IMAO is a regular stop for me, and I read even if Rummy doesn't make an appearance. So I was glad to help Frank out when he needed a little video editing done - I got this new VAIO with lots of neat software and lots of horsepower.

Frank sent me a video of him doing some aikido that I did a little touch up on. This is in Windows Media format, so other OS's, sorry.

My little thought about how the lack of WMD would be bad for those who think Rove is the puppetmaster could have come right out of "Best of the Web" - last month! Honestly, I didn't read that way back when.

I'm gonna misuse James Lileks. Today's Bleat has a theme that people ought not to "lump" a whole set of beliefs to a whole set of people. But I'm going to take a quote from there and do just that. Because of one my themes is the differences in the way the Right and Left treat each other, and treat themselves.

Some elements of the right went through this in the 90s. A recent column by Ted Rall darkly suggests that Bush will suspend the 2004 election, claiming national security issues. Uh - right. This reminded me of the guys who called Art Bell at 1:47 AM back in the pre Y2K days, insisting that Clinton would use the global computer crash as a pretext for suspending the Constitution and making us all march to FEMA collection stations to have barcodes tattooed on our necks. The difference is that those guys had ugly web pages with GIANT LETTERS on orange backgrounds, and Rall has a deal with a mainstream syndicate.

That's one heck of a nutshell, there. Like the difference between Ann Coulter and Al Franken. Ann get's fired upon from Right and Left. Not only does Franken get adulation from the Left, he gets protection from them. The Right has no problem with either eating their own, or throwing them to the wolves.

I listened to Michael Savage last night just because all the controversy intrigued me in what he would say in the face of it all. A lot of talk hosts would avoid it. Or a real provocateur would revel in it. He didn't do either. But he made a point that the Right does need to think about, even if it comes from an evil hatemonger insert whatever else people on the Right side of the aisle have written about him - that the Right is letting the Left pick off guys on our side, one by one. Not just letting, helping.

Sure, there is a measure of "doing the right thing," of standing on principle, etc. But skewering our own doesn't buy us any credibility on the Left. Think someone on the Left is going, that Andrew Sullivan may want lower taxes and support President Bush on most things, but he is okay because he doesn't like Ann Coulter's book? By the same token, is anyone on the Left going "Carville and Begala are over the top, they are hurting our message."

The questions, they answer themselves.

Not sure why LT Smash wasn't in there before. He is now. Balloon Juice is too. Evidently he caught the "Africa is about oil" thing prior to my posting.

Ann Coulter is getting a bad rap, lately. I haven't read Treason (or any of her books), so I have no idea if it is as bad as they say. Of course, even if it isn't, the world would come down on her for defending Joe McCarthy anyway - even though she was right. At any rate, Andrew Sullivan (in uncharacteristically untimely fashion) takes off on her for saying something catty about Hillary.

Again, this represents part of the double standard between the Right and the Left. When Al Franken wrote Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot, his partisans loved it. I still remember when the publisher advertised on NPR (I'm sorry, there is no advertising. When they got a sponsorship announcement.) that Laura Wertheimer took such delicious joy in announcing the book title. Franken is still considered by many as the choice for the talk show host of the Left.

And don't get me started about Michael Savage. Kinda interesting that at the same time the Dixie Chicks are testifying before Congress about how they were oppressed for simply "expressing their opinion," and receiving sympathy even from Senator John McCain, the rest of the world, including on the Right, is gleefully waving the torches and dancing on Savage's coffin. Just because he expressed his opinion.

UPDATE: I just saw that Tobacco Road Fogey noticed that about Savage already. Yesterday.

Instapundit sez:

No doubt we'll be hearing that Liberia is all about oil, soon.

And at Time Magazine:

He may even be poised to commit troops to Liberia to help prevent yet another catastrophic African fratricide, a substantial expansion of military humanitarian peacekeeping of the kind for which he had once sharply criticized his predecessor. But while AIDS, trade, investment, democracy, development and the moral obligation of preventing mass bloodshed may dominate many of the speeches, Mr. Bush is first and foremost a national-security president. His agenda in Africa remains grounded in his priority of defending the realm, and the increased U.S. engagement in Africa is driven by two familiar strategic concerns: Oil and terrorism.

Well, this explains why the press wasn't covering Bush's Africa policy - they hadn't figured out the spin to make it something bad yet. But Time is on the case.

UPDATE: Jinkies. I informed Glenn, and didn't even get a link!

UPDATE II: Note to self: if you blog it, and send it to Instapundit, send the link to your blog entry, not just to the item!

The Commonwealth of Virginia, which throughout the 90s had been solidly Republican, voted for a Democrat governor in 2001. There was some "time for a change" in the mix, some "this guy is a right-wing extremist rhetoric," and James Gilmore, the last Republican governor, made his own mistakes. Mark Warner ran as that kind of centrist Democrat that they like to pretend to be - not against guns, and of course he wasn't planning to raise taxes:

Warner, who managed Wilder's campaign for governor in 1989, has spent much of the past few weeks rebutting the assertion that he is a fiscal liberal and echoed that theme in thanking Wilder today. 'The ability to manage a budget without raising taxes is a model I'll emulate,' Warner said.

Of course not. That was just the scare tactics of the Republican party.

Of course, our moderate governor is proposing new taxes. Including a tax on Internet sales. Who could have seen that coming? Certainly not the press in Virginia:

Earley strategists said tonight that the GOP candidate may again focus on Warner's money, but they said he was more likely to focus on the suddenly harsh tone of the new Warner ad. Its narrator said: "The press says Earley is lying. . . . The press says he's dishonest -- a hypocrite. Earley's shamed himself. It's desperate politics as usual. . . . No positive plan, more false negative attacks. That's why we just can't trust Mark Earley with our future."

Talk about your false negative attacks. But anyone who expected differently was horribly naive.

I've trimmed off some folks who have dropped out. One of the one's I'll really miss is Patrick Ruffini. I have it on good authority that he is actually on a secret mission. Speaking of secret missions, maybe he would like the post below.

Or all those lefties were who used to preach the "W is a moron manipulated by his puppet masters" line but are now on the "Bush is an evil mastermind who is able to hoodwink even really smart guys like John F. Kerry, who served in Veitnam," what if they were right the first time?

You know, what if all of statecraft is really a Rovian plan to roll back the clock and all that. Wouldn't he deliberately suppress information about WMD so that the wild-eyed Left could get all whipped into a frenzy, and then later look just plain silly? I mean, you let it go on just long enough so there could be a real frontrunner among the 9 Democratic candidates for President, let him build up a head of steam, and suck all the money out of the pockets of the Left. Wait for there to be a real buzz around him, and when it is all at fever pitch, drop the bomb - literally?

Imagine where Dean would be 2 weeks or a month from now, still without conclusive evidence of WMD or al Qaeda. Imagine all the summer doldrum stories, the calls for Congressional investigations, spurred or seconded by the Dean wing.

Imagine what that would look like when a bunker full of VX artillery shells is unearthed. When al Ani confesses he met with Atta in Prague in April of 2001.

Not saying this is one of those rope-a-dope deals. Just the Democrats better hope their first take was wrong.

Today is supposed the big day. Or a big day, anyway. It's still early here, so the blogosphere is still asleep, apparently. But the major news has nothing on it. This is an eerie silence.

UPDATE: Well this explains it - plans cancelled due to a police state. Link via Instapundit.

On a similar note, next time someone argues that we have walked away from Afghanistant, read this:

Since 2001, the United States has spent or committed to $2 billion on aid to Afghanistan, The European Union has spent or committed to $450 million.

...

Another positive sign: There were fears before the U.S.-led war that Afghanistan might explode as its religious and ethnic groups made power grabs after the Taliban was removed. But there have been no serious uprisings. And work continues on a new constitution and toward national elections in June.

Spotted at Andrew Sullivan.

Mullings, by Rich Galen, today:

The pilot said for the most part the people with whom he had come into contact were "extremely friendly, and reminded us that the "power is on, people are conducting business in the markets; it's not the smoking ruins that you think."

Read it, and remember to be be optimistic about Iraq. There are people, Americans even, who want us to "lose the peace" for their own petty reasons. One way they could succeed is making the rest of us think that we've already lost. It just isn't so.