It's everywhere you want to be. And, sometimes, places you don't necessarily want to be.

In a move indicating some degree of financial confidence and political stability, Visa just issued its first batch of credit cards to Iraqis -- 30,000 of them.

Not really a lot, when you think about it, and of course mainly issued to those who are quite wealthy and well-connected and can easily pay their debts, but...

It's a start.

Let's see... democracy, whiskey, sexy.

I think those credit cards will help facilitate the last entry on that check-list, if my experience is any guide.

Posted by: Ace at 10:21 AM | Comments (7)
Post contains 117 words, total size 1 kb.

Lizz Winstead, who you never heard of before and hopefully won't hear of again, is suing the "network" for over $300,000 in unpaid back wages.

As this guy points out, her salary of $250,000 per year seemed a touch high for a host on a tiny upstart radio "network."

Thanks to Viking Pundit, who suggests the filibuster deal can't be as bad as we think if the Boston Globe is having conniptions over it.

Posted by: Ace at 10:14 AM | Comments (11)
Post contains 92 words, total size 1 kb.

According to the National Journal's Blogometer:

Last week we stumbled across the website Blogebrity, which purported to be a magazine focusing on bloggers-as-celebrities (see 5/20 Blogometer). We speculated then that the site was a promotional tool for another website; it turns out we were wrong, but close. The website is actually an entry in a contest sponsored by liberal-leaning performance artists/activists at Contagious Media, previously known for a well-publicized prank on Nike and the satirical website Black People Love Us. Gawker Media founder Nick Denton, a "Blogebrity" target, is also involved. The contest will award cash prizes to a completely new website that receives the most unique visitors over a 3-week period ending 6/9. Blogebrity is currently ranked third.

National Journal guys: Allow linking to this feature. It's a good column, and it can't hurt to get the additional traffic and name-recognition that frequent linkings would provide.

No, you're probably not going to get many subscriptions out of the deal, given your rather high subscription rates. But you can throw up a couple of ads on the page and derive some revenue from that.

Posted by: Ace at 09:57 AM | Comments (2)
Post contains 194 words, total size 1 kb.

Outrageous. Only for Arab/Muslim consumption, appearing on Al Jazeera TV Dan Klaidman, a Newsweek Washington Bureau editor, said Newsweek remains "neutral" as to the story's veracity.

A couple of weeks ago he claimed the story did not demonstrate any "institutional bias" at Newsweek.

But it is awfully strange. Here in America, the story is retracted and apologized for. For Al Jazeera's core demographic of America-hatin' lunatics, it might just be true after all.

When the hell did "it might be true" become the threshhold of evidence needed to run a story and stand by it?

A lot of things might be true. Hell, if we want to be as reckless as Newsweek, we might say it might be true that Vince Foster's body was moved after death in order to prevent the White House from becoming a crime scene.

Is this the standard? Might be true? If so, will the media use the might-be-true standard against the liberal polticians and causes they champion?

Posted by: Ace at 09:53 AM | Comments (14)
Post contains 177 words, total size 1 kb.

We've all wanted to do it-- grab a couple of long fluorescent bulb tubes, fill them with gasoline, set them ablaze, and have a "light-saber" contest.

Wouldn't that be an awful lot of fun?

Well, actually, no. Not so much.

Thanks to Fat Kid, Ogre Gunner, and Raymond.

Posted by: Ace at 09:43 AM | Comments (18)
Post contains 62 words, total size 1 kb.

Remember that AT-ST lookin' robot "land walker" I mentioned here a while ago? (Months after Dave from Garfield Ridge featured it, of course.)

You can see video of it in action here (look for "Land Walker").

Interestingly, the robot's feet seem to be based on the exotic technology that brought us... in-line skating. It's able to turn on a dime without moving its legs; I assume its feet are lined with some large steel ball-bearings or something that allow it to turn in place.

And, you know, if you're over there anyway, you might want to check out Sophie Marceau losing one strap of her dress on the red carpet at Cannes or someplace like that.

It says a lot about the coarsening of our society and the end of public shame and the wanton flouting of long-existing norms of sexual modesty.

Plus, you get to see full-on raw tit, which is just as nice as I imagined it would be since I saw her in Lost & Found.

Suspicions, Suspicions: She seems to dip that shoulder almost deliberately to drop the strap. Trying to revive a stalled career?

I don't know. Seems like a good plan to me, if that's what it was.

Also... Fat Kid tipped me to this a few days ago. Check out "World of War Craft with Leroy." I don't play War Craft, and alas I don't play these sorts of games over the internet -- but it is sort of funny to watch a bunch of dorks work out their plan (via chat over the microphones) and then see a character played by "Leroy" completely get sick of all the talking and just run into the monster's lair.

A total party kill ensues. It's fun to hear them say "Oh gee, oh fuck, oh God" in between calling for the casting of a "Divine Intervention" spell. Maybe if you guys weren't such potty-mouths Thor would be more willing to help you out.

Moderately chuckleworthy, if you're into this sort of Geek Culture.

Posted by: Ace at 08:36 AM | Comments (14)
Post contains 344 words, total size 2 kb.

Instapundit slices like a hammer, linking both this story and the one below. Hate to keep stealing from him -- I try to avoid that, as I figure most of you read him anyway -- but damn, what I wouldn't do for that man's gmail box o' magic tips.

At any rate... you know that crazy ultrareligious government they've got in Iraq now? The one that's no better -- worse, actually -- than Saddam's rape-ocracy?

They just allowed nightclubs and taverns to start pouring the good stuff.

Alcohol doesn't solve all of life's problems, of course. No more than, I'd say, 80-90%. So the Iraqis have more work to do, but this is a good start.

But seriously-- the idea that a government should basically leave people the f' alone to do what they want is a good one. Porn, booze, "marital aids," birth control -- it's not that we should exult in people engaging in what some consider immoral behavior, but that we should exult in governments that are wise enough to leave most such decisions to their citizens.

And the thought that such a progressive idea is infecting Iraqi politics is a hopeful sign.

Now, of course, anyone wishing to sell booze will of course have to apply for a license. And liquor licenses are basically just a vehicle for governmental corruption, even in more advanced democracies like ours.

But a bit of low-level graft isn't a threat to democracy.

In an odd way, low-level corruption is the canary in the coal mine of democracy. If the state is so omnipresent and powerful as to root out low-level corruption... well, in all likelihood, the state itself is engaging is very high-level megacorruption and kleptocracy.

Posted by: Ace at 08:29 AM | Comments (23)
Post contains 300 words, total size 2 kb.

Cherenkoff wonders why they don't devote more time to the accomplishments of the fallen -- and those still alive -- rather than simply noting their deaths. He proposes showing the faces and reading the names of all 170,000 troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.

That's unworkable, of course.

The media is crafty on this. They know that these fallen heroes do deserve a tribute; conservatives can hardly take the stance of the Daily Kos and say "Screw 'em; I feel nothing for these mercenaries."

These brave men and women deserve an in memorium segment. If an assistant sound engineer on The Wizard of Oz deserves one during the Oscars, surely men and women fighting to defend this country from terrorists deserve one too.

And furthermore, they're quite right that "informing the public" includes informing the public of the sacrifice this country -- and these particular soldiers and their families -- are making/have made in defending us.

No argument.

The trouble is, of course, that they're rather cynical and selective about what "informing the public" requires. Informing the public requires not just wallowing in the deaths and injuries; it requires also showing what these men and women died to accomplish. It would require also showing two liberated peoples, free elections being held in formerly barbaric tyrant-controlled dysfunctional terror-states, and girls being allowed to attend school for the first time.

ABCNews will self-righteously claim they're honoring the lives, and deaths, of these brave men and women by noting their deaths. Well-- seems to me that if a fireman dies rescuing three children from a four-alarm blaze, we just don't note that someone has died, but what heroic service that man died performing.

If ABCNews truly wants to honor these men and women, they would make a special note of their accomplishments.

But they don't actually want to honor the fallen. They want to simply display the list of the dead and nail it to the gate of the White House.

And that's not a tribute to the dead. That's merely a self-serving and cynical use of fallen heroes for rank political purposes.

Posted by: Ace at 08:18 AM | Comments (13)
Post contains 368 words, total size 2 kb.

Typical screeching column about "extremists" on the bench, "overbearing Republicans," and the need for "centrist" (read: dogmatic liberal) nominees for the high court.

It ends oddly:

While the idea of letting the majority rule is at the heart of much in American democracy, it has little to do with the Senate, where some members represent 10 times as many people as others. There is absolutely nothing unfair about allowing a minority that actually represents more American people to veto lifetime appointments of judges who are far outside the mainstream of American thinking.

Yes, darlings, but that is the scheme of the Constitution, isn't it?

Further, this paragraph makes little sense. Sure, I suppose if you added up the populations represented by liberal Senators they might exceed the populations represented by conservative Senators; but then, most of those big states tilting liberal have lots and lots of people who voted Republican, whose interests are being thwarted by this maneuver.

In other words, the New York Times doesn't like Bush because he only won 52.5% of the vote and yet presumes to act on behalf of the country at large. He has no national mandate.

But the New York Times also thinks that Senator Clinton, who received (guessing) 58% of New York's votes, ought to be able filibuster, because she did, apparently, receive a "state mandate" to act on behalf of the majority of voters who actually voted for her, while ignoring the wishes of the rest.

It makes no sense, of course.

But the New York Times op-ed page never really does. As its own "Public Editor" (called an "ombudsman" by everyone else) Daniel Okrent leaves, he delivers this parting shot to the NYT's editorial page:

Op-Ed columnist Paul Krugman has the disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers in a fashion that pleases his acolytes but leaves him open to substantive assaults. Maureen Dowd was still writing that Alberto R. Gonzales 'called the Geneva Conventions "quaint"' nearly two months after a correction in the news pages noted that Gonzales had specifically applied the term to Geneva provisions about commissary privileges, athletic uniforms and scientific instruments. Before his retirement in January, William Safire vexed me with his chronic assertion of clear links between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, based on evidence only he seemed to possess.

No one deserves the personal vituperation that regularly comes Dowd's way, and some of Krugman's enemies are every bit as ideological (and consequently unfair) as he is. But that doesn't mean that their boss, publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr., shouldn't hold his columnists to higher standards.

I didn't give Krugman, Dowd or Safire the chance to respond before writing the last two paragraphs. I decided to impersonate an opinion columnist.

Ignore the attack on Safire, of course; Okrent's a liberal, and as such, feels that evidence linking Saddam to Al Qaeda -- such as Saddam inviting Al Qaeda to make a base in Iraq -- is not any evidence of a link between Saddam and Al Qaeda. It's his attack on fellow liberals which stings.

Thanks to David of Precision Plain English for pointing out that the NYT's idiot op-ed columnist, as usual, makes no freaking sense at all.

Posted by: Ace at 08:03 AM | Comments (6)
Post contains 556 words, total size 4 kb.

So says an Al Qaeda message-board, at least.

Your Terrorist Leadership Team

You guys do all the fighting and suicide-bombing. We'll be over here, bravely monitoring the situation on CNN, at a Damascus Fuddruckers.

Posted by: Ace at 07:46 AM | Comments (4)
Post contains 42 words, total size 1 kb.