The site just collects up postcards confessing dark thoughts and dirty laundry.

Well, that's just common sense, really. Who doesn't? Who's ambivalent about pooping in public?

Seems to me you are either very anti-pooping in public, or, for a couple of rather foul koproexhibitionists, very much in favor of it. I don't think there's much middle ground there.

I owe someone a hat-tip for this, but I've had the thing open for so long I forget who tipped me.

Posted by: Ace at 11:05 AM | Comments (40)
Post contains 85 words, total size 1 kb.

Give the man a chance.

Trump beside models of proposed Twin Towers II.
He told the skeletal, craven "Freedom Tower" "You're fired."

Denouncing the existing plans for rebuilding Ground Zero as the "worst pile of crap architecture I've ever seen," Trump argued that erecting two new, even taller twin towers was the only valid response to the terrorists.

...

Describing the Freedom Tower as an "empty skeleton," Trump said its construction would be a capitulation.

"If we rebuild the World Trade Center in the form of a skeleton ... the terrorists win. It's that bad," he told reporters gathered in the lobby of his 5th Avenue Trump Towers headquarters on Manhattan.

...

The replacements would be at least 1,475-feet tall, more than 100 feet higher than their previous incarnations. The new North Tower would also boast a 383-foot communications mast.

"It's bigger, it's stronger and it's better than the previous World Trade Center, and it sets the right tone and the right attitude," Trump said, adding that some members of the public who had seen the model had been moved to tears.

It's the right thing to do. It's the right monument for those who perished. And it's the right way to say a hearty "Go Fuck Yourselves And Die Slowly" to the mass-murderers and their allies.

And if it takes a brash, cocky, tacky guy like Trump to get the job done-- well, that's America, ain't it? Brash, cocky, and tacky is what we are.

I Repeat: It's the Right Thing To Do:

Pic of models swiped from File It Under.com.

But Who Would Work There? Update: Karol asked Deroy Murdock this on yesterday's show, and he said something like, "I'd work there, as a proud American man."

Let me extend and revise his remarks:

I'd work there, I'd live there, I'd visit the museums and memorials, I'd eat at the goddamned restaurant, I'd play the fucking slots three times a month if he puts his trashy casinos in them.

Another Answer To the Question: With the Towers destroyed, the Empire State Building became the next major NYC landmark tempting terrorists.

And yet there has not been, as far as I know, a mass exodus of tenants from the ESB, has there?

There will be businesses and residential tenants who don't want to be located in the Twin Towers II. So what? There are businesses and tenants who don't want be located in a lot of buildings, for various reasons.

We don't need the entire city to want to live or work there. We need enough businesses, workers, and residential tenants to (nearly) fill the thing up.

I suspect that there are a lot of people who will jump at the chance to relocate in the rebuilt Towers. Almost certainly more than enough to make the project economically viable.

Unless we truly have become a city of cowards... which I don't think we have yet. A city dominated by liberal hand-wringers and worryworts, yes. But surely all courage and all defiance has not yet departed New York City.

Posted by: Ace at 09:28 AM | Comments (81)
Post contains 537 words, total size 4 kb.

And to think I was psyched when James Woods came out!

I love Vader's new, NASCAR-esque look.

Thanks to (who else?) SithChick.

Posted by: Ace at 09:22 AM | Comments (11)
Post contains 42 words, total size 1 kb.

A thourough debunking of the Times' latest hysteria over weapons in space from DefenseTech.

According to DT, the Times conflates pie-in-the-sky and very theoretical (and unlikely) weapons systems with more practical and likely ones, all in the service of giving its liberal readers something to whine about over cocktails.*

*At least that's my interpretation. DT doesn't quite share my politics, I don't think, particularly on SDI.

Posted by: Ace at 08:30 AM | Comments (8)
Post contains 88 words, total size 1 kb.

I'm beginning to become increasingly distresed to be linked by the Huffington Compost, which seems to be little else but vapid posts about nothing at all or else batshit-crazy screeds by certifiable lunatics:

At present, I have a few thoughts I can certainly not prove, but the gaffe over the Michael Isikoff story in Newsweek concerning the Koran and the toilet is redolent with bad odor. Who, indeed, was Isikoff's supposedly reliable Pentagon source? One's counter-espionage hackles rise. If you want to discredit a Dan Rather or a Newsweek crew, just feed them false information from a hitherto reliable source. You learn that in Intelligence 101A.

...

As for the riots at the other end, on this occasion, they, too, could have been orchestrated. We do have agents in Pakistan, after all, not to mention Afghanistan.

Obviously, I can offer no proof of any of the above.

Shut up, really?

There still resides, however, under my aging novelist's pate a volunteer intelligence agent, sadly manque. He does suggest that the outcome was too neat. It came out too effectively for one side, one special side. At the age of eighty-two I do not wish to revive old paranoia, but Lenin did leave us one valuable notion, one, at any rate. It was "Whom?" When you cannot understand a curious matter, ask yourself, "Whom? Whom does this benefit?" Dare I suggest that our Right has just gained a good deal by way of this matter? In every covert Department of Dirty Tricks, whether official, semi-official, or off-the-wall, great pride is best obtained by going real deep into down-and-dirty-land—Yeah! Expedite the consequences.

See the Day By Day Cartoon below.

I think Chris Muir needs to update.

RNC Dirty-Tricksters Disguised As Muslims Provoked Riots in Afghanistan and Pakistan-- It Might Be True (R)!

Thanks, I suppose, to Chickpea. Although this sort of lunatic paranoia is dispiriting.

I am almost filled with heart-ache, I don't mind confessing.

Posted by: Ace at 08:11 AM | Comments (22)
Post contains 355 words, total size 2 kb.

But it had nothing to do with Rathergate:

CBS said Wednesday it is cancelling the Wednesday edition of "60 Minutes," insisting the decision was made because of poor ratings and not last fall's ill-fated story about President Bush's military service.

...

"This was a ratings call, not a content call," Moonves said Wednesday.

...

Moonves said that story didn't figure in the decision to cancel it, "not even slightly."

I'm sure it was mostly about ratings. A show that was getting decent ratings could stay on the air no matter how egregiously deceptive its reportage.

Hell, Keith Olbermann remains on the air and his ratings are only slightly better than Fox's short-lived series, The World's Safest and Most Conscientious Drivers. Which was basically just an hour of people executing perfect parallel-parking and following the next car at a vert-safe five car lengths.

But not even "slightly" about Rathergate? Even indirectly so, in that Rathergate could not have helped the show's ratings, right?

Your Liberal Media

You'll believe anything we say. Because you're fucking stupid.

Thanks to The Wardrobe Door, who also pans Bill Gates' plan to install Windows into "SmartPhones" that can play music. I'm not the Apple fan Wardrobe Door seems to be, but I do worry about having my phone rely on Microsoft's unreliable operating system.

Whoops! Forgot to Mention This! I cut this out of the article, because I wanted to deal with it out-of-order-- you know, after making the main point.

But for those of you who think Dan Rather is gone... well, he's not quite gone yet. From the bit I meant to quote but forgot to:

Dan Rather, the newsmagazine's lead correspondent, will contribute stories to the Sunday edition of "60 Minutes," said CBS Chairman Leslie Moonves.

I have a feeling he'll be doing stuff like "Looking for America" where he samples Iowa's best rhubarb pies and that sort of Charles Osgood crap.

Posted by: Ace at 07:53 AM | Comments (8)
Post contains 327 words, total size 2 kb.

They ought to change the name to the Columbia Journalism Apologia, because that's all they seem to do. They don't "review" or "criticize," except of course for blogs and FoxNews and the New York Post. Everytime the MSM gets caught dirty, they go into full spin mode.

And now they're claiming the Al-Newsweek desecration story did not spur any riots. None. Not at all. Not even a factor.

And so it goes.

I've said this before and I'm sick of saying it, but here goes anyway:

The media does provide an important function to our democracy by acting as a watchdog on government, business, and... well, just about everything else.

But they are an extraodinarily powerful institution themselves. Indeed, they themselves would make the case, in an unguarded and braggarty moment, that as they supply information to the world, they are the most important and powerful institution on the planet.

And yet... they don't seem particularly interested in watch-dogging themselves.

Which is curious. How can one of the most important and powerful institutions on the planet not need a watchdog, whereas much less consequential ones (like, say, the Boy Scouts of America) do?

And if the media will not watchdog themselves, someone else will have to.

And they should all stop whining about it and grow a pair. It's the new normal, guys. If you were doing your jobs properly, there'd be no need for bloggers or the Shadow Media at all.

Competitors cannot break into an industry which is well-serving its customers.

Posted by: Ace at 07:46 AM | Comments (3)
Post contains 263 words, total size 2 kb.

The network now claims it was an "easy" call, because the show is so brilliantly inventive and funny. Well, they say it was an easy decision now, after they've made it. It apparently wasn't such an easy call in the weeks leading up to this.

It's the funniest show on TV, I think. I know Curb Your Enthusiasm has its fans, but I never bothered to watch it.

Give it a shot next season. Easily the best comedy since Seinfeld. And it's strangely, subversively conservative, too, despite the rather strong (and bizarre) sexuality depicted on it sometimes.

Here are six reasons you should begin watching it next season:

1) Although the show gets progressively more self-referentional and inside-jokey as the season progresses, the first episodes are pretty accessible... it's the later ones that start becoming hard to get unless you've watched the previous ones. So, if you start off with the first show, you'll be all right.

2) It's brilliantly funny. There are some clunker episodes, just as Seinfeld had clunkers, but the laugh-out-loud episodes far outnumber the stinkers.

3) Giving the show ratings will keep it on the air. This will not result in any crazy blog-money for me, but it will result in the next best thing, crazy television-watching.

4) The show dared the ultimate in anti-liberal PC-- featuring Heather Graham (mmmm...) as a hippy-dippy liberal teacher who loved Saddam Hussein. Not merely supported him because she was anti-war, as one character suggested; no, she literally loved him, and encouraged students to create valentine-shaped love-collages to the dictator.

5) Right after Dave from Garfield Ridge (and the rest of you geek bastards) made fun of me for linking to the "new Star Wars kid video," the show spoofed that same video the next week, proving that I am right on the bleeding edge of the cultural zeitgeist, and you're all a bunch of Star Trek geeks who need to get out more.

6) The show's star, the very likable Jason Bateman (brother of Justine "Mallory" Bateman... mmmmm) is married to Paul Anka's daughter.

I think I've made my case.

Thanks to Chickpea.

PS... Now that a lot of people have outed embarassing stuff about themselves, let me know when you think the time may be right for an informed haiku flame war.

Friday seems to be the usual day for this sort of thing... but if anyone's jonesing, we could do it earlier.

Posted by: Ace at 07:28 AM | Comments (28)
Post contains 421 words, total size 3 kb.

It's a great strip, but I have trouble reading comics unless they feature superpowers and spandex.

This one, though, hits me where I live, on multiple levels.

More Day By Day here. But you knew that already.

Posted by: Ace at 07:05 AM | Comments (11)
Post contains 53 words, total size 1 kb.

What a lot of nerve, huh?

The press can't have it both ways. They cannot simultaneously claim that they are to be trusted due to their (I get sick of writing this) multiple layers of painstaking editorial fact-checking and then get all outraged when anyone dares to suggest that maybe they ought to actually put their stories through those self-same multiple layers of painstaking editorial fact-checking.

If you don't want to check your facts, fine. But then stop claiming you can be trusted based on double-checking and double-sourcing claims.

One or the other, guys.

I know that you're liberals, and thus creatures of inconsistency and different rules for different people at different times under different circumstances (such rule-changes always favoring yourselves and your preferred political stances), but I'm afraid we're going to have to insist on this point.

Posted by: Ace at 07:01 AM | Comments (12)
Post contains 168 words, total size 1 kb.