I just put up MT-Blacklist because the spamments were so annoying. It was so cake to install. If you want it, get it from the author, Jay Allen. Cool!

A good piece from The American Thinker, link via Powerline Blog. More for the "maybe we weren't wrong after all" pile. I especially like this:

Then in January of this year, Danish forces discovered 120mm mortar shells with a mysterious liquid inside that initially tested positive for blister agents. Further tests in Southern Iraq and in the US were, of course, negative. The Danish Army said, “It is unclear why the initial field tests were wrong.” This is the understatement of the year, and also points to a most basic question: If it wasn’t a chemical agent, what was it? More pesticides? Dishwashing detergent? From this old soldier’s perspective, I gain nothing from putting a liquid in my mortar rounds unless that stuff will do bad things to the enemy.

Precisely what I want to know. One thing I do know - there is more to the story than we know. We aren't going to Google up the answers, and it isn't recorded in the New York Times.

Businesses Add 308,000 Jobs in March

Hoping for bad news is an awful place to be.

Bomb found on Spanish train.

Good thinking, Spanish electorate!

I was reading Time (sorry) and saw this Joe Klein column, complaining that the Bush administration has gone ugly and personal on Richard Clarke. About the only thing he cites is "On the day after Clarke first made his charge on 60 Minutes that before 9/11 the White House had minimized the terrorism threat, it sent out its biggest gun—the Vice President of the United States—to defend its performance." So defending your record is going personal, these days.

Well, I think I found out what's going on, by trolling through some Lefty websites. They claim that there is some sort of whispering campaign going on, that the Bush administration is trying to discredit Clarke by saying that he is gay. Wow. Here I am in the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy and I had never heard that! It has never appeared or been insinuated in any of the news I have seen, and not in the part of the blogosphere I normally frequent. And if this were really happening, wouldn't Andrew Sullivan be blowing his stack about now?

Go ahead and Google "Richard Clarke gay." Lefty type sites, mostly blogs, are the result. Seems like the Left is trying to smear Clarke as gay, to me. Even worse, they are trying to impugn the Bush administration with the accusation - just read some of the outraged comments on those blogs. There is an ugly, personal campaign going on. But it is the Left doing it.

Update: Rich Lowry in The Corner hits on this obliquely - pointing to a Krugman column that also hits on it obliquely. Krugman thinks that CNN is carrying Bush administration water. He's definitely gone of the rails.

Note, though, that in the CNN transcript in The Corner, the reporter expressly denies that Bush administration officials are talking about Clarke's personal life.

New comment spam. Several comments together. Starts with spam, a response that accuses it of being spam, a response to that with the original name saying it isn't spam, a post from another name saying, see, he's back, can't be spam. All from the same IP address.

Of course it is gone and the IP is banned, so you can't see it or mistakenly click on the commercial links.

I don't understand this spam. Could this possibly be working? A lot of the automated ones seem to hit old posts, so noone is going to see it. And it is just pissing me off.

Looking forward to MT 3 or something. I may end up closing comments to stop the crap.

About maybe the President wasn't wrong about WMD.

What I call the Bush cycle. Michael Novak sees it in The Corner. Key point:

I have no idea what made the President decide to send Condi to testify this time. But I have seen this move too often to believe it is not a designed play. If it is not, well, it looks like the old game plan, and in any case it has again worked like a charm.

People are wondering if the terrorists could affect the US elections. Sure they could. And it wouldn't take a huge event with a huge a plan. They could change our elections, and change history. It's happened before.

I date the current war between the United States and Islamic fascists to the assassination of Robert Kennedy in 1968. I think most people think of Sirhan Sirhan as a poster child for gun control - he was some nut who was able to get a cheap gun and kill another Kennedy. But Sirhan Sirhan was a Palestinian who, in his diary, wrote that he would kill Kennedy because he was afraid that he would be too friendly to Israel.

The murder of RFK definitely affected that election. I think probably RFK would have won the nomination, and would have beaten Nixon. Imagine how differently history would have turned out.

I've noticed that when CNN reports on the "traded barbs" line, they always say "Kerry criticized" or "Kerry blasted," but for the GOP, it is the "the President claims" and "the Vice President accused."

But they can't hold the spin forever. On the morning show, there was a report about John Kerry's MTV appearance, focusing on this bit:

Kerry: Oh sure. I follow and I'm interested. I don't always like, but I'm interested. I mean, I never was into heavy metal. I didn't really like it. I'm fascinated by rap and by hip-hop. I think there's a lot of poetry in it. There's a lot of anger, a lot of social energy in it. And I think you'd better listen to it pretty carefully, 'cause it's important.

The young lady presenter just laughed.

I think I know why the President won't just come out an admit he was wrong about WMD in Iraq.

Could just just be that he wasn't. That's all I'm saying.

In Miami, lots of people wear sunglasses at night.

People drive Ferraris to a crab shack.

And Rolls Royces to sushi bars.

Okay, that part only in South Beach.

Lileks wrote a piece about New York and Times Square before (I'll dig up a link at some point) and how Times Square has lost a lot now that it is cleaned up. It always amazed me that New Yorkers hated Times Square with Barnes & Noble more than they did the sex shops. Times Square was rough country. Now you can go there.

But I kind of understand it, now. I drove through the Deco area - I really like Deco - and the first part that I saw had that great architecture, but also I was a bit disappointed to see the same old stores in those buildings. Banana Republic, Gap, etc. As I went further down, though, some original occupants, particularly the hotels, stood out, unhomogenized. I suppose that it is possible that without those generic occupants, those buildings might have been torn down, or would be in disrepair, so it may be a very good thing they are there. But I can understand - a little, anyway - New Yorkers' nostalgia for grimy old Times Square.

You enter the ring against your opponent who has risen through the ranks to face you. You circle. You throw an exploratory jab. Your opponent collapses, bleeding badly, only to crawl to the corner for a rest, bashing his teeth out on the corner post as he makes it there.

If that happened, what would you do? You would be confused. As I think the Bush team is.

Kerry came out, The Administration hit him with some decent adds, and Kerry spent the next two weeks self-immolating. It's amazing. His handling of his vote on the $87B was atrocious, his handling of his senatorial record is worse, and when he was attacked as a thin skinned liberal who wanted to raise your taxes, Kerry showed remarkable stupidity in proving via denial, the charge. And then there was that moronic statement about the secret service agent.

Most of my buddies on the left think that Rove and company are not doing that great of a job, and I somewhat agree. But I think they are nonplussed about Kerry. Mainly because I think decision is this. Do you utterly destroy Kerry right now, do you back off, or do you give him a slow death?

If you kill him right now, there is a chance that the Democrats will nominate someone else, and then you have spent good money for nothing. Also, you may come off badly to the public. People enjoy a good contest, but not a beating.

If you back off, you give the guy a second chance, something that may not be wise tactically.

Giving him a slow death splits the difference, but again that may make you look bad, and give Kerry another shot all at once.

So what would you do?

I don't know, but once again I am amazed at how inept the Democrats have become at the game of politics. I have always considered them the equals, if not superior to the Republicans in political skill, risk assesment, spin and message discipline. But right now, they are horrible. All the pro's are silent. No Gephardt, Daschle or Clinton on the radar, except for that atrocious event. It would confuse the crap out of me too.

I also know that the Democrats will utterly deny this, and state that they think Kerry is holding his own with Bush. The polls say something very different. And once again this shows that utter inability of the Democrats to objectively view the situation.

Yesterday I was watching Fox News Channel, and there was an interview with John Loftus, which was a regular analyst spot on Sunday mornings. I've heard Loftus on the radio before - he seems to be a one-man DEBKA file. Astounding revelations, sketchily sourced. His website doesn't shed any light.

The starting point of the interview was some recently released information that came from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed - that AQ intended to attack Heathrow Airport just after 9/11. Loftus added that the CIA had obtained an AQ memo that they called the "Domino Theory Memo," that laid out a political plan to isolate the US from its allies by attackign them, starting with Spain.

I am skeptical of Loftus, and this memo seems a little too convenient, as well as outlining a level of political sophistication about the West that I wouldn't ascribe to AQ. However, if it is true, this would mean that this war is a lot bigger in scope than it seems. Bob Novak wrote a column last week that said that AQ had changed over to an overtly political strategy.

I am still skeptical of the whole thing, but it is definitely food for thought.

Miami.