Kos, Markos Moulitsas Zúniga himself, the blogosphere’s favorite bolshie, is celebrating Halloween a little early this year, donning his “libertarian” costume, and penning the October lead essay on Cato Unbound.

It’s easy to understand why the powers-that-be at Cato let Kos in the door. The absolute incongruity of the idea, its cognitive dissonance, makes perfect journalistic sense. “Kos the libertarian” is arrant nonsense, but will inevitably arouse curiousity and attract readers in the same way National Inquirer headlines about flying saucers returning Elvis to proclaim the Second Coming of Princess Di will sell.

Hell, I even read it.

Of course, I was disappointed. Kos never writes brilliantly, and all he’s doing here is a not very impressive intellectual version of three card monte.

“It’s not the government that’s the real threat any longer. It’s the big corporations.” “The free market is the answer. But we need the government to build the marketplace, the roads, the courts… and the Tennessee Valley Authority, and to license hypertrichologists to make all that free market capitalism possible, and not ruinous.”

Kos is just selling the same old statist wine in bottles he has labelled “The New Libertarian Democrat.”

All this great new idea represents is one more galvanic twitch from the dying leftwing statism of the last century desperately trying to cling to existence a little longer by impersonating a more highly evolved political idea.

I do not believe this manuever will succeed. Nature has equipped the political competition with more than adequately keen perceptions to detect Kos’s fraud.

As of today, blogs which we know of carrying pictures of Adnan Al-Shukri Juma aka El Shukrijumah and other known associates wanted by US authorities, and reporting on the rumored mass terror attack on US cities during the coming month of Ramadan (starts September 24) include:

Pajamas Media

Little Green Footballs

The Jawa Report

Clarity & Resolve

Riehl World View

Ace of Spades HQ

Allahpundit

My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy

Cop the Truth

Noblesse Oblige

Drop me a line if I overlooked anyone.

China Daily reports a major blog controversy.

Chinabounder, an anonymous British expat and self-confessed wastrel in his early 30s, likes to boast on his weblog of his sexual conquests of Chinese women, including some of his students.

This has so outraged Shanghai’s web citizens that they have resolved to track him down and “kick the foreign trash out of China”.

In racy language suggesting a Terry-Thomas-like rogue cutting a dash in the seedy bars of Shanghai, Chinabounder describes seducing a different girl every night of the week.

The postings are also critical of Chinese male sexual prowess and contain occasional snipes at womanising and the frustrations of Chinese housewives.

The collection of juvenile if provocative musings on sexual mores in contemporary China may even be a hoax cooked up by artists to gauge the reaction in China to such unsavoury comments from a foreigner.

Access to his “Sex and Shanghai” blog – which attracted millions of readers – is currently denied as the author hides from a wave of contempt. Cyber-vigilantes, furious at his claimed seductions of married women and teenagers, have threatened him with a beating if they track him down and some comments are couched in dangerously xenophobic language.

Today, someone is claiming the whole thing was only a hoax, intended to test on-line vigilante behavior.

The not-currently working url is: http://www.chinabounder.blogspot.com

Deborah Frisch, the former instructor in Psychology at the University of Arizona, who resigned her position after posting a series of irrational and obscene comments on Jeff Goldstein’s Protein Wisdom blog-site (many including references to Goldstein’s children) was arrested, and arraigned on August 21, in Oregon on charges of stalking and telephone harassment.

WWB and Tim Dreier have the story, and lots of recent background.

Our own coverage of the original incidents may be found here, along with some subsequent blog humor here.

Jerry Jackson, the Chicago Sun Times’ Wednesday conservative editorialist, responds to Lanny Davis’ recent Wall Street Journal editorial which expressed surprise at finding so much “scary hatred” (aimed at Joe Lieberman) emanating from the left. (Lanny is a red-diaper baby, named after Upton Sinclair’s “progressive” agent Lanny Budd.) Scary hatred, in Lanny Davis’s view is a natural monopoly of the political right.

When I discuss Rush (Limbaugh) and others with some of my liberal friends, they all repeat the same worn out phrases. He (Rush) is full of hate, cuts people off if they disagree and in general spews vitriol against liberals. I then ask them if they ever listen to Rush, and to a person they always answer “of course not, but I know all these things because I read about him and hear these comments from my friends”.

Rush maintains an audience of somewhere between 20-25 million people because he delivers a quality program with lots of good humor and bases his comments on considerable research. He encourages calls from those that disagree and some days takes calls only from those who have a different philosophy.

Does Rush make fun of the liberals and make their immature ideas sound ridiculous? Absolutely. Does he do research to prove their talking points are without logic? You bet! Does he use vulgar phrases and emit hate in every word? Never.

For years now the progressives have tried to offset Rush with their own left leaning performers, and they went through a number of lefties that bombed on the air. Those have included Mario Como, Hightower, Al Gore and many others.

A few years ago the lefties thought they had the answer, and with enormous financial backing from such stalwarts as George Soros, created a whole network to feature the left and called it Air America. This network is 24 hours a day of Bush bashing, hate, vulgarity and out and out stupidity. Since I criticize the Limbaugh bashers who have never heard his program, I felt it was my duty to listen to Air America. I have done so over a period of about three months and here are some comments from just two 90- minute sessions:

1) “The entire Bush crime family should be executed.”

2) “George Bush is a g.d. lying s.o.b.” (by the host) There was no use of initials in this quote.

3) “Bush and Cheney are gleefully causing gas prices to go sky high to benefit their big oil friends.”

4) “Why didn’t Cheney turn the shotgun on himself after he wounded his friend?” (by the host)

5) “The Bush Administration planned and executed 9-11.”

6) “Rumsfeld should be hung by his thumbs and subjected to all the torture that was given to the alleged insurgents.”

7) “The Bush government purposely did not capture bin Laden because they wanted an excuse to go to war.” (by the host)

8) “We can hope that the insurgents will get information on Bush’s travel plans so they can shoot down his airplane.”

9) “Bush and the government planted explosives in the World Trade Center and that’s why the Twin Towers collapsed.”

On this latter point one of the hosts asked how this could be so since we all saw the airplanes fly into both towers. The answer to this was simple. One of the listeners explained that this was a conspiracy between Bush and the major TV networks. Through trick technology they transposed these airplanes onto the TV screens to fool all America – and on and on and on.

So these are all the peace loving, tolerant, well educated and so informed progressives and liberals that are trying to redirect America. If the subject wasn’t so serious, it could be great comedy. If you want something to keep you up at night, these patriots with their brilliance and liberal elite-ness vote in all the local and national elections.

The good news is that Air America is having a very tough time staying afloat. They have lost their radio outlets in New York and several other major markets. This network cannot raise enough advertising dollars to promote this brand of vicious propaganda. Eventually George Soros and other sponsors will no doubt tire of funding such trash and they will be required to compete in the free market.

Charles Johnson links to an Israeli blogger who reports that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s new blog set off a series of warnings from her Norton Internet Security program.

Apparently, Ahmadinejab’s site goes after Israeli visitors, but I seem to recall that he doesn’t like Americans much either, so….

****CAUTION*****
Users without good security software and all the latest Microsoft Security updates (Norton refers to “an attempt to exploit a vulnerability in Internet Explorer”) should avoid visiting this site.

The Personal Notes of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Charles Johnson, the publisher of Little Green Footballs, is unquestionably one of the most important figures on the right side of the Blogosphere. He is famous for debunking Dan Rather‘s forged National Guard letter during the 2004 presidential campaign, humiliating CBS News and ultimately causing Rather to step down.

Unlike such equivalently prominent blogging personalities as Glenn Reynolds and Michelle Malkin, one does not frequently seen Charles Johnson appearing on television, and few readers even know what the great man looks like.

Yesterday, Johnson reluctantly published a link to an appearance of his on CNN, discussing the faked Reuters photographs.

Scott Johnson at Powerline comes through with a link to a gallery of the work of the same photographer.

Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs has another scalp to hang on his barn door, next to Dan Rather’s.

Yesterday, LGF identified Photoshop-manipulated imagery in the Reuters’ photograph of alleged “burning buildings destroyed during an overnight Israeli air raid on Beirut’s suburbs August 5, 2006.”

Charles Johnson is an experienced photographer, and knowledgeable Photoshop user, and was readily able to recognize repetitive smoke patterns produced by application of the Photoshop clone tool.

Reuters has since admitted that LGF was right, and withdrawn the photo. Interestingly, Ynet.news reports that the photographer responsible was also the source of many of the photographs from Qana, also demonstrated by bloggers (specifically by EU Referendum) to have been staged.

Score two major Blogosphere corrections of the MSM falling for Hezbollah propaganda tricks in under a week.

India this week blocked access to “more than 15 websites,” including both a number of individual blogs, and (evidently on the basis of some technical confusion) to several major blog host sites, including Blogger.com, Blogspot, Typepad, and Geocities. The South African Clickatell.com was included.

The Government of India claimed in July of 2003 the right to ban websites in the interest of

sovereignty or integrity of India,
security of the state
friendly relations with foreign states and public order
preventing incitement to commissioning of any cognisable offences.

Some 17 individual blogs were originally banned. The Indian Government’s list (image here), according to CNN, included:

Two Hindu political sites:

1. HinduUnity.org
12. Hindu Human Rights

The personal blog of one Indian grad student studying in the US:

17. http://rahulyadav.com -personal web-site of an Indian kid earning an MIS at Indiana University. Blocked for having a few links to Indian political sites.

Seven US Conservative Blogs:

2. The Jawa Report
4. Opinipudit
5. Pirate’s Cove
6. “http://commonfolkcommonsense.blogspot.com” – previous url, currently a Japanese language blog. Should have been: Common Folk using Common Sense
7. My Vast Rightwing Conspiracy
8. Princess Kimberly – Url works, but ceased publication in March of 2004
9. http://merrimusings.typepad.com – previous non-working url banned. Should have been: Merri Musings
10. Macker’s World

Yahoo’s image search url:

15. http://imagesearch.yahoo.com – should be: http://images.search.yahoo.com/images

Four badly typo’d or defunct sites:

11. Dalitstan – an art site, whose name refers to Salvador Dali.
13. http://nndh.com – does not exist
14. http://bloodroyaltriped.com – does not exist. There is also no “http://bloodroyaltripod.com.”
16. http://imamali8.com – does not exist. Tried http://imamali5.com and http://imamali6.com without success as well.

A pretty motley collection, demonstrating some serious incompetence at the Indian Attorney General’s office. Obviously, any American blog which has criticized Islamic extremism (including this one) is just as worthy of the Indian Government’s ban as those on its current list.

The Indian Government, under criticism, yesterday retreated to the extent of issuing a clarification, stating that its intention was to ban only specific blogs, and not entire hosting sites. But the American Conservative blogs listed above remain banned today.

Rusty Shackleford’s original report.

It should hardly be surprising to anyone that, informally and in private, President Bush speaks like anybody else, using colloquial expressions and occasionally colorful language.

A press microphone, earlier today, accidentally caught a private conversation between Bush and Blair, in which the president said, (presumably referring to Kofi Annan and the UN) “what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this sh*t.”

(CNN story & video –If you actually care.)

Well, not since the day our second-grade nun banged her finger, and exclaimed “Darn!,” have I seen such a display of infantile astonishment at the descent of Olympian authority to the level of ordinary humanity.

This unutterably trivial event was dotingly recorded, memorialized, and pondered over from Manhattan to Timbuktoo today, proving once again (in case there was doubt in anybody’s mind) exactly how childish and inane the collective intelligence which identifies and comments on the day’s news events actually is.

Andrew Sullivan momentarily paused in his perenniel campaign of demanding kinder treatment for cuththroats to second the leftwing blogosphere’s posterboy of prolixity, Glenn Greenwald, in attacking the amiable Glenn Reynolds.

According to Andrew Sullivan, Reynolds is guilty, forsooth, “of never challeng(ing) in any serious way the abuses of power in this administration nor the extremism of the Malkinesque blogosphere.”

Those who haven’t been drinking moonbat koolaid don’t actually believe this administration is guilty of abuses of power at all. Really, if anything, it is guilty of neglecting to prosecute and punish war-time sedition and treason.

And face it, Andrew, anyone still really libertarian is on the right, and not on the San Francisco-style left. A commitment to socialism at home and surrender overseas, even seasoned with debauchery, is not libertarianism, old boy. Barry Goldwater was right: There’s nothing wrong with extremism in defense of liberty. Those of us still libertarian, still on the right, respect and admire Michelle Malkin precisely because she is a fighter. In fact, as a symbolic rejoinder on this subject, I’m going to add this little item to my links collection today.

I can understand, of course, how Michelle Malkin would scare someone like you.

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Turning to that odious windbag Greenwald, aptly recognized by Charles Johnson as “the left’s most dishonest blogger” (a title not easily achieved):

On Tuesday, Greenwald indulged in a little gamesmanship, first pooh-pooh’ing the significance of last weekend’s ravings in Jeff Goldstein‘s Comment section by deranged (then University of Arizona Psychology Instructor) Deborah Frisch (who subsequently resigned), and then proceeding to claim rhetorically the moral high ground in order to equate an obvious exasperated rant by Mischa of Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler with Dr. Frisch’s sinister and highly disturbing comments, applying imagined violence and sexual acts to Mr. Goldstein’s children.

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Mischa’s rant:

So keep that in mind. Should we ever make the mistake of capturing any of the perpetrators of the war crime against PFCs Menchaca and Tucker alive, we can forget about interrogating them in order to catch the rest, according to the Supreme Whores. Well, unless they’re willing to give up information if we ask “pretty please?”, since anything other than that has been deemed illegal by those blackrobed tyrants. Are we exaggerating? Try doing anything to those mutilating darlings of the Supremes in order to extract life-saving intel from them, and then wait for the Supreme Whores to decide that you were “humiliating” them in doing so.

Five ropes, five robes, five trees.

Some assembly required.

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Personally, I have a lot more of a problem with the name-calling language “Supreme Whores,” than I do with the “five ropes, five trees… Some assembly required” rhetorical flourish at the end.

OK, Mischa’s posting is not an example of closely-reasoned and totally exemplary blogging, but the current debates over public issues and policy are often emotionally charged, and we all blog unevenly. Many bloggers occasionally descend to the literary form of the rant. But, frankly, the most lurid right wing rant has a tendency to resemble an example of the most dignified and restrained expressions of partisanship found on many of the left’s best known blogs. Mischa would have to chug down a lot of tequila shots, and be in a really bad mood, to come even close to Digby or Atrios on an average day.

Greenwald’s alleged outrage over Mischa’s post is just like the faux-pious nonsense from leftwing moonbats filling up my own Comments section over the Hadji Girl song: just a bunch of opportunistic righteous posturing, the left’s favorite form of self-gratification.

There is a great deal of difference between the downright spooky comments involving his kids that Jeff Goldstein was receiving over the weekend, ultimately accompanied by some very real Denial of Service attacks, and Mischa’s crack. The Supreme Court was not put out of action for a few days, and Justice Stevens didn’t lose any sleep wondering if Mischa was really serious about that tree and that rope.