz? I fear we have yet to find out:

On Oprah's Wednesday 'voting party' show featuring important celebrities like P. Diddy (Vote or Die!), Drew Barrymore and Christina Aguilera, svelte suffragette Cameron Diaz took to shock tactics to get the female vote out. After a discussion with Oprah on lynching and the vote, Diaz spoke of the dire consequences for women if they sit out this election: Ms. DIAZ: We have a voice now, and we're not using it, and women have so much to lose. I mean, we could lose the right to our bodies. We could lo--if you think that rape should be legal, then don't vote. But if you think that you have a right to your body, and you have a right to say what happens to you and fight off that danger of losing that, then you should vote, and those are the... WINFREY: It's your voice. Ms. DIAZ: It's your voice. It's your voice, that's your right.

Emphasis mine. Rape being legal? Didn't we not just free a nation where rape was used as a tool of terror? Was rape not used as a matter of course by Uday? Give me a break. Although I did not see this interview, it appears as though Oprah did not rebut her on that poor choice of words.

Get Well Mr. Blair

One of our greatest allies is having some serious health problems:

Tony Blair is to be admitted to hospital on Friday for a procedure to correct an irregular heartbeat.
The prime minister will be under local anaesthetic for the process to treat the "flutters" from which he suffered last year and which have reoccurred.
In an interview with the BBC, Mr Blair said he still intended to serve a full third term in office if elected.
But he told BBC political editor Andrew Marr he had no intention of serving a fourth term.

Say a prayer for Tony Blair if you are so inclined.

Lileks

James holds a man up (sorry, a Newsman/Reporter with a notebook and all) and Tim Blair whacks the shit out of him.

Oh, That Liberal Media

What's really happening in Iraq? Our soldiers and Marines can tell you:

''The Najaf shrine — HUNDREDS of dead women and children were brought out after Sadr left,'' Rose wrote. ''They (Sadr's supporters) rounded them up during the battle and brought them in to be executed. Why? Because they anticipated the Americans would eventually enter the shrine and walk into a media ambush. We never went in. The people of Najaf love us right now because of that. They hate Sadr and want him dead.
''Have you heard that one yet (in the media)?''
No we haven't. We just get one side. That's bad journalism — by a news media acting in concert with Kerry.

I imagine that's the case in the majority of Iraq but we just aren't hearing it.

Bush Is "Scaring" America

John Kerry, in the midst of his "wooing the Security Mom" tour, got tripped (scroll down) up:

Tonight's debate is probably the last chance John Kerry will have to persuade Americans that he is capable of leading the country during wartime. His supporters must be hoping against hope that what he says tonight will be more coherent than what he's been saying since he started campaigning--up to and including this morning. ABC News reports on part of an interview with Diane Sawyer that aired today on "Good Morning America":
When asked why polls show Bush gaining support among women voters, Kerry said the president has been scaring America.
"He's talking terror every day and people see terrible images of what's happening in the world, and they're real--people being beheaded, the acts of terror in that school in Russia," Kerry said. "I feel that as any mom in America does or any father. I mean, I'm a parent too."
So Kerry is criticizing Bush for "scaring America," while acknowledging that the things they fear are real? In a way it seems fitting that this debate comes 66 years to the day after then-Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain declared "peace for our time." As the BBC reported back then, "many MPs are bound to criticise it as part of the Prime Minister's 'appeasement' of German aggression in Europe." At least they knew where Chamberlain stood.

Security Moms will sure as hell be watching tonight and Kerry better have something better than that to say.

Factchecking Their Ass Before They Can Publish

Wizbang proved a story fraudulent before it was even published. Nice work, Dude.

Mugger

Russ Smith:

Lockhart, who must not have read the briefing that Kerry supposedly places immense value on the friendship of allies around the world, told the Los Angeles Times, "The last thing you want to be seen as is a puppet of the United States, and you can almost see the hand underneath the shirt today moving the lips." How strange. Listening to Democratic rhetoric, you wouldn't think George W. Bush, who after all has the i.q. of an exceptionally silly foie gras-producing goose, had the cunning to trick Allawi that way.
Dick Cheney takes a lot of heat from his superiors in the media—even though he's absolutely on target in saying the United States would be more vulnerable if Kerry's elected, God save the Union!—but he doesn't give a hoot. Unlike John-John Edwards, the unctuous Democratic vice presidential candidate who's in a rabbit hole now, trying to salvage his (2008) political career, Cheney knows his job in a campaign: kick a dog when it's down. His response to Kerry's slap at Allawi was typically succinct and brutal: "I must say I was appalled at the complete lack of respect Senator Kerry showed for this man of courage, when he rushed to hold a press conference and attack the Prime Minister, a man America must stand beside to defeat the terrorists."
Golly, I suppose the above isn't in the spirit of this "Best of Manhattan" issue. Last year, when I wrote a downbeat column—probably about the fraud called Paul Krugman—for New York Press' largest edition, my friend (and editor) Jeff Koyen later chastised me for being too churlish. Oh, brother. Like Koyen doesn't have the word NEGATIVITY etched across his forehead.
But I'm a sport.

Lockhart is, and always was, a wretched hack and Cheney rightfully hammered him. I can't wait to see Cheney and Edwards go toe-to-toe. Same BS as always, Edwards is a lawyer, and smart, and charismatic. Cheney by contrast is dull, partisan, and was on the board at Halliburton. Cheney will wipe the floor with that little North Carolina esquire.

Now as for the debate tomorrow, Kerry has alot to prove. He sounded downright negative today when interviewed by Diane Sawyer (at least from the clips I've heard, I work). Bush in contrast looks and sounds relaxed, which is the reason he ingratiates himself to half the American people. W's campaign has done a great job of pounding Kerry for the better part of a month and a half and has obliterated any momentum he has. Tomorrow is much more crucial for JFK than W.

Another CBS Scandal

CBS is at it again.

Another Iranian Revolution?

The Website Project: Free Iran says that fighting has broken out in several cities:

Reports over the past 24 - 48 hours via several important information services such as SMCCDI, Peykeiran, Zagros and direct email reports and phone calls from Iranian citizens is beginning to shine light on what at this time looks to be country-wide fighting and quickly escalating into what could potentially become a freedom revolution. Several independent citizen sources have reported the formation of significant crowds throughout the country, and have heard many loud explosions and gun shots, including in the cities of Tehran, Esfahan, and Shiraz. SMCCDI and Peykeiran have both reported intense battles between freedom-loving Iranian citizens and the regime's fanatical militias in the village of Meeyan Do Ab. Both sources are reporting many deaths and injuries both to the villagers and regime's forces. In the past week and recent days, many regional commanders and leaders of the regime's militias have been targeted and killed along with many of their militiamen. Initial reports from Iranian online news sources as well as from western satellite news media are reporting intense fighting throughout Iran, and report that such fighting is increasing at a constant rate. On September 28th, SMCCDI reported that in Iran's main southern port of Bandar-Abbas located by the Hormoz Strait on the Persian Gulf, heavy fighting between Elite commandos of the Pasdaran Corp and Iranian residents who were protesting the regime's murder of three fishermen broke out. Angry residents attacked several public buildings as well as regime vehicles with incendiary devices. Reports also indicate that Bandar Abbas is the main commercial entry to Iran and its paralysis could help spark unprecedented chaos that would severely threaten and likely cause the fall of the Islamic Regime.

If this is true, we are well situated to aid any uprising with covert weapons supply and intelligence. Assisting from Iraq would be easier I suspect than from the west in Afghanistan, however Bandar al-Abbas is on the gulf and not far from Oman. I hope that we have some human intelligence inside or have contact with potential rebellion leaders.

Trust the UN?

Darfur, Nigeria, and now Haiti:

Nearby, a human vertebra stuck out of a pile of sludge topped by a tire, one of the unclaimed flood victims that residents buried because so many were rotting before officials ordered mass burials.
Officials say more than 1,500 people died in the storm and some 900 are missing, many of whom are presumed among dead. Most of the victims were in Gonaives, Haiti's third-largest city, where four-fifths of the 250,000 residents were left homeless.
The security chief for the U.N. stabilization mission in Haiti, John Harrison of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, visited Cassolet on Tuesday to scout for a safe place to distribute food.
Earlier, only about 40 people lined up for food at an aid center in another neighborhood where U.N. peacekeepers from Brazil had to shoot into the air Monday to control hundreds of people who rioted when they were prevented from looting the food.
"It's very difficult to get food. We come every day ... People are getting very frustrated," said Manette Jean, 31, one of the few people to show up Tuesday.

She said a piece of metal stuck in her foot when she was shoved and nearly trampled during a previous visit to a food distribution center, but that she had to come so she can feed her five children.

Where's France and Germany? The Haitians do speak Francais.

Another Week Another Lie

John Kerry is caught in another bit of truth bending:


CAPTAIN ED catches John Kerry in a whopper:
I mean, I was in Safwan. I went there when the signing of the armistice took place at the end of the war.
This statement, made during a 2001 interview on FOX News' O'Reilly Factor, apparently refers to the armistice ending Operation Desert Storm, which was signed in Safwan, Iraq on March 3, 1991.
Problem: John Kerry didn't visit Iraq until March 16, thirteen days after the event took place.

As I've said before, Kerry makes it entirely too easy to catch him. Just like Al Gore.

Questions I'd Like Asked But Won't Be

Thursday night is the first presidential debate moderated by the very capable Jim Lehrer. Jim has his choice of questions but I predict none will be too hard-hitting. The NY Sun suggests some here. I would ask the following:

For Bush:

Mr. President, Egypt receives over a billion dollars per annum from the US. They have not done nearly enough to restrict assistance to terrorist organizations such as Hamas. Would you consider reducing the yearly stipend we send them?

In the last four years, you have signed the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform Bill, you have signed into law the largest entitlement program in years with the Medicare prescription drug bill, and you've signed a massive education bill, which has put the country into a large deficit situation. Are there any major program spending increases you foresee in the next term?

With the price of oil at the highest level it's ever been, would you consider instituting CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards for cars sold in the US? Would you be willing to fight again for drilling for oil in ANWR?

For Kerry:

Senator Kerry, you have discredited out greatest allies as "coerced and bribed" and have said that you would convince other nations to join us in our Iraq effort. France and Germany have both said they would not change their Iraq policy if you were elected. What allies that are not currently with us would you bring on board and why would our current allies such as Britain, Australia, Italy, Bulgaria, and Poland chose to stay with the coalition after being discredited by you?

You have talked about President Bush's tax cuts and have said that you would offer a better middle-class tax cut. What would that cut be, would you rescind the Bush tax cut, and what is your definition of middle-class in annual salary?

More tomorrow.

Vote Early and Often

The WaPo has a blog election going on and Instapundit, LGF, and National Review-The Corner are up for numerous awards. They forgot the Best Collusion With CBS and The DNC blog; I'd vote for Josh Marshall for that one.

Blair On Leadership

Tony Blair had some inciteful things to say about leadership:

When I hear people say: "I want the old Tony Blair back, the one who cares", I tell you something.
I don't think as a human being, as a family man, I've changed at all.
But I have changed as a leader.
I have come to realise that caring in politics isn't really about "caring".
It's about doing what you think is right and sticking to it.
So I do not minimise whatever differences some of you have with me over Iraq and the only healing can come from understanding that the decision, whether agreed with or not, was taken because I believe, genuinely, Britain's future security depends on it.

There has been no third way, this time.

Change a word or two and that could be GW Bush saying that. Libs do not understand that if a decision is thought out and believed, a true leader sticks by that decision. I know that Kerry is "nuanced" and all that bullshit, but looking at Kerry's campaign and back through his Senate days, I'd say nuanced means that one is afraid to take or stay with a position.

Kid Rocks Sounds Off

Kid Rock takes Springsteen and the other Kerry pimps to task:

The rocker wowed troops when he and actress BRITTANY MURPHY jetted off to meet and greet soldiers in Baghdad last year (JUN03), and now he's angry that those who didn't salute men and women stationed in Iraq are touring to raise cash for President GEORGE W BUSH's rival JOHN KERRY on the VOTE FOR CHANGE tour.
He states, "You see this thing now where like BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN, JON BON JOVI - like I love all these guys as musicians - they're gonna raise money for John Kerry. God bless 'em.
"But, before you go and do that, why don't these motherf**kers go over there and play for our soldiers in Iraq? I'm not vocal about my views on the war. I'm just vocal about my views on the troops."
Rock, real name BOB RITCHIE, insists rockers have no right getting involved with politics.
He adds, "I do not believe that artists or actors and people should be out there like voicing their full-blown opinions on politics because, let's face it, at the end of the day, I'm not that smart of a guy. I play rock 'n' roll, that's what I do.
"Who would you trust to make your decisions, (US Secretary of Defence) DONALD RUMSFELD or the DIXIE CHICKS?"

Why won't they play for the troops, because they're pussies:

With international terrorism on everyone's mind, even the bravest rock stars are pulling out of concerts scheduled for particularly volatile parts of the world. Madonna recently skipped out on Israel (only to return there on a spiritual quest for Rosh Hashanah) and Alicia Keys scrapped a show in Indonesia. Now Alanis Morissette is following Keys' lead.
Alanis was supposed to treat fans in Jakarta, Indonesia to a show this Sunday (October 3), but after growing security fears, she's decided to stay at home. To be fair, Morissette's fears are somewhat justified — on September 3, the U.S. issued a travel advisory urging people to stay away from Indonesia because of terrorist threats. Six days later, a suicide bomber killed nine people outside of the Australian Embassy there.

Bravest rock stars my ass! These people are brave, they went into a war zone and played for our troops. Ted Nugent, Toby Keith, and to their credit Al Franken and Ben Affleck are appearing or have appeared.

The aforementioned Springsteen "gains enormous sustenance" from Maureen Dowd and Paul "Enron" Krugman and derides the bad, bad people at FOX:

Most of his criticism, however, is aimed at TV coverage, and he reveals that as "a dedicated" New York Times reader he has gained "enormous sustenance" from columnists Maureen Dowd and Paul Krugman.The problem, according to Springsteen, is that "Fox News and the Republican right have intimidated the press into an incredible self-consciousness about appearing objective and backed them into a corner of sorts where they have ceded some of their responsibility and righteous power." In this regard, he finds The Washington Post and The New York Times admitting mistakes in their initial reporting about Iraq "very revealing." Overall, while there has been some great reporting in the press, it has fallen far short, Springsteen tells Rolling Stone founder Jann S. Wenner: "Real news is the news we need to protect our freedoms. You get tabloid news, you get blood-and-guts news, you get news shot through with a self-glorifying façade of patriotism, but people have to sift too much for the news that we need to protect our freedoms....The loss of some of the soberness and seriousness of those institutions has had a devastating effect upon people's ability to respond to the events of the day." But Springsteen mainly aims barbs at cable news, mocking the "enormous amount of Fox impersonators among what you previously thought were relatively sane media outlets across the cable channels."

Sane as in "liberal" Bruce?

"Screw Them" Gets "Fisked"

Markos "screw them" Zuniga get's a serious beatdown for his Guardian article.

Liberal groups are fighting back, working to build a parallel infrastructure. My blog DailyKos.com receives 350-400,000 visits every day - double that of FoxNews.com and comparable to the Guardian's print run.
Not according to Site Meter, it doesn't. According to Site Meter, it gets 317,741 visits per day on average. Gee, Markos, would you like to talk for a bit about how this 20% exaggeration in your traffic figures is "grossly out of proportion to the alleged infraction?"
Daily Kos and other bloggers like Atrios, MyDD, TalkLeft, and Juan Cole have become a liberal counterweight to the mainstream media and the Rightwing Noise Machine. We don't have parity, but we're working on it.
Yay for the little guy! The little guy who … um … claims to have readership in excess of the Guardian's. Wait, what? I'm confused. Is Daily Kos this huge thing or a tiny grass-roots venture? You're having trouble getting your message out, Markos. Better start blaming it on the "right-wing noise machine."
We all hope to have an impact in 2004, but there's reality: conservatives have spent 30 years building their infrastructure. We can't be expected to counter that in one year. We do things with an eye to the future, all the while doing our best to spare our country (and the world) four more years of a Bush administration.

Via Allah.

We Must Never Forget

From my Father-In-Law. Thanks Dad.

Counting Every Death

As we saw a few weeks ago upon the sad event of the 1,000th US military death in Iraq, the MSM uncorked a flurry of stories concerning the unjust nature of the war. They were waiting for it and almost seemed excited by it. Here was a story that would take the Swifties off the A-section of the morning paper. The idea that the Dems are at the point that bad things in Iraq mean good things for Kerry is a supremely sad state of affairs that underscore the desperation the minority party now feels. Christopher Hitchens nails the despicable nature of this horrific way of thinking:

What will it take to convince these people that this is not a year, or a time, to be dicking around? Americans are patrolling a front line in Afghanistan, where it would be impossible with 10 times the troop strength to protect all potential voters on Oct. 9 from Taliban/al-Qaida murder and sabotage. We are invited to believe that these hard-pressed soldiers of ours take time off to keep Osama Bin Laden in a secret cave, ready to uncork him when they get a call from Karl Rove? For shame.
Ever since The New Yorker published a near-obituary piece for the Kerry campaign, in the form of an autopsy for the Robert Shrum style, there has been a salad of articles prematurely analyzing "what went wrong." This must be nasty for Democratic activists to read, and I say "nasty" because I hear the way they respond to it. A few pin a vague hope on the so-called "debates"—which are actually joint press conferences allowing no direct exchange between the candidates—but most are much more cynical. Some really bad news from Iraq, or perhaps Afghanistan, and/or a sudden collapse or crisis in the stock market, and Kerry might yet "turn things around." You have heard it, all right, and perhaps even said it. But you may not have appreciated how depraved are its implications. If you calculate that only a disaster of some kind can save your candidate, then you are in danger of harboring a subliminal need for bad news. And it will show. What else explains the amazingly crude and philistine remarks of that campaign genius Joe Lockhart, commenting on the visit of the new Iraqi prime minister and calling him a "puppet"? Here is the only regional leader who is even trying to hold an election, and he is greeted with an ungenerous sneer.
The unfortunately necessary corollary of this—that bad news for the American cause in wartime would be good for Kerry—is that good news would be bad for him. Thus, in Mrs. Kerry's brainless and witless offhand yet pregnant remark, we hear the sick thud of the other shoe dropping. How can the Democrats possibly have gotten themselves into a position where they even suspect that a victory for the Zarqawi or Bin Laden forces would in some way be welcome to them? Or that the capture or killing of Bin Laden would not be something to celebrate with a whole heart?
I think that this detail is very important because the Kerry camp often strives to give the impression that its difference with the president is one of degree but not of kind. Of course we all welcome the end of Taliban rule and even the departure of Saddam Hussein, but we can't remain silent about the way policy has been messed up and compromised and even lied about. I know what it's like to feel that way because it is the way I actually do feel. But I also know the difference when I see it, and I have known some of the liberal world quite well and for a long time, and there are quite obviously people close to the leadership of today's Democratic Party who do not at all hope that the battle goes well in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Exactly. I can't even imagine thinking that these good men and women died for nothing more than a few cheap votes for a man who slandered the memory of other good men 33 years ago. I know the left view would be that we shouldn't be there in the first place, a debate that is ongoing, but the simple fact is that our troops are there. They are fighting every day and trying to rebuild a country that has a shattered infrastructure and a deep-rooted wariness of government, not to mention long-held theological differences within the Muslim religion. These volunteers need to read the paper and know that we support them, regardless of our ideological slant, we should support what they are getting underpaid to do. The fact that the Kerry campaign seems to be wishing for either a terrorist attack at home (which I believe is also a wish of al-Qaeda), or major American casualties in Iraq is abhorrent.

Zawahri Not Captured

Al-Arabiya reported earlier that Ayman al-Zawahri, the second in command of al-Qaeda was captured in Pakistan. Alas he wasn't, but several other interesting things happened in Pakistan today.

Smacking Around The Times

The Times as a whole and Maureen Dowd in particular get rightfully thrashed.

Blair Is Back

Tim Blair is posting again after a sporting weekend.

Lovins' OK If You Don't Pay

The military is about to make it a punishable offense if our troops buy a hooker:


RHEIN-MAIN AIR BASE, Germany, Sept. 27 (UPI) -- U.S. troops stationed in Germany are upset over plans to change the Uniform Code of Military Justice to make paying for sex a punishable offense.
In Germany, unlike other areas of the world where U.S. troops are stationed, prostitution is legal and women who choose the world's oldest profession are taxed like any other workers. They also are given regular health checks.
Pfc. Marty Conyers of the 464th Replacement Detachment on Rhein-Main told the European edition of Stars & Stripes changing the UCMJ would be unfair to troops.
"It would be different if it were some third-world country that had no jobs and no opportunity, and women were forced into it," Army Sgt. Adam Z. Pastor said. "It's a little bit pushy to enforce that law here."

That's going against 200 years of military history.

War Blogging

Blogging from the front:

For Spc. Buzzell, it was grist for his online war diary, http://cbftw.blogspot.com, whose fans range from soccer moms and truck drivers to punk band leader Jello Biafra. Before the counter dropped off the site, he said he was getting 5,000 hits a day. Iraq war blogs are as varied as the soldiers who write them. Some sites feature practical news, pictures and advice. Some are overtly political, with more slanting to the right than the left. Some question the war, some cheer it. Spc. Buzzell and a handful of others write unvarnished war reporting. A few of these blogs have been shut down, and Spc. Buzzell, an infantryman in an Army Stryker brigade, says he was banned from missions for five days because of the blog and has stopped adding new narrative entries. For the folks back home, soldier blogs offer details of war that don't make it into most news dispatches: The smell of rotten milk lingering in a poor neighborhood. The shepherd boys standing at the foot of a guard tower yelling requests for toothbrushes and sweets. The giant camel spiders. The tedium of long walks to get anything from a shower to a meal. Smoke from a burning oil refinery a hundred miles away blocking the sun. A terrifying night raid surprised by armed enemies dressed in black. On the blogs, soldiers complain, commiserate and celebrate their victories and ingenuity.

Here's a list of numerous blogs with a military slant.

Pajama People Vs. Legacy Media

Joanne Jacobs has an article in todays Inquirer:

Bloggers are true to the journalism adage: "If your mother says she loves you, check it out." On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog. Nobody knows you're anything. So you have to prove you're worth reading and believing by providing links to your source material or to your credentials and by making sense.
If a blogger makes an error, readers will jump on it. Then the blogger writes: "Update: Thanks to reader Joe Blow for pointing out my mistake. Actually, the moon is made of green cheese, not blue cheese." The blogger then links to the green cheese source data, so readers can check it out for themselves. Or, the blogger might write: "Reader Mary Doe says the moon is made of moon rocks. Anybody have info on this?"
Bloggers don't claim to be perfect. They claim to correct mistakes quickly and openly.
As a journalist turned education blogger, I hope the blogosphere can help journalists rebuild trust, and do a better job, by reducing their isolation.
Journalists tend to be liberal Democrats from educated, middle-class families; few spend time with blue-collar workers, people in the military or people of religious faith.
Online, journalists can hang out with a larger, more diverse crowd. The pajama people include some rabid partisans and outright nuts, sure. But many of the bloggers I've met online are thoughtful, well-informed people worth listening to.
In the 21st century, access to information isn't the monopoly of people "who buy ink by the barrel," as Mark Twain wrote. Everybody's a player.

Here's a link to Joanne's education blog.

Atonement

At this moment, Jews are in the midst of atoning for the last years sins and contemplating their renewal. I hope the folks at this event did plenty of things they are atoning for today.

Leno

Jay Leno has some funny writers:

President Bush attended the opening of the Smithsonian’s American Indian museum in Washington, D.C. President Bush said he was proud of the history of the Indians and proud that the white man could come to this country to liberate them and bring them democracy.

This Is What The UN Is For?

David Brooks on Darfur and the UN (lack of) response:

We did everything basically right. The president was involved, the secretary of state was bold and clearheaded, the U.N. ambassador was eloquent, and the Congress was united. And, following the strictures of international law, we had the debate that, of course, is going to be the top priority while planes are bombing villages.
We had a discussion over whether the extermination of human beings in this instance is sufficiently concentrated to meet the technical definition of genocide. For if it is, then the "competent organs of the United Nations" may be called in to take appropriate action, and you know how fearsome the competent organs may be when they may indeed be called.
The United States said the killing in Darfur was indeed genocide, the Europeans weren't so sure, and the Arab League said definitely not, and hairs were split and legalisms were parsed, and the debate over how many corpses you can fit on the head of a pin proceeded in stentorian tones while the mass extermination of human beings continued at a pace that may or may not rise to the level of genocide.
For people are still starving and perishing in Darfur.
But the multilateral process moved along in its dignified way. The U.N. general secretary was making preparations to set up a commission. Preliminary U.N. resolutions were passed, and the mass murderers were told they should stop - often in frosty tones. The world community - well skilled in the art of expressing disapproval, having expressed fusillades of disapproval over Rwanda, the Congo, the Balkans, Iraq, etc. - expressed its disapproval.
And, meanwhile, 1.2 million were driven from their homes in Darfur.

If Bush hadn't acted "unilaterally" in Iraq, does anybody doubt that we still would be debating the issue at the UN? The UN is an idea that is crumbling and showing its age, just like the building it inhabits.

Kerry & Allawi

When most heads of state from other nations come to America, the rival party, or in this case rival candidate, usually shows that person the respect they deserve by their title. Not John Kerry:

In this respect, John Kerry isn't exactly the best advertisement for his Swiss finishing school. Forget the impeccable carriage -- if you imagine you're watching streaming video on a slow dial-up connection, his gait seems perfectly natural. But the manners thing seems to have passed him by entirely. His decision to break the time-honored tradition of keeping out of the way during the other guy's convention by rushing on the air within an hour of President Bush's speech to give an instant response was boorish and petty. But, given that his ''midnight rambler'' routine in Ohio was a disaster, there didn't seem much point dwelling on it.
But last week he did it again. Ayad Allawi, the first prime minister of post-Saddam Iraq, was in Washington to give a joint address to Congress. A tough, stocky, bullet-headed optimist, Iraq's interim leader delivered a simple, elegant and moving speech, which made three basic points:
''First, we are succeeding in Iraq. [Applause] It's a tough struggle with setbacks, but we are succeeding . . .
''The second message is quite simple and one that I would like to deliver directly from my people to yours: Thank you, America [Applause] . . .
''Third, I stand here today as the prime minister of a country emerging finally from dark ages of violence, aggression, corruption and greed . . . Well over a million Iraqis were murdered or are missing . . .''
Kerry didn't show up for Allawi's visit to Washington -- he was in Ohio again, which is evidently becoming the proverbial Vietnam-type quagmire for him. Nonetheless, barely had the prime minister finished than the absentee senator did a daytime version of his midnight ramble and barged his way onto the air to insist that he knew better than Iraq's head of government what was going on in the country. One question from his accompanying press corps was especially choice:
''Prime Minister Allawi told Congress today that democracy was taking hold in Iraq and that the terrorists there were on the defensive. Is he living in the same fantasyland as the president?''

Read the whole thing of course. Kerry has a instilled as a central part of his campaign the ability to form a coalition to assist us in Iraq and in the wider war on terror. In the past year he has disrespected Australia, Italy, Poland, Bulgaria, and now the new leader of Iraq. France has already made clear that even with Kerry in office, they still aren't going to send us assistance in Baghdad. Who is left to piss off Mr. Kerry?

Of course, Kerry is just parroting the French opinion.

Lileks

I haven't linked to James in a while for no other reason than I have little time. Todays is a slightly screedy piece that has this little nugget:

The draft is coming back! The draft is coming back! You know, there’s Zombie Hippie Boomer component of the nation that simple can’t dump the tropes of the 60s, and the only way they can live is to eat the brains – the sweet, sweet braaaains – of the young. The draft is coming back! Tin Soldiers and Nixon coming! Run away! I hear Canada is, well, Canada this time of year. The ZHBs want it to be 1969 in perpetuity, I fear. Well: I was 20 in 1978, and I was sick of the 60s. And they’d just ended a few years before. (The sixties hung over into the early seventies, until about ’72; the true sucktacity of that decade didn’t manifest itself until ’73, and died in 1981 about the moment the American hostages left Iranian airspace. It was a short decade, but it had the dead horrid gravity of a black hole.) 1969 was 35 years ago. To prop that dead rotten hulk up and wire its jaw so it appears to speak – well, it’s like telling me, in 1978, that I ought to base my worldview on the ideas of 1943. No: the ideas held by the anti-establishment types in 1943, which would be old bitter Wobblies still pissed that WW2 wasn’t about destroying industrial capitalism.

Anyway. I digress. The draft isn’t coming back. But it would make for an interesting exchange at the debates, eh?Senator Kerry, you’ve said that President Bush intends to reinstate the draft. On what evidence do you base this assertion?“This president has consistently underestimated the nature of the threat, and the nature of the forces we need to deal with, and confront, in this new century, and in doing so has placed us in a position where we find ourselves overextended. And alone. And we’re the target. I have a plan to bring our allies to the table, to forge new alliances as well as strengthen old ones, in such a way that fills out our options and gives us the flexibility to meet the changing needs of today with a military that will not be asked to shoulder the burdens of the world, when the world itself has a stake in these obligations. That’s what I meant when I suggested that there might be a draft in a second term of this president. He has boxed us in to a situation where our only solution to our go-it-alone policy might well be forced conscription of our young people, and I’m against it.”Thank you. President Bush?"There won’t be a draft."(Pause) (Pause.) (Pause) (Bush grin) (Scattered laughter)"I don’t know what else there is to say. There won’t be a draft. We’re going to move some forces around, uh, change our strategies. My opponent wants more German participation, and that’s fine with me. You know, they have a draft. Nine months, have to serve. I’d rather American men and women choose to join, choose to serve. Peace Corps, National Guard, our Armed Forces, however. But it’s up to them. Choices. We have the greatest armed services on the planet, and see, it’s because they want to serve. Love of country. And that’s a tradition I want to maintain. If my opponent has some inside information about plans to bring back the draft, I’d be happy to take a look, as long as he didn’t get it from some fellow in Texas who says he found the plans in a wastebasket."

Nice. Why some big city daily doesn't give him a job is beyond me.

This One Is For Kate

Have fun.

A Rant

This is one of the main problems I have with Republicans:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Federal courts would be barred from striking the words "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance to the American flag under a bill passed on Thursday by a House of Representatives split largely along party lines.
The Republicans in control of the chamber rejected Democratic claims that the measure was an unconstitutional bid to limit the power of the federal judiciary and an election-year ploy to rally social conservatives. It passed on a vote of 247-173.
Spurred by a celebrated but ultimately failed court challenge to the pledge in California, the bill is expected to die in the U.S. Senate without a vote as the U.S. Congress draws to an end this year. But that did not dampen Republican enthusiasm.

It doesn't matter if the word "God" is in the pledge or not. If people believe in God they will say it while reciting the pledge, if not they won't. Like the gay marriage issue or flag burning, in the whole scheme of things, it just doesn't matter when compared to the war on terror. If two gay men wish to be married it really is of little consequence, marriage will not end and America will go on.

Exhibit A I'll use to prove my case is this money-grubbing, non-God fearing asshole:

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) -- Evangelist Jimmy Swaggart apologized Wednesday for saying in a televised worship service that he would kill any gay man who looked at him romantically.
A complaint was filed with a Canadian broadcasting group, and Swaggart said his Baton Rouge-based Jimmy Swaggart Ministries has received complaints from gay groups over the remarks made on the Sept. 12 telecast.
In the broadcast, Swaggart was discussing his opposition to gay marriage when he said "I've never seen a man in my life I wanted to marry."
"And I'm going to be blunt and plain: If one ever looks at me like that, I'm going to kill him and tell God he died," Swaggart said to laughter and applause from the congregation.

On Wednesday, Swaggart said he has jokingly used the expression "killing someone and telling God he died" thousands of times, about all sorts of people. He said the expression is figurative and not meant to harm.
"It's a humorous statement that doesn't mean anything. You can't lie to God - it's ridiculous," Swaggart told The Associated Press. "If it's an insult, I certainly didn't think it was, but if they are offended, then I certainly offer an apology."

I'm shocked that this would be an insult: "And I'm going to be blunt and plain: If one ever looks at me like that, I'm going to kill him and tell God he died,". The sheer mendacity of that statement is shocking. That Swaggart fellow would have been a hell of a Crusader or a deft assistant to Torquemada. For that matter, Jimmy ought to join the Taliban. I know that their are folks that watch this guy and believe what he says, but this is what the media is waiting to pounce on. This guy is as bad as the idiots at Indymedia or Moveon.org.

Lucy In The Sky...

Mickey Kaus got to wondering:

Meanwhile, where in the world is "Lucy Ramirez," the alleged source of Rather's bogus Bush docs? She seems hard to find! Doesn't she even have a blog? ...

Just like the libs, blame it on an Hispanic woman.

A Rather Sad State Of Affairs

The American perception of the media is ebbing:

PRINCETON, NJ -- As media analysts and journalists wring their hands over the fallout from CBS News' faulty reporting relative to President George W. Bush's Vietnam-era National Guard service, a new Gallup Poll finds the news media's credibility has declined significantly among the public. The Sept. 13-15 poll -- conducted after the CBS News report was questioned but before the network issued a formal apology -- found that just 44% of Americans express confidence in the media's ability to report news stories accurately and fairly (9% say "a great deal" and 35% "a fair amount"). This is a significant drop from one year ago, when 54% of Americans expressed a great deal or fair amount of confidence in the media. The latest result is particularly striking because this figure had previously been very stable -- fluctuating only between 51% and 55% from 1997-2003.
Conversely, 39% currently say they have "not very much" confidence in the media's accuracy and fairness, while 16% say they have "none at all."

Don't worry, in a few years we'll have the ever reliable Brian Williams to look up to and respect.

If Rather Had Done This...

Another example of the Blogosphere correcting itself when it was wrong. This happened within hours. Everyone who linked to this is posting a correction. Why did Dan not realize this simple fact; make a mistake and own up. You'd have thought that Rather would have learned at least this lesson from Watergate.

Line Of The Day

Catherine Seipp has this:

By now I'm used to thinking differently from most people around me. Fantastically increased West Coast real-estate values mean no one would call Los Alamitos down-market today. When I was a child, though, it really was, at least by the standards of most people I hang around now.
My youth did not, alas, resemble that of the kids on The O.C. Bikinis were used not for dreamy wandering around mansions but for bodysurfing, which often ended with your face in the gravel and the bra part around your neck as boys pointed and laughed and yelled "Bitchen wipeout!" And these boys did not look like the charismatically cute Seth or Ryan on The O.C.; they looked like Meatloaf or Jughead or an adolescent, grease-stained Ozzie Osbourne — especially during my last year of high school, when for some reason I began hanging out with drag-racers.

Emphasis mine. This in an article defending Charles Johnson which is todays must read.

Tuesday Morning Quarterback Returns

I meant to link to him last week but, alas, I was out of town. So I'll link now to one of the best sportswriters around, Gregg Easterbrooke:

Is Jerry Rice the best football player ever? You won't hear me object to that statement. As Rice prepares to take a final bow, bear in mind the incredible margins of his success. In other NFL news, it's only Week 3 and already this weekend offers just one pairing of undefeated teams, Philadelphia at Detroit. A mere seven NFL teams remain undefeated -- will there be any matchup of undefeateds left by October? I don't wish to alarm you, but current trends make the Detroit at Jacksonville matchup on Nov. 14 look like the possible monster game of the year.

Yes Rice is the greatest player to ever lace 'em up and parity is rife in the NFL, it sure is intriguing though.

A Secret Plan

Russ Smith on the new super, double-secret Kerry plan:

According to a slew of political stories in the Sept. 20 pro-Kerry dailies, the candidate has found his voice, simplified his message and is ready to pounce. Maybe so. After all, last weekend in Albuquerque, Kerry claimed that Bush has a secret plan to send more reservists and National Guard units to Iraq after Nov. 2. This charge might stick if Kerry offered any proof, but what the hell, it whips up a crowd. Kerry said, "Hide it from people through the election, then make the move—that's not the way we do business in the United States of America, my friends."
And John Edwards (remember him?) got into the act last Sunday in Phoenixville, PA, repeating Kerry's "secret plan" charge and promising that the Massachusetts Democrat, once in office, "will find Al Qaeda where they are and crush them before they can do damage to the American people."
Details of this offensive, apparently, are secret.

He also smacks the hell out of Oliphant:

The Boston Globe's Thomas Oliphant, as reliable a Kerry mule as you'll find in Washington, was madder than a swarm of red ants in Lubbock on Sunday when he attacked the former Clinton officials who've signed on to rescue the Kerry campaign. Loyal to the Teddy Kennedy acolytes who'd reigned supreme until recently (Shrum, Mary Beth Cahill), Oliphant ripped into opportunists like James Carville, Paul Begala and Joe Lockhart.
He snorted: "John Kerry gave a more than decent account of himself in Michigan last week in an important oration about the economy ["more than decent" is an indication that even Oliphant sees the prize slipping away]. But several new members of his campaign staff thought it more important to step all over his message and promote themselves as the new bosses of the effort. Later in the week, Kerry was even more forceful and effective in Nevada as he discussed the murderous mess in Iraq. But again, his campaign's Narcissism Caucus got between Kerry and the public by spinning the political press into glowing accounts of their campaign coup."
It goes without saying that Oliphant has never been "spun" by the Boston pols who give Jersey officeholders a good name.

Nice line, Mugger.

Kerry's Diary

Dear diary,

It's been a rough couple of months for me with those Swifty jerks, no convention bounce, the miserable failure that whole forgery thing turned out to be (Terry McAuliffe promised it would work, and it would've if it wasn't for those pesky pajama-clad bloggers, but I digress).

Now this wannabe leader Allawi decides to come to America and tell a joint session of congress that their is reason for optimism and hope in Iraq. Is he crazy? Doesn't he realize that if Iraq settles down and becomes a thriving democracy I have nothing to pin on Jr. Bush? This is my time, time for a new JFK.

I'm going to speak out today and say that Bush and Allawi are unrealistic, that'll show them. I'm so glad I brought in Lockhart and Carville, they will put me over the top.

I am so glad that I got my voice back today, the American people love it everytime I speak, at least that's what Mary Beth says. I kinda wish Teresa would put a sock in it though (of course I can't tell her that, she might not give me my allowance).

Well diary, I have to go, I hear Dan Rather is about to break a story about Bush producing porno films and he has documents to back it up. This is going to work. I'll be like Genghis Khan rolling through the battle field.

Teresa is calling me and she can be downright mean if I don't respond to her wishes quickly, gotta go.

John

Update: Damn Diary, Teresa said this today:

In regard to the hunt for terror leader Osama Bin Laden, Heinz Kerry said she could see the al-Qaida chief being caught before the November election.
"I wouldn't be surprised if he appeared in the next month," said Heinz Kerry, alluding to a possible capture by United States and allied forces before election day.
The spouse of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry also hit President Bush on Iraq, saying it should not be equated with anti-terrorism efforts and that the current administration chose to create a "hotbed for terrorism" in Iraq when dictator Saddam Hussein did not pose an immediate threat. Heinz Kerry also said she agrees with her husband that a military draft may be reinstated under Bush.

I'll tell you diary, she sounded exactly like Mad Albright with that line. She really, really wants to be president...er, first lady.

The Media Vultures Rip Up Rathers Carcass

The Inquirer leaps on the Dan Must Go! bandwagon:

Memo to Dan: It's time to go.
The unforced error served up by CBS News about President Bush's service in the National Guard is not the end of mainstream journalism as we know it. But it ought to spell the end of Dan Rather's career.
As mistakes go, this one was colossal. CBS and Rather rushed pell-mell to broadcast apparently bogus memos, which purported to show Bush had disobeyed a direct order to take a physical exam in the National Guard in the 1970s.
We now know the network aired the story despite warnings from documents analysts that the memos might be phony. The source of the documents, retired National Guard official Bill Burkett, finally admitted this week that he lied to CBS about where he obtained the memos. CBS News officials still cannot satisfy themselves about the documents' origins.
If CBS News is to salvage its credibility, Rather must go. Whether or not his producer did most of the prep work for this report, Rather put his weighty seal of approval on the story. Such carelessness by a veteran journalist, especially on a high-profile story about a sitting president in the heat of a campaign, has irreparably damaged Rather's credibility. His apology Monday night was overdue.
Viewers are now left to wonder whether a veteran anchor was blinded by competitive juices or, worse and more unlikely, motivated by partisan bias. That kind of taint won't wash off, even in a hurricane.

They couldn't help themselves when it came to slamming Bush though:

But don't let the smoke of this blunder utterly obscure the story beneath. There is little doubt that Bush received preferential treatment to get into the National Guard so he could avoid more dangerous service in Vietnam. After doing so, he went missing for many months during his six-year commitment. Apparently, at the time, he was a somewhat aimless twenty-something who was years away from settling down and becoming the man who would become president. All this, which was known in 2000, should hardly matter, were it not for the screaming hypocrisy of Bush supporters throwing mud on John F. Kerry's decorated service in Vietnam.
Whether Bush's Guard duty matters much to you or not, the most pressing question has to be why so much energy and ink are being lavished on what these candidates did during a war that ended 30 years ago, rather than what they've done, and would do, about the urgent quagmire in Iraq.
The best thing might be a moratorium on the distracting phrases Swift boat and Texas National Guard for the rest of the campaign.

A moratorium on free speech? Is that what the Inquirer advocates? This is what McCain Feingold has wrought. 527 groups can operate and say whatever they wish with little impunity. As I recall, the Inqy supported McCain-Feingold. You reap what you sow.

I have a few more thoughts on my previous post concerning Hitchens. The liberal-left leaning ideology has not accorded itself well in the last decade. While genocide and ethnic cleansing were occurring in Bosnia and Kosovo, the only real solution was destruction of Milosevic and the other warloads. The Left balked and chewed their nails and did...well, nothing at all except attempt to thwart any effort to end the annihilation of men, women , and children. Their next chance to aide a beleaguered people was Rwanda, again nothing.

After 9/11 they wrung their hands and said that we should do nothing because to do something would only anger the Islamo-fascists more and lead to more bloodshed. When GW Bush stepped up and did fight back the leftists equated him to the Taliban or worse, including Adolph Hitler. The leftists have shown that their ideology is morally bankrupt in many, many ways.

The Chomsky and Tariq Ali types of the world have no credibility anymore after siding with Saddam and giving any iota of credence to the thought that Islamic terrorists had justifiable means to attack America. Goodbye to your useless pandering to murderers and goodbye to the discredited ideology you cling to like a life raft. Good riddance to any thought that Noam Chomsky has any acceptable seat at the table of rational dialogue and solution seeking.

Democracy and capitalism are not perfect, no economic or political system is. However, more opportunities are created for the people of the world if these systems are adopted and allowed to flourish. The liberal-left should be cheering the Iraqi people on and assisting them in all possible ways. Instead they harp on every soldier's death and hope that the Iraqi democracy experiment goes awry so that the US is not encouraged to attempt it with another nation raped, oppressed, and beaten by a thug-like dictator.

Hitchens & The Neocons

Former Marxist Christopher Hitchens, a truly free thinker, has alienated his old Trotskyite buddies by siding with the US on the Iraq invasion:

To many of Christopher Hitchens' old friends, he died on September 11th 2001. Tariq Ali considered himself a comrade of Christopher Hitchens for over thirty years. Now he speaks about him with bewilderment. "On 11th September 2001, a small group of terrorists crashed the planes they had hijacked into the Twin Towers of New York. Among the casualties, although unreported that week, was a middle-aged Nation columnist called Christopher Hitchens. He was never seen again," Ali writes. "The vile replica currently on offer is a double."
This encapsulates how many of Hitchens' old allies - a roll-call of the left's most distinguished intellectuals, from Edward Said to Noam Chomsky - now view him. On September 10th, he was campaigning for Henry Kissinger to be arraigned before a war crimes tribunal in the Hague for his massive and systematic crimes against humanity in the 1960s and 1970s. He was preparing to testify in the Vatican - as a literal Devil's Advocate - against the canonisation of Mother Theresa, who he had exposed as a sadistic Christian fundamentalist, an apologist for some of the world's ugliest dictatorships, and a knowing beneficiary of corporate fraud. Hitchens was sailing along the slow, certain route from being the Left's belligerent bad boy to being one of its most revered old men.

Emphasis mine. Ali calls Hitch vile because he is backing a cause that real Leftists should, the removal of a nation from the evil spector of torture and rape at the behest of a dictator. It seems that terror appeasers like Tariq Ali and Noam Chomsky are the real sell-outs to the Leftist ideology.

He explains that he believes the moment the left's bankruptcy became clear was on 9/11. "The United States was attacked by theocratic fascists who represents all the most reactionary elements on earth. They stand for liquidating everything the left has fought for: women's rights, democracy? And how did much of the left respond? By affecting a kind of neutrality between America and the theocratic fascists." He cites the cover of one of Tariq Ali's books as the perfect example. It shows Bush and Bin Laden morphed into one on its cover. "It's explicitly saying they are equally bad. However bad the American Empire has been, it is not as bad as this. It is not the Taliban, and anybody - any movement - that cannot see the difference has lost all moral bearings."
Hitchens - who has just returned from Afghanistan - says, "The world these [al-Quadea and Taliban] fascists want to create is one of constant submission and servility. The individual only has value to them if they enter into a life of constant reaffirmation and prayer. It is pure totalitarianism, and one of the ugliest totalitarianisms we've seen. It's the irrational combined with the idea of a completely closed society. To stand equidistant between that and a war to remove it is?" He shakes his head. I have never seen Hitch grasping for words before.

Again, emphasis mine. Read that line again. Hitchens is speechless because he didn't shun his cause, his cause shunned him because of sheer hatred of George W. Bush. Hitch explains his views on Neo-conservatism thusly:

He believes neoconservatism is a distinctively new strain of thought, preached by ex-leftists, who believed in using US power to spread democracy. "It's explicitly anti-Kissingerian. Kissinger hates this stuff. He opposed intervening in the Balkans. Kissinger Associates were dead against [the war in] Iraq. He can't understand the idea of backing democracy - it's totally alien to him."
"So that interest in the neocons re-emerged after September 11th. They were saying - we can't carry on with the approach to the Middle East we have had for the past fifty years. We cannot go on with this proxy rule racket, where we back tyranny in the region for the sake of stability. So we have to take the risk of uncorking it and hoping the more progressive side wins." He has replaced a belief in Marxist revolution with a belief in spreading the American revolution. Thomas Jefferson has displaced Karl Marx.

I consider myself a Neocon and this hits upon the Neoconservatism better than most pieces I've read. Hitch was really impressed (and still is as far as I know) with Paul Wolfowitz whom he based the first first pages of A Long Short War on:

But can we trust the Bush administration - filled with people like Dick Cheney, who didn't even support the release of Nelson Mandela - to support democracy and the spread of American values now? He offers an anecdote in response. There is a new liberal-left heroine in the States called Azar Nafisi. Her book ?Reading Lolita in Tehran' documents an underground feminist resistance movement to the Iranian Mullahs that concentrated on reading great - and banned - works of Western literature. "And who is this book by an icon of the Iranian resistance dedicated to? [US Deputy Secretary of Defence] Paul Wolfowitz, the bogeyman of the left, and the intellectual force behind [the recent war in] Iraq."
With the fine eye for ideological division that comes from a life on the Trotskyite left, Hitch diagnoses the intellectual divisions within the Bush administration. He does not ally himself with the likes of Cheney; he backs the small sliver of pure neocon thought he associates with Wolfowitz. "The thing that would most surprise people about Wolfowitz if they met him is that he's a real bleeding heart. He's from a Polish-Jewish immigrant family. You know the drill - Kennedy Democrats, some of the family got out of Poland in time and some didn't make it, civil rights marchers? He impressed me when he was speaking at a pro-Israel rally in Washington a few years ago and he made a point of talking about Palestinian suffering. He didn't have to do it - at all - and he was booed. He knew he would be booed, and he got it. I've taken time to find out what he thinks about these issues, and it's always interesting."

A facinating, if disjointed article that is worth reading.

Update: Over at Slate, the reponses to Hitch sum up the thinking of Leftists with regard to Hitchens support of the Iraq War:

…Let's be honest, Hitch. Your solemn tone is not the product of an actual reverence for American war dead. If it were, you would not have advocated sending them to their doom simply to effectuate some radical social reform in a land that is not our concern. You would be more concerned, as am I, with then NEXT 1,000, and the next, and the next, and the next.....Be honest, good Hitch. If, instead of a rabid murderer like Allawi ruling Iraq, it was the kindly face of an elected former exile, you would be crowing now. If, instead of a rapidly expanding piles of rubble studded with IEDs and car bomb shrapnel, Iraq's cities had functioning power and water treatment plants, you'd be quoting George M. Cohan, not Spencer…For me, the 1000th American death is simply another campaign ribbon to strap on the colors in the fight to end this insanity. It goes along with the other ribbons-- the ten, or is it thirty? thousand Iraqi civilians murdered for no better reason than their ill judgment to live on top of 12 billion barrels of oil. It goes with the billions in tax payer profits handed over in no bid contracts to companies largely owned by the men directing this war and their life-long business compadres. It goes with the name of a prison that will stain the reputation of our nation and our armed forces for decades. Right now, those 1,000 deaths are politically meaningless for one reason only-- they were all volunteers-- all professionals. Professional armies have always been the playthings of sovereigns…--doodahman

'Nough said.

Over At Better Blogs...

Michele has lots of interesting stuff over at A Small Victory. This post on the best SNL skits is intriguing. My personal favorite SNL skit was Jesse Jackson reading Theodore Geisel's Green Eggs & Ham.

The Command Post is a daily must-read.

At the Kerry blog, they have Kerry's Top Ten List from Letterman last night. Here it is:

"Top 10 Bush Tax Proposals" are:
10. No estate tax for families with at least two U.S. presidents.
9. W-2 Form is now Dubya-2 Form.
8. Under the simplified tax code, your refund check goes directly to Halliburton.
7. The reduced earned income tax credit is so unfair, it just makes me want to tear out my lustrous, finely groomed hair.
6. Attorney General (John) Ashcroft gets to write off the entire U.S. Constitution.
5. Texas Rangers can take a business loss for trading Sammy Sosa.
4. Eliminate all income taxes; just ask Teresa (Heinz Kerry) to cover the whole damn thing.
3. Cheney can claim Bush as a dependent.
2. Hundred-dollar penalty if you pronounce it "nuclear" instead of "nucular."
1. George W. Bush gets a deduction for mortgaging our entire future.

Also at the Kerry Blog, the looney-left conspiracy theorists (scroll) are in full on crazy mode:

Here's the way that it really is. Dubya was playing golf and goofing off while al-Qaeda was planning to strike America. He was warned in August about a Bin Laden plan to attack the United States using commerical airlines, and did nothing. I bet that he was thinking about that memo during the "pet goat" meditation. Cheney had plenty of time to meet with oil industry cronies but no time to schedule a principles meeting for Richard Clarke.
Bush and Cheney blew it. They left America open to attack.
THEY ARE 100% RESPONSIBLE FOR 9/11.
NO MORE EXCUSES!Posted by duetta at September 21, 2004 09:37 AM

Bush knew, Bush read to kids while America burned, Dick Clarke is always right, and Clinton had no responsibility for us being attacked. If you believe all of that, Kerry is your man.

Welcoming Money-smart Jews Back To China

China is in the midst of attracting Jews back to spur the local economy:

Now, after years of not being welcomed, they are returning to a city that is eager to see them. Harbin recently announced a $3.2-million renovation of its main synagogue, and it is stepping up efforts to preserve other historically significant buildings and sprucing up the Jewish cemetery, Asia's largest.For the Chinese, it's less a warm and fuzzy embrace of the old days than a fairly blatant bid to spur the struggling local economy. Last month, at an international conference on "Jewish History and Culture in Harbin" that was attended by nearly 100 former residents and their families, officials gushed about the "always smart" and "always good with money" Jews who might help return Harbin to its former glory."We haven't heard such compliments since the days of Moses," says Yaacov Liberman, 81, a Harbin native now living in San Diego. Liberman was on his first trip back since his family left China in 1948.

The Chinese are never afraid to use a stereotypical slur to spur the local economy. Via the excellent Roger L. Simon.

Flip Flop, Flip Flop...

My goodness I'm getting whiplash. Kerry now says he would not have ousted a brutal dictator:

NEW YORK (AP) - Staking out new ground on Iraq, Sen. John Kerry said Monday he would not have overthrown Saddam Hussein had he been in the White House, and he accused President Bush of "stubborn incompetence," dishonesty and colossal failures of judgment. Bush said Kerry was flip-flopping.
Less than two years after voting to give Bush authority to invade Iraq, the Democratic candidate said the president had misused that power by rushing to war without the backing of allies, a post-war plan or proper equipment for U.S. troops. "None of which I would have done," Kerry said.
"Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator who deserves his own special place in hell," he added. "But that was not, in itself, a reason to go to war. The satisfaction we take in his downfall does not hide this fact: We have traded a dictator for a chaos that has left America less secure."
Bush hit back from a campaign rally in New Hampshire, interpreting Kerry's comment to mean the Democrat believes U.S. security would be better with Saddam still in power. "He's saying he prefers the stability of a dictatorship to the hope and security of democracy," the Republican incumbent said.

This from the candidate who said two months ago that he would have voted to remove Saddam sans WMD:

That's why it was not surprising that John Kerry insisted Monday that, even with the benefit of hindsight, he still would have supported the 2002 congressional resolution giving George W. Bush authority to invade Iraq. "Yes, I would have voted for the authority," the Democratic nominee said while campaigning at the Grand Canyon in Arizona. "I believe it was the right authority for the president to have."

This is the sound of a campaign imploding.

Football Fans For Truth

From calling Lambeau "Lambert" to asking for a cheesesteak with swiss, Kerry has pretty much struck out every time he tries to appeal to the "common" man. One website aims to bring the real truth of Kerry's lack of sports knowledge to light.

Update: This is a man who can handle the pressure of putting it over the plate. Awesome, I promise.

PajamaBlogging Cont'

Inquirer staff writer Beth Gillin comments on Rathergate:

Where were the filters that might have prevented these lies from being printed and broadcast?
To which the MSM replies: Who determines when bloggers are telling the truth? On the freewheeling Internet, people with axes to grind are everywhere, from Angry Left conspiracy theorists who say President Bush ordered planes to crash into the World Trade Center to Wingnuts of the Right who say the Clintons faked Vince Foster's suicide.
But in the crowded marketplace of blogging, those who deliver the goods - who do not plagiarize, flame their competitors, or report rumor as fact - rise to the top by earning the trust of their readers. The bloggers with the biggest audiences, be they left or right, do not tend to embroider, and are unembarrassed about correcting mistakes.
In newspaper and broadcast cultures, errors are cause for shame. Correcting them - by reading an apology on air, or writing an explanation for a senior editor - can be humiliating. The process, however, does instill caution.
A blogger who makes an error is quickly corrected by readers, the mistake is fixed, its discoverers thanked, and an apology issued. Everything happens in full view of readers.
Bloggers call this process of sharing and feedback transparency, and in Rathergate it has more traction than the argument- from-authority defense: "Trust us. We're CBS News."
And yet there is something to be said for the authority of the MSM. Without institutions to define news by deciding what's important, how are consumers supposed to make sense of the avalanche of information available in the digital age?

It's a fairly strightforward piece that gives Charles' his due credit. I do have a problem with the last posted sentence. The media think they have to pick out stories and spoon-feed them to us because we're not smart enough to figure out the "important" news, we are not capable of making "sense of the avalanche of information" that is available daily. Give me a break, blogs post stories that would never make it into the mainstream media because of laziness, agenda, or space. I for one do not need Gail Collins or any other editor to decide what I read, I can read Xinhua, the San Antonio Express-News, or the feed from Reuters as well as she can.

Update: The WaPo has a devastating side-by-side of real and the forged documents.

A Mushroom Cloud In California Soon?

Charles hosting company is about to have a melt down and I'm out of here for the evening. I'm on business, out of town, and have had more time to post. The downside is I'm away from my beautiful wife and kids.

Kirstie Alley Fans For Kerry

She sure looks like Al Gore.

Remember, Bush Is Stupid

The Boston Globe knows why Bush misspeaks himself, he's suffering from a type of dimentia:

So why does Bush sound stupid? One doctor thinks he shows signs of "presenile dementia," or an early onset of Alzheimer's disease.
This summer, Joseph Price, a self-described "country doctor" in Carsonville, Mich., was reading a long article in The Atlantic about Bush's speaking style. Author James Fallows alluded to Bush's malapropisms and to speculation that Bush had a learning disorder or dyslexia. But those conditions generally manifest themselves in childhood. Furthermore, Fallows wrote, "through his forties Bush was perfectly articulate."
Dr. Price's children happened to have given him a daily tear-off calendar of "Bushisms" for Christmas. "They are horrible, but they are also diagnostic," Price says. When he read that Bush had spoken clearly and performed well while debating Texas politician Ann Richards in 1994, Price thought: "My God, the only way you can explain that is by being Alzheimer's."

Emphasis mine. A "self-described country doctor" diagnosed Bush from an Atlantic article and a tear off calendar. He must be a genius. This is pure and simply the lowest I've seen the media go (this week at least). Bush is stupid, the mainstream media has made that perfectly clear. Now they say it's Alzheimer's? Pathetic. Yes, this article has a true specialist who refutes the "country doctor", but why was this article even written?

That Fudge & Nougat Thing Is Kinda Odd

Jonah Goldberg on old media with references to the obscure and forgotten:

A quick refresher in world history. Prior to World War I, the world was a huge ball of molten slag and gaseous muck. But that's not important right now. Immediately prior to World War I, the world was divvied up into huge power blocs, basically known as empires. The rulers, bureaucrats, aristocrats, intellectuals, and guys in funny wigs running these empires refused to accept that their way of life was unsustainable, that the curtain was closing on their chapter under the sun ("Jonah Goldberg doesn't merely mix metaphors, he snaps their spines!" — self-blurb). A relatively unknown loser (no offense to the PowerLine guys, Freep, et al.) shot Arch Duke Ferdinand and the whole house of cards came down. Some empires were obliged to help their allies. Others were just greedy, seeing opportunities in others' weakness. The point — which doesn't warrant extremely close inspection — is that the giants seemed extremely powerful right until they fell over. Moreover, what caused them to fall over was their desire to prove that they were as strong as they used to be, that they were still the Engines of History, Masters of their Fates, and the Inspiration of Needlessly Ornate Furniture.
Something similar is going on with the Media Empires of today. Powerline or the blogosphere generally — which would be the "Black Hand" in this analogy — spotted the now-obvious fraudulent nature of these documents immediately. The charge is the journalistic equivalent of an assassin's bullet for Dan Rather. Had he refused to go to war in defense of these documents, he might have survived. Instead he's determined to go the way of the Hapsburgs and his career is over.
Oh sure, he'll probably ride out this election and retire in the next couple years with crates full of gold watches, plaques, awards, and attaboys from the establishment media. But the inevitable fact is that he will be drawn into a war he cannot win. The very best he can do is defend the slender possibility that these documents could be real. At this point it seems impossible that he can prove they are real. Indeed, Rather has already largely conceded all this. His defenses are all about how you can't prove the documents are false, as if the burden of proof for a journalistic icon is for other people to prove what he says is wrong rather than for him to prove it is right.
And, for Rather, this kind of draw is a loss. This could drag on for days or weeks or months. But even if it's days, the bleeding will be fatal. Already, the man looks like a sad buffoon, in denial that the quicksand is already up to his chest. His flailing about "partisan operatives" being behind the backlash makes him sound like the Norma Desmond of Big Journalism. Someone tell me when ABC News and the Washington Post become arms of the RNC, because I would love to see that memo. But before I believed it, I'd study the size of the "th"s a bit more closely than Dan did.

Maybe I'm showing my youth but I had to Google Norma Desmond.

The Times Best?

The NY Times is at their partisan best here:

Kitty Kelley's catty new book about the Bush family is a perfect artifact of our current political culture in which unsubstantiated attacks on Senator John Kerry's Vietnam War record and old questions about President Bush's National Guard service get more attention than present-day issues like the Iraq war, the economy, intelligence reform or the assault weapons ban.
It is also a perfect artifact of a cultural climate in which gossip and innuendo thrive on the Internet; more and more biographies of artists and public figures dwell, speculatively, on familial dysfunction and disorder; and buzz - be it based on verified facts or sheer rumor-mongering - is regarded as a be-all and end-all.

Notice that the Swift Boat Vets facts are "unsubstantiated attacks" while the "old questions about President Bush's National Guard service" are not unsubstantiated? Typical Times. Kitty Kelley is a heathen who makes a living digging into people's pasts and reporting rumors and innuendo. I guess that is a backhand to the bloggers who are exposing Rather, CBS, and the Times for the Democratics shills they are.

Those Who Create Will Try To Destroy

Britney's Mom is upset that the media portray her daughter as "trashy":

Britney Spears' mother has had enough with the media trying to paint her daughter as trashy.

Britney SpearsLynne Spears writes on her daughter's Web site she's come across numerous photos trying to paint her daughter that way.
Lynne Spears says in one photo, Spears stepped on her floor-length skirt and it pulled down too low in the front. She said she's sure that's happened to lots of girls before -- but there weren't hordes of paparazzi around.
Also, Lynne Spears said her daughter has been appearing barefoot a lot because she needs to wear only tennis shoes because of her knee problems and they're too hot.

Okay Mrs. Spears. I guess that the pictures of your daughter rolling around on stage and gyrating with her dancers didn't make her look trashy. I guess 48-hour Vegas marriages are the mark of non-trashy women. The media built her up and is now going to take her down, that's Hollywood. I guess these officially-licensed pictures from her website don't make her look trashy. My heart is pumping piss for you.

Madame Not Bright

Madeleine Albright is spinning like a friggin' top with this answer to Tim Russert:

Russert: But didn't North Korea develop a nuclear bomb on Bill Clinton's watch?
Albright: No, what they were doing, as it turns out, they were cheating. And the reason that you have arms control agreements is you don't make them with your friends, you make them with your enemies. And it's the process that is required to hold countries accountable. The worst part that has happened under the agreed framework, there was these fuel rods, and the nuclear program was frozen. Those fuel rods have now been reprocessed, as far as we know, and North Korea has a capability, which at one time might have been two potential nuclear weapons, up to six to eight now, we're not really clear. But in this period of time when there has not enough action been taken, I think that the threat from North Korea has increased.

As James Taranto says; "Shouldn't that "no" have been a "yes"?".

Lack of Adult Supervision

The New Yorker has a good piece on the decimation of McGreevey and the influence of Charles Kushner and Golan Cipel. This line sums up the last three years in Trenton:

“The McGreevey administration was without adult supervision,” says one insider. “All the guys who could provide a compass were pushed out.”

It's a great read, long but worth it.

Countdown to CBS News Oblivion

The newly crowned "sexiest newscaster" Keith Olberman (man his fingers must hurt from clicking that mouse so many times voting for himself) senses a vast right-wing conspiracy with regard to Rathergate:

MSNBC's Keith Olbermann sees a grand conspiracy in "how the documents came to be so quickly and thoroughly refuted on a right-wing Web site not two hours after they were first revealed on CBS." Picking up on how a FreeRepublic.com poster, "Buckhead," had first suggested a 1970s typewriter could not have produced the memo showcased by 60 Minutes, on Monday's Countdown Olbermann ran through the blogger's resume and concluded, ever so ominously: "So the Killian documents come out and are almost immediately questioned by a lawyer with Republican ties and are distributed to other news organizations without comment by the White House and they suddenly have one of their principal endorsers retract his endorsement. How many rats do you smell?"
Turning to Craig Crawford of Congressional Quarterly and CBS News, Olbermann suggested that if Bush opponents had created the memos they would have done a better job of forgery: "Wouldn't somebody faking this to try to hurt Mr. Bush have to think about, at least, the, you know, the type faces that would identify this as a 2004 document as opposed to a 1992 document, or 1972 document, and more importantly, the out-of-date references to the retired colonel? Who would, who, sophisticatedly would leave that stuff in this?"

Not really Keith, if these documents came from an organization pulling for Kerry like say...Moveon.org, they are not smart enough or sophisticated enough to think of that stuff.

Update: This from ABC News:

CBS EXPERTS SAY THEIR CONCERNS WERE IGNORED, ABC News' Brian Ross reports... EVENING NEWSCASTS
EMILY WILL TO ABC: "I did not feel that they wanted to investigate it very deeply."
LINDA JAMES TO ABC: "I did not authenticate anything and I don't want it to be misunderstood that I did."
SUPPOSED AUTHOR'S SECRETARY SAYS THEY'RE FAKE: Lt. Col. Killian's secretary Carr Knox tells Ariane DeVogue "I would have typed them and I didn't."