Oh, we weren't? Well. That's too bad.

One of my favorite Latin artists is Carlos Vives. A sampling:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7pTAcppFeQ

He's Colombian but has lived in Puerto Rico for years and years, partly because of, well, issues in Colombia, one might say.

I was introduced to his music through "Escalona," perhaps the wildest telenovela ever (well, there is some Brazilian product that could compete), in which he plays a legendary vallenato musician who has, shall we say, adventures.

Someone videoed the final episode from their teevee:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thxZNNrLW8Y

May be a little tough to figure out what's going on. Let's just say somebody has a tail. Could it be.... SATAN??

(In previous episodes, they found the crash site of Amelia Earhart. No lie.)

Needless to say, it's all good.

A denial that sober, responsible Bush followers would have associated themselves with Gaubatz. (This is from Patterico's blog -- the civil, dignified web site that literally categorizes "Glenn Greenwald" as "Scum". Check out http://patterico.com/category/scum if you think I'm kidding.)
http://patterico.com/2007/04/22/theres-a-third-thing-thats-certain-ben-death-taxes-and-glenn-greenwald-lying

4/22/2007
There’s a Third Thing That’s Certain, Ben: Death, Taxes, and Glenn Greenwald Lying
— Patterico @ 12:40 pm
. . . Finally, we have Power Line’s Scott Johnson, who merely says that the article is very interesting . . .

So says Patterico, but here's what Claremont Institute Fellow Johnson actually said.

http://powerlineblog.com/archives/017398.php
April 20, 2007
MEET DAVE GAUBATZ
The current issue of the (UK) Spectator has some extremely interesting articles. The article by Washington Post editorial board member Anne Applebaum on Vladimir Putin is one of them, but none surpasses Melanie Phillips's "I found Saddam's WMD bunkers" in interest. Phillips's article tells the story of Dave Gaubatz, an agent in the US Air Force’s Office of Special Investigations who searched Iraqi WMD sites after the fall of Saddam.
- - Posted by Scott at 07:43 AM

Patterico, the self-described pontificator, issues his not-so-papal bull:

One of the three bloggers says the article is very interesting. The other two, Glenn Reynolds and Allah [Allahpundit at Malkin's "Hot Air" blog], actually cast doubt on Gaubatz’s claims. Yet, despite the clear evidence that Allah and Reynolds don’t buy the theory, Greenwald nevertheless claims that Allah (and Reynolds) are both pointing at Gaubatz as the “Iraqi Weapons Expert who knows the Real Truth behind Saddam’s Missing WMDs.”

Allahpundit's disclaimer is that he only jumped off the cliff because all his friends were jumping off the cliff: "Melanie Phillips’s new piece in the Spectator is making the rounds so I might as well toss up a link. This story isn’t new — FrontPage was writing about Gaubatz last April and the Times featured him in a story about diehard WMD believers in June. He seems credible, but I must say, stories about the continuing hunt for WMDs at this point seem to me like a right-wing version of Trutherism. Besides, even if Gaubatz is right . . . " Pope Patterico seems to have tuned out the, um, subliminable message from Allahpundit.

Reynolds, of course, ALWAYS disclaims that he was merely linking, without a hint of approval. In this case, he tried to cover his private parts both frontways and backways by the circumlocution, "Er, wouldn’t this be news if it were true? Maybe not, these days." Which is about as subtle as a toddler playing peekaboo.

Patterico, so proud of his Debate Club skills that he could just bust, finishes up by writing,

"P.P.S. Last night a friend of mine (who is not one of the people Greenwald criticizes in his post, by the way) asked me: Do you think he’s dense or just a hack who doesn’t care if he’s right?"

False dichotomy, but nicely projected.

Giving the White House to these guys was like giving the car keys to Toonces. Or, on second thought, it may be unfair to subsume "Patterico & Pals" under the rubric of "funny felines". Unfair, that is, to my own cats, who'd certainly never cat-egorize any humans as "scum." (We're "the household staff.")

Not to go all pedantic on me, kdwmson? God forbid. As for Secaucus, I'm sure it won't mind being misspelled. It's Spring, and in Spring, an old man's fancy turns to homophones, don't you know?

As for what no one does, you'd be the world's expert on that, I suppose? Or are you just one of those jokers who insists on saying Peking because the damned Chinese have no right to tell us how to say the name of their capital city? I mean, after all, they don't even speak English, do they?

There really were WMDs after all, and the Axis of Evil is passing them around like doobies.

After Iraq gave them to China, China would have eventually given them to Osama bin Laden who would have launched them from Iran.

And that would all justify this war we're losing.

If anyone needs me, I'll be on my flying unicorn, heading over to Happy Hour with Santa Claus and Jiffy Hoffa.

Anyway, Mr. Greenwald, that was all very depressing in an interesting kind of way...or interesting in a depressing kind of way.

Thanks,

A year ago David Horowitz and others of his bent told their readers that a former Iraqi general saw great stockpiles of Iraqi WMD in Syria. Much like Judith Miller's adventures in the desert with Chalabi's cousin,with absolutely no proof. So where is the general? Did he take his expense payments and disappear? Did he even exist at all? When it comes to any Iraqi assertion about never-seen Ba'athist WMD, the warmonger Right demands our complete faith in the invisible.

I read an account of newly arrived American's briefings in the Baghdad embassy: they are told not to trust any Iraqis. So the centurions of empire on site have an equally generalized lack of faith in every Iraqi's word. Whichever way you turn, the lack of empiricism by the self-described imperialists bodes ill.

I enjoy being a troll at RedState.com from time to time, though it's tricky to post there given their constant hunt for mobys, purity trolls, and all the other things I might want to be. Anyway, recently there was an article there about the latest WMDs found in Iraq (such stories come to RedState.com with some regularity. This time the offending substance was nitric acid, a common industrial chemical that any civilized nation is going to have in abundance. But because it can be used to "make explosives" and because it "can burn the skin" - all these meathead armchair chemists were touting it as conclusive proof that finally the WMDs had been found! I pointed out that nitric acid was a common industrial chemical and was immediately shouted down. Nobody wanted to learn any chemistry if it meant they'd have to reassess their latest proof of the rightness of Bush's invasion.

Read it all for yourself, it's a hoot:

http://www.redstate.com/stories/war/more_chemical_weapons_found_in_iraq