Oopsie

As T-bogg has pointed out, it seems that the idiots over at Powerline were wrong, wrong, wrong, while Murtha was right. Powerline said:

James Taranto makes a great point about the comments of Rep. John Murtha regarding the investigation into whether U.S. troops committed war crimes in a November incident where 15 Iraqi civilians were killed in Haditha, Iraq. Murtha claims that an internal investigation will show "there was no firefight, there was no IED (improvised explosive device) that killed these innocent people. Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood."

As Tananto notes, however, Murtha's description is self-contradictory because if the Marines "overreacted," then the killings were not premeditated. And if the killings were not premeditated, they were not in cold blood.

But it actually seems to be the case that really bad stuff really did happen:

A military investigation into the deaths of two dozen Iraqis last November is expected to find that a small number of marines in western Iraq carried out extensive, unprovoked killings of civilians, Congressional, military and Pentagon officials said Thursday.

Plus note the dumb-ass debaters argument that this guy makes and the Powertools endorse. But this isn't surprising because they do it themselves all the time--form, but no substance.

STUPID, STUPID MICHELLE MALKIN

Malkin has a post up accusing Harry Reid of being a hypocrate, because, as she puts it:

When President Bush leads the way and refuses to let Europe dawdle with dictators, he's a war-mongering "cowboy" who "swaggers" too much and doesn't do enough to allow our coalition partners to do the heavy lifting.

Now, the same bed-wetting Dem Senator--Harry Reid--who accused Bush of swaggering is swaggering about how the President isn't doing enough to lead the way on Iran...

If you actually read the article, or even the portion she posted, it's pretty obvious that what Reid is saying is that the adminstration is not involved in the diplomatic process at all:

"Our not being involved diplomatically in trying to solve the situation in Iran shows the Bush failure in foreign policy there and elsewhere."

And he said the U.S. has no military option in Iran.

"We don't have the resources to do it" because of the ongoing war in Iraq," he said.

Reid is saying that the U.S. needs to be involved in the diplomatic process, instead of leaving it up to the above mentioned countries. He then rejects the military option. The obvious inference is that Reid is operating under the assumption that the U.S. is not making a good faith effort to find a multi-lateral diplomatic solution to the problem (more likely, a multi-lateral solution period) and is instead determined to go to war, no matter who comes along. Does this sound familiar? Of course it does, because it's exactly what happened with Iraq. But for some reason Malkin thinks there is an inconsistency here. Probably because she's stupid.

Better Idea--Build the Wall out of Lego Bricks

So Malkin is getting behind this idea of sending bricks to Congress as a show of support for getting tough on immigration generally and building a wall specifically. Get it? Bricks. Wall. Very clever. So as if the idea is not silly enough on its own, there's this:

Many readers recommend sending Congress a double message by mailing in LEGO bricks -- support immigration enforcement and Denmark.

Heh

So I saw this on Powerline:

Andrew Sullivan argues that President Bush is too unpopular to undertake a preemptive strike against Iran. But one could just as easily make the opposite argument -- that Bush's low approval numbers make it more likely that he'll strike, particularly since opinion polls show wide support for such action. This, of course, is the "wag-the-dog" theory. I put no stock in it because there's no reason to believe that Bush will make his decision based on political calculation. For the same reason, I put no stock in Sullivan's speculation.

I also like the fact that there is no sourcing for the notion that there is broad support for a "preemptive strike". I wondered why this was the case, and thought to myself, "Maybe because it's bullshit". Sure enough, the LA Times did a poll on the issue, and to say that there is broad support is misleading at best. Specifically:

Forty-eight percent said they would support military action against Iran if it continues to produce material that can be used to develop a nuclear bomb, down from 57 percent in January. Forty percent oppose military action, up from 33 percent in January.

First, just going by the numbers alone, 48-to-40 doesn't seem that broad to me. But whatever, it's more than those opposed, so for the sake of argument I'll grant the point. But look at the trends--not good at all.

Then there's this:

A majority -- 54 percent -- said they ``don't trust'' Bush to make the right decision about whether the U.S. should go to war with Iran, compared with 42 percent who said they do trust him.

So even assuming there is "broad" support for an invasion in some general or abstract sense, there doesn't seem to be the same level of support when Bush would be the one running the show. Sure seems like a fly in the ointment to me.

This is funny

Here's a video that I don't think we're going to here on "Top of the Pops" any time soon. I'm not sure what is funnier, the song or the comments about the song. My favorite: "I love this! It gives me hope for the future--young guys rocking out for the "right" cause! Japatriot." That's right--rocking out.

Also, I wouldn't be surprised if Billy Joel sues. And no, I don't think this is supposed to be a joke, which is actually pretty scary.

No sense of humor

So here's a post that is supposed to show that Al Franken is totally unhinged or whatever, because of the following exchange:

Franken: "I think they should just fire these guys in order of exhaustion. I think Rumsfeld is looking real tired."

That last line drew a laugh from Lauer and the Today set. However, Mr. Franken, who felt free to dish insults out, became very testy when Michael Smerconish noted how somber the author of "Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot" seemed:

Smerconish: "Yeah, Al sounds a little exhausted to me this morning."

Franken: "It's 4:11AM! It's four in the morning here....Screw you! I got up at four in the morning."

Franken, who was appearing via remote from California and thus in a different time zone,couldn’t let the issue go:

Franken: "I got up at 4AM, Michael! Four friggen AM!"

The post also has a link to the video of the exchange. Watch it. It is so incredibly obvious that he was kidding...but that's lost on this tool.

Damn, Malkin is hella stoopid

So she's got this post up which features a Google News search of the term "undocumented", which returns a bunch of hits from various news organizations. Supposedly, this proves that there is some specific effort to use this more politically correct term instead of something like "illegal".
Of course, the thinking here is just stupid. She's surprised she gets sources that use the term "undocumented" when that's what she searched for? That's what it's supposed to do. Do the same thing with "illegal immigration" and you get plenty of major news sources referring to illegal immigration and the like.

Idiot.