tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-66870312011-07-07T20:39:35.503-04:00Comment and Satire, Stranger than FictionEDHnoreply@blogger.comBlogger431100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6687031.post-10919943163296576512008-11-08T15:25:00.024-05:002008-11-09T01:57:20.813-05:00

Adam Smith, of Birmingham Mail, is YouTube sensation after drunken 'F*ck you' resignation and admitting to copying BBCLife does indeed imitate South Park.Turns out you don't have to "go on down to South Park" to see somebody so emboldened by the Obama victory that he tells his boss F**k You!!!Here's a short video clip from the hilarious post-election episode of South Park, "About Last Night."

EDHnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6687031.post-2860711587632846922008-10-05T15:22:00.021-04:002008-10-05T17:57:55.832-04:00

Sarah Palin points out that Starbucks considered it politically correct to put a wrathful quote on a coffee cup because it was said by a prominent liberal Democrat.They're all atwitter on the left over at the Huffington Post. Sarah Palin received the personal endorsement Shelly Mandell, the president of the Los Angeles chapter of the N.O.W., at large rally in Carson, California.The left's

EDHnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6687031.post-8505450858386024542008-02-29T16:43:00.008-05:002008-11-16T12:02:50.817-05:00

Predictably, if not logically, Andrew Sullivan left out the other possibility: that our good "offense" got a lot better.There are logically two - not necessarily exclusive - possibilities: our defense has been getting much better; their offense was over-rated. And remember this seven-year result of unexplained progress is against a backdrop of supposedly metastasizing enemies and threats that

EDHnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6687031.post-76262011582111962422007-11-11T21:07:00.000-05:002007-11-11T22:00:40.334-05:00

EDH,Thanks for the comments. Actually the Greenstone paper uses the tradesports probabilities of democrats winning the election to show that the confounding explanation you raise is not the source of the big run up in iraqi bond yields. They wouldn't let me discuss that due to space constraints but you should check out the study.A.G.[I assume by "They" he means the NYT. -EDH]Austan,Thank you for

EDHnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6687031.post-19400203626711534062007-11-11T14:03:00.000-05:002007-11-11T21:59:44.057-05:00

Should we take note of the fact that Austan Goolsbee, a distinguished economist, totally overlooked the probability that a Democrat might be elected US president next year as one possible discount factor depressing the Iraqi bond market?Did I mention he’s economic advisor to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign?Goolsbee posits In the Bond Market, A Bleak Prognosis for Iraq that the global

EDHnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6687031.post-18330996158637109032007-10-16T01:29:00.000-04:002007-10-16T02:00:39.891-04:00

Speaking of how the sexes are treated differently, compare the following NutriSystems ads for women and men, and the reactions to them. Maybe you've seen them.First, the reaction on "girlscantwhat.com" to a NutriSystems ad in which a women brags “now my husband calls me his trophy wife.”Gretchen: Ugh. What a horrible way to be identified. I do not want my husband to be proud of me for how I look,

EDHnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6687031.post-85986785407162181862007-10-08T11:16:00.000-04:002007-10-08T22:12:21.768-04:00

As a "guest columnist" for the Boston Globe, David D'Alessandro, former CEO of John Handcock Financial Services, provides his sage advice to fellow executives "when a management person is unable to fill a key position with an African-American."Maybe he should have kept the advice to himself. D'Alessandro's solution to The great lie in African-American hiring:The answer goes something like this.

EDHnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6687031.post-35527183934432789132007-09-20T16:13:00.000-04:002007-09-20T16:28:13.354-04:00

He's so going to want to make a movie about this story, right?Iraqi National Police Break Up al-Qaeda Rape, Terror Cell in Samarra.

EDHnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6687031.post-70661674219593502252007-07-26T19:11:00.000-04:002007-08-06T17:25:15.558-04:00

Bryan Bender's headline article on the front page of the Boston Globe Analyst counters Bush on Al Qaeda: Says biggest threat is in S. Asia, not Iraq is a good example of how the press tries to spin the news.Reading his piece carefully, we see Bender doing a "spin job" in order to cobble together a seeming contradiction. A contradiction that was not asserted by the congressional witnesses he cites

EDHnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6687031.post-2501484558861900552007-07-11T23:56:00.000-04:002007-07-27T08:58:02.786-04:00

Need a reason to question another AP report based on a carefully couched description of an "intelligence report" leaked by an "official and others [who] spoke on condition of anonymity because the secret report remains classified"?The headlines scream: "Classified Report: Al Qaeda at Pre-9/11 Strength."Certainly an arresting caption, but what does that mean? To be accurate, wouldn't al Qaida have

EDHnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6687031.post-36916801045828635472007-07-06T18:08:00.000-04:002007-07-08T11:17:14.471-04:00

Behold as Barak Obama's "economics guru," Austan Goolsbee, tries to spin a "Grand Bargain" out of the senator's proposal to have taxpayers pick-up the tab for runaway union auto worker fringe benefit costs in exchange for the imposition of more stringent command-and-control corporate average fuel mileage regulations on automakers.Ironically, Goolsbee had just said that "a regulatory solution,

EDHnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6687031.post-81369460319257385792007-06-09T21:13:00.000-04:002007-06-10T14:36:57.519-04:00

1.) Hasn’t the al Qaida terrorist insurgency inside Iraq facilitated the progress we’re now seeing in Sunni areas of Anbar province? 2.) Did al Qaida’s thuggery motivate Sunni tribes, otherwise predisposed to support an Iraqi insurgency, to begin working with the central government and coalition forces? 3.) Had Bush been “competent” enough to send “sufficient” US troops to Iraq to prevent the al

EDHnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6687031.post-54816472337812806072007-05-27T11:54:00.000-04:002007-06-09T21:48:12.838-04:00

Okay, here’s where I get really confused about the debate over a link between Iraq and 9/11, especially as that argument is formulated by those seeking to discredit it. A prime example is the Boston Globe’s Peter S. Canellos in an article entitled GOP rivals embrace unproven Iraq-9/11 tie.In defending the Iraq war, leading Republican presidential contenders are increasingly echoing words and

EDHnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6687031.post-36687996214715875162007-02-13T21:50:00.000-05:002007-06-02T12:54:04.922-04:00

Was politics or music behind the Dixie Chicks winning five Grammy Awards? Even if their country fanbase has abandoned them, or vice versa, you'd expect the Best Album winner to have garnered some critical praise in popular music circles before sweeping the industry's top awards show. Evidently not.A look at Metacritic's Best Reviewed Albums of the Year reveals less than critical acclaim for the

EDHnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6687031.post-1170448492525650552007-02-02T14:54:00.000-05:002007-02-12T15:52:38.584-05:00

It's easy -- perhaps too easy -- to criticize the reaction of the Boston authorities to the Mooninite "Lite-Brite" scare, especially after the promotional signs for the guerrilla marketing campaign had been blinking off and on while attached to various pieces of strategic infrastructure around town for about three weeks before they were detected and removed.But have Boston area politicians

EDHnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6687031.post-1164052946012476832006-11-20T14:56:00.000-05:002007-02-09T09:58:15.676-05:00

Stanley Kurtz, Three Foreign Policies, The Corner, National Review Online:Kurtz: So the troubles of the hawks in Iraq have brought the realists to the fore, and have also empowered the doves. Even if the doves undermine the realists, we may ultimately see a return to hawkishness. All three factions will struggle into the future, unless or until something very good, or very bad, emerges to confirm

EDHnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6687031.post-1162832344300336542006-11-06T11:36:00.000-05:002006-11-06T13:01:52.780-05:00

Doctor Evil, as quoted from Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, 1997:Dr. Evil: All right guard, begin the unnecessarily slow-moving dipping mechanism. [guard starts dipping mechanism]Dr. Evil: Close the tank!Scott Evil: Wait, aren't you even going to watch them? They could get away!Dr. Evil: No no no, I'm going to leave them alone and not actually witness them dying, I'm just gonna

EDHnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6687031.post-1162473580602271272006-11-02T07:45:00.000-05:002006-11-02T17:14:42.033-05:00

A week before the election, has there ever been a more graphic example of a political Rorschach Test than the classified CENTCOM Power Point slide "leaked" by the NYT entitled "Iraq: Indications and Warnings of Civil Conflict"?Aside from the lingering issue whether the NYT is once again helping the enemy hone its offensive strategy, the message that the media draws from the chart -- and wants to

EDHnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6687031.post-1161132899288029352006-10-17T20:00:00.000-04:002006-10-18T13:36:20.276-04:00

Unfortunately, OpinionJournal's Taranto seemingly acquiesces to Dennis C. Jett's illogical response to his original Best of the Web post How Many Lynchings?Taranto had originally critiqued the logic of an op-ed that former ambassador Jett wrote for the Gainesville Sun, in which Jett minimized the risk of terrorism by equating it with the risk of accidental death from several common voluntary

EDHnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6687031.post-1160939071580144922006-10-15T13:55:00.000-04:002006-10-16T03:15:40.436-04:00

Charles Krauthammer proposes announcing a policy of presumptive retaliation against North Korea as a way to deter nuclear terrorism, but argues it's only good so long as North Korea maintains its monopoly status as rogue nuclear state.Specifically, he advocates the "automaticity" of a nuclear deterrence policy against North Korea, one "requiring a full retaliatory response upon North Korea" for "

EDHnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6687031.post-1159325107797913142006-09-26T22:26:00.000-04:002006-09-26T22:46:14.473-04:00

A president distracted from Bin Laden and al Qaida by Iraq? George W. Bush, right?Well, as TigerHawk points out, Bill Clinton might rethink declaring Richard Clarke as his go-to "wing man" on terror. In Against All Enemies, Richard Clarke, gave us a glimpse why the Clinton administration didn't pursue Bin Laden in Afghanistan with zest:Sometimes I heard, "Look, we are bombing Iraq every week. We

EDHnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6687031.post-1159260175836448142006-09-26T04:01:00.000-04:002006-09-26T22:25:56.013-04:00

In the aftermath of ABC's Path to 911 and Bill Clinton's heated reaction to Chris Wallace's interview questions, has there been a effort on the part of Clinton supporters to confuse two opposing concepts in the public mind? First, let's isolate the two concepts subject to conflation:1.) Scandal and impeachment distracted Clinton from taking military action against al Qaida.2.) Clinton used

EDHnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6687031.post-1158098472291383902006-09-12T17:27:00.000-04:002006-09-26T05:13:04.946-04:00

Headline: Theory that U.S. orchestrated Sept. 11 attacks 'not absurd': Venezuela.Do you get the impression that the Axis of Weasels might be ramping up its global propaganda war as the price of oil drops?I assume al Qaida never thought that 9-11 conspiracy claim would pass the laugh test, or during the planning stage they would have tried to come up with ways to make it look more plausible.Yet,

EDHnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6687031.post-1157720588582811182006-09-08T08:42:00.000-04:002006-09-12T18:42:54.303-04:00

Here's a thought about the new media technology and why the Demcrats now want ABC to cancel their 9-11 docu-drama instead of editing-out certain scenes: Think about how perfectly suited those selected scenes will be for broadcast on YouTube.Cutting certain scenes is more enticing than canceling the entire broadcast. It identifies the forbidden fruit. A greater number of people are likely to

EDHnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6687031.post-1157653034620703592006-09-07T14:04:00.001-04:002008-11-16T12:07:05.521-05:00

If Cindy Sheehan's fantasy is to go back in time to commit infanticide, why couldn't she ask Mr. Peabody to set the date on the Wayback Machine to Saddam Hussein's first year on the planet instead of George W. Bush's?Revealing.

EDHnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6687031.post-1157651733024077442006-09-07T13:37:00.001-04:002008-11-16T12:10:05.507-05:00

Compare this "bad economic news" story on inflation in the Washington Post, which ominously reports "wages and benefits rose strongly," with the recent drumbeat of "bad economic news" stories on lagging wages.Notice when the "bad news" is rising costs, the statistic used is "labor compensation, which includes wages and employment benefits," to make it look larger, and when the "bad news" is

EDHnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6687031.post-1157561995235234782006-09-06T12:17:00.000-04:002006-09-07T14:30:00.726-04:00

While I'm loath to exaggerate the importance of Lakoffian "framing" of political language, it seems to me the increasing use of the term "realist" is much more euphemistic than the abbreviated "neocon."While both terms attempt to describe a foreign policy approach, the word "realist" tends to connote a level of certitude on the part of its proponents that should make most thinkers uncomfortable.

EDHnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6687031.post-1153682490474520692006-07-23T15:02:00.000-04:002006-07-26T13:40:40.076-04:00

Who Killed the Electric Car? is Hollywood's latest conspir-u-mentary film, narrated by one-time Toyota spokesvoice and conspiracy monger Martin Sheen, that purports to tells us the story behind why General Motors abandoned its all-electric EV-1 passenger vehicle.I don't plan to buy a ticket to see the film, but as the movie's website makes clear, the answer is to found in a Casablancian round-up

EDHnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6687031.post-1153170878947172612006-07-17T17:05:00.000-04:002006-09-02T10:29:55.540-04:00

Andrew Sullivan links to a Belgravia Dispatch from Greg Djerejian, "a conservative of the reality-based variety," who criticizes Instapundit Glen Reynolds on a variety of fronts without offering much rebuttal or citation.What to make of Djerejian's unhinged criticism? For example, Djerejian criticizes Reynolds' "repetitive primitive attacks on the 'Yale Taliban,'" without providing one link (

EDHnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6687031.post-1150308213809554052006-06-14T13:39:00.000-04:002006-07-17T19:43:40.946-04:00

In Detainees in Despair, the NYT gave editorial space to a Frenchman, Mourad Benchellali, who was released from Gitmo in 2004 after he:made the mistake of listening to my older brother and going to Afghanistan on what I thought was a dream vacation. His friends, he said, were going to look after me. They did — channeling me to what turned out to be a Qaeda training camp... I am a quiet Muslim —

EDHnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6687031.post-1132512801716832512005-11-20T13:33:00.000-05:002006-07-17T18:19:24.920-04:00

An Ohio judge ordered a woman to spend the night outside in the cold wilderness of northeast Ohio the day before Thanksgiving for abandoning some kittens outdoors. Torture?Certainly, the treatment would be banned by the McCain amendment, if not the Geneva Conventions. Andrew Sullivan decried this type of "torture" in a recent post. As Sullivan quotes one soldier in Iraq: "It was very cold up in

EDHnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6687031.post-1123977235778349252005-08-13T19:51:00.000-04:002005-08-13T19:53:55.776-04:00

James Schlesinger on the Theology of Global Warming.

EDHnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6687031.post-1123869049180299112005-08-12T13:00:00.000-04:002005-08-15T11:08:56.260-04:00

Captain Ed has done a great job of tracking the "Able Danger" story from the beginning, and offers continuing insight into the 9/11 Commission's loss of credibility.

EDHnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6687031.post-1122134618870857532005-07-23T11:55:00.000-04:002005-07-30T12:17:44.733-04:00

When the left argues that the Bush-Blair Iraq policy provoked the London bombings, aren't they essentially "profiling" the perpetrators as otherwise loyal opponents of the invasion of Iraq? Isn't that the logical implication of eliminating from consideration any other seditious or existing jihadist motive?Imagine the response if either Bush or Blair had been first to make the very same reductio

EDHnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6687031.post-1122125918120921992005-07-23T09:13:00.000-04:002005-07-23T09:43:35.483-04:00

Baghdad Boogie. Who did Saddam Hussein turn to after President Clinton launched Operation Desert Fox? Thomas Joscelyn's The Four Day War looks down the international press memory hole, like it was 1999, to remind us who reported the links and even predicted Osama' s "boogie to Baghdad."

EDHnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6687031.post-1119317623886349562005-06-20T21:05:00.000-04:002005-07-23T12:40:58.166-04:00

Andrew Sullivan says you have to "doubt the FBI interrogator who witnessed the appalling treatment of some detainees at Guantanamo" to take offense at Sen. Durbin's remarks.I suppose that's true if you see no logical need to connect the content of the FBI agent's emails and Durbin's remarks, or explain what Durbin was tying to accomplish with his words when he compared Gitmo to the worst

EDHnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6687031.post-1114195003499178472005-04-22T14:32:00.000-04:002005-07-23T10:41:30.333-04:00

Just Thinking: Remember back when Prince was the freak and Michael Jackson was considered the nice boy?

EDHnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6687031.post-1085924371331277382004-05-30T09:30:00.000-04:002004-06-01T08:06:34.256-04:00

Instapundit Glen Reynolds only glosses the surface of Mickey Kaus's analysis of John Kerry as a "straddler." Kaus actually argues Kerry is a "straddler"-plus. Kaus: "Like many alleged Kerry flip-flops, this one appears to really be a straddle presented in a dissembling fashion...The problem is that he shows each camp the half of his position that he wants it to see, keeping the other half

EDHnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6687031.post-1082157650646056692004-04-16T22:32:00.001-04:002008-11-16T12:12:39.436-05:00

Christopher Hitchens points out the reasons why Ted Kennedy's Vietnam analogy with Iraq, quite unlike a 1967 Oldsmobile, doesn't hold water.One critical Hitch distinction between Iraq and Vietnam: "the other Kennedy brothers started assassinating the very puppets they had installed there."Ouch!

EDHnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6687031.post-1082162626275293432004-04-16T22:31:00.000-04:002006-09-08T09:31:14.133-04:00

By now we know the familiar criticism of Richard Clarke. That he may be an egomaniacal bureaucrat. A wonkish nerd. Blinkered by his single-mind determination to thwart the al Qaida terrorist threat.But his competency to be "Terrorism Czar" is hardly questioned.Rep. Chris Shays (R-CT) sheds new light on Richard Clarke the man, the myth and his track record. Shays is Chairman of the National

EDHnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6687031.post-1081694013106838562004-04-11T09:48:00.000-04:002004-04-18T16:42:35.826-04:00

Perhaps the most overlooked revelation contained in the August 6, 2001 PDB memo to President Bush is the implicit assertion by U.S. intelligence that Osama bin Laden was not behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Not exactly hidden in the memo's first two sentences: "reports indicate bin Laden since 1997 has wanted to conduct terrorist attacks in the U.S. Bin Laden implied in U.S.

EDHnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6687031.post-1082320561306452972004-04-11T09:30:00.000-04:002004-05-30T17:08:15.013-04:00

So, if not al Qaida, do we know who was behind the 1993 WTC bombing? The uncertainty revealed by the 8-6-01 PDB memo reflects a long standing disagreement among counter-terrorism officials about the WTC bombing, state sponsorship and a possible link to Saddam. The current debate between Richard Clarke and Laurie Mylroie, an early Clinton advisor on Iraq, is revealing. Mylroie presents a

EDHnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6687031.post-1081651684996013652004-04-10T22:47:00.000-04:002004-06-03T15:14:04.813-04:00

In a surprise development, former national security advisor and author Richard Clarke criticized the investigative journalism of ABC News, while lauding the work of CBS News. Clarke became an on-air terrorism commentator with ABC News soon after he left government over a year ago. And yet, the pasty, balding Clarke remained largely unnoticed, even though "more Americans get their news from ABC

EDHnoreply@blogger.com