I didn't see the furor over this coming. Went right past me. It's South Park -- what do people expect?

Another good episode. They've really managed to keep the quality of the show high, despite its long run.

It should be said they didn't mock Irwin, except to the extent they did feature him, dead, and in Hell, with the stingray still stuck through his chest. But he wasn't mocked or denigrated. His death was treated irreverently, but please, everyone I knew was doing that the day after his death.

Like noting how absurd the media coverage was about this being a "freak accident which shocked a nation." The guy built an entire career upon grabbing crocodiles by their hind legs, turning them upside down, and putting their penises into his mouth. (Not a sexual act; an act of love and respect.) There was nothing "freak" about his demise, no more than it's a "freak" death when a professional parachuter dies on a jump.

How the hell did you expect him to die -- slipping in the shower?

To quote the very underrated Troy--

THE KING: "You mock my brother even before he is laid to rest!"

ODYSSEUS: "It is no insult to note that a dead man is, in fact, dead."

Posted by: Ace at 09:46 AM | Comments (103)
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I love Tony Snow, but he's spinning absurdly here.

Dick Cheney supports water-boarding. And bless 'im for having the stones to say so. (Points deducted for being disingenuous about that now, but there are some things you're not supposed to say, "I support water-boarding" high on the list.)

The White House said Friday that Vice President Dick Cheney was not talking about a torture technique known as "water boarding" when he said dunking terrorism suspects in water during questioning was a "no-brainer."

Human rights groups said Cheney's comments amounted to an endorsement of water boarding, in which the victim believes he is about to drown.

"You know as a matter of common sense that the vice president of the United States is not going to be talking about water boarding. Never would, never does, never will," presidential spokesman Tony Snow said. "You think Dick Cheney's going to slip up on something like this? No, come on.

The vice president replied, "Well, it's a no-brainer for me but for a while there I was criticized as being the vice president for torture. We don't torture. That's not what we're involved in."

Peppered with questions about the remarks, Snow said Cheney did not interpret the question as referring to water boarding and the vice president did not make any comments about water boarding. He said the question put to Cheney was loosely worded.

The administration has repeatedly refused to say which techniques they believe are permitted under the new law. Asked to define a dunk in water, Snow said, "It's a dunk in the water."

A media whore tried to be funny by saying that Dick Cheney wouldn't "slip up" about something like this the same way he wouldn't "slip up" and shoot a guy in the face. Ha, ha.

The media is of course all a-flutter and in full conniptions about this. I wish Cheney and Snow would stop being disingenuous and say, "Fuck yeah, I support the water-boarding of confirmed murderer and terrorist leader Khalid Sheik Mohammad. It saved lives. Any of you gutless pansies got a problem with that? How many lives would you trade, exactly, in exchange for Khalid Sheik Mohammad's personal comfort?"

It also occurs to me that the media only asks questions on this issue from the left. They never ask what I'd like to see asked -- if water-boarding was so effective as claimed, why is this useful tool apparently now ruled out of bounds by the compromise with the McCain Faction? Is the White House willing to trade innocent American life to appease Republican Faint-Hearts?

No one asks that, though, now do they?

Fair and balanced, baby. Objective and neutral. Asking all the tough questions from every political direction, without favor or prejudice.

Posted by: Ace at 09:38 AM | Comments (31)
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The Ace of Spades HQ oppositional researcher has dug up this tidbit:

Charlotte Post-Courier, 1998 oct 28

(in an article about a political rally)

Leah Bergen, a young Charleston woman, said she came to the rally just to meet Bubba. Lane Hudson, 21, a College of Charleston student from Myrtle Beach, said, "I'm sick of negative advertising..."

Note he did not say "I'm sick of fake blog which push information into the media deceptively just in time for an election, and, though I sat on the information myself for months, I am more than happy to assist my party in claiming that the GOP leadership 'didn't act swiftly enough.'"

Posted by: Ace at 09:28 AM | Comments (7)
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Weird:

The campaign of Republican Sen. George Allen on Thursday released excerpts from some of the war novels Webb wrote between 1978 and 2002. The books include some graphic sexual passages, as well as frequent uses of a racial slur for blacks and descriptions of Vietnamese women as "monkey-faced."

Among the excerpts is a scene from the 2002 novel "Lost Soldiers," in which a man embraces his four-year-old son and places the boy's penis in his mouth.

...

"It's not a sexual act," Webb told Plotkin regarding the "Lost Soldiers" excerpt. "I actually saw this happen in a slum in Bangkok when I was there as a journalist."

"The duty of a writer is to illuminate his surroundings," he added.

Coincidentally, a Cambodian woman in Las Vegas is facing sexual assault charges for performing a similar act on her young son, according to an Oct. 14 report in the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

The article quotes an office manager for the Cambodian Association of America, who described the act as a sign of respect or love.

Hey, I'm convinced. But try telling that to my wife.

"It's an exception," Thira Srey told the Review-Journal of the practice. According to the report, the act is usually performed by a mother or caretaker on a child who is one year old or younger. In Webb's novel, the child is four years old.

Now Cambodia -- that's your "horny woman's dream" right there.

No word yet on the bananas.

I don't think this is the biggest scandal in the world, but I don't get the harumphing offered by Michelle Malkin and other bloggers she quotes. Give me a break. This race has been nothing but "Grand Wizard Felix Macaca" for months, the media and Democrats (but I repeat myself) are seeing anti-miscegenation messages and hearing "jungle drums" everyfuckingwhere and beat the dead Foley horse so hard it actually got up and began training for the Preakness, and some conservatives think we should only talk high-mindedly about policy?

Macaca please.

Audio of Webb's defense (on Washington Post radio) at Hot Air.

Thanks to RobG for the tip.

Posted by: Ace at 08:45 AM | Comments (46)
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In Radar.

Thanks to CF as well as another reader who tipped me last night.

Though HRC calls Hudson a "junior staffer," he was in fact HRC's only GOTV coordinator in Michigan, which makes his position sound a bit less than junior.

A helpful reader with Lexis/Nexis is digging up connections, but so far, no bombshells.

Stop October Surprises, who forced the fake-blogger's outing, continues to threaten to reveal more about the whole "story," which he continues suggesting involves more than a single employee.

Whether he's just bluffing to get HRC to reveal more, or whether or not he actually knows something, I don't know.

I do know that if there's any there there, the clock is beginning to run down if there's to be any impact.

Posted by: Ace at 07:27 AM | Comments (10)
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A lack of message coordination in the Red-Pink-Green coalition.

A ROW has blown up over a claim a prominent Manchester Muslim has defended the execution of sexually-active gay people as "justified".

Arshad Misbahi, a junior Imam at the city's Central Mosque is alleged to have confirmed that it is an acceptable punishment in Iraq and Iran.

His comments are said to have been made to psychotherapist Dr John Casson who is researching the persecution of gays in Islamic states. But they have been condemned as "encouraging conflict between the area's large gay and Muslim communities.

I like how that's put -- encouraging conflict between gays and Muslims.

Because you know those British gays are just jonesing to blow themselves up in Islamic bookstores. And this may be the match that lights the fuse.

...

[The doctor recounted the cleric's contention:] "[Such laws] might result in the deaths of thousands, but if this deterred millions from having sex and spreading disease, then it was worthwhile to protect the wider community."

It is understood Imam Misbahi believes his comments were taken out of context and misrepresented. He says will be issuing a statement to clarify his views.

Ah, of course. It's so easy to mistake "I do not condone homosexual behavior" with "We should execute perhaps thousands of gays to stop the spread of disease." American leftists, such as Andrew Sullivan, always confuse those two statements.

Dean Esmay, meanwhile, is trying to figure out a way to call the accurate reportage of a Muslim cleric's statements "Islamophobic." If he can do so with an attack on a major blogger who will link him back and give him some hits, so much the better.

Thaks to jdubious for the Dean Esmay tip.

Posted by: Ace at 07:19 AM | Comments (12)
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I hope Southerners are getting what he's claiming. The mere thought of an actress posing as a Playboy bunny, spoofing Ford's attendance at a Playboy party, sends you into paroxysms of racial hate.

They're desperate. They can taste it, and they won't let anything get in their way of victory this time.

And by "they" I mean the media.

Posted by: Ace at 07:05 AM | Comments (32)
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Write in the distinctive "Webb style." Or the style of any other politician.

Didn't Barbara Boxer write a book?

Note: Suggested by DaveS -- but I already put up the post before I got to his suggestion.

Still, I'll give him his hat-tip, otherwise he'll talk shit behind my back.

Or maybe turn me upside down and put my penis in his mouth. Who knows.

Posted by: Ace at 08:56 PM | Comments (66)
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Headline thanks to jj.

Jim Webb's strange writings, via Drudge:

"The man grabbed his young son in his arms, turned him upside down, and put the boy's penis in his mouth..."

Hot.

This is all so stupid, but if this is the game -- the game the Washington Post has turned the contest into -- then by all means, let us play the game as well.

Thanks to Robert.

Also From Spruiell's Media Blog: Chris Matthews furiously pimps idiotic "racism" charges against Republican ads; and Romney smack-down of a reporter-moron who seems to have forgotten precisely whom was elected as a representative of the people of Massachusetts:

Posted by: Ace at 04:03 PM | Comments (123)
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Backlash! Backlash! Backlash!

The fear in Sydney is that rising summer temperatures could be accompanied by a rise in racial tension.

Certainly, many Muslim leaders fear a backlash.

"I am expecting a deluge of hate mail," said Walid Ali of the Islamic Council of Victoria. "I am expecting people to get abused in the street and get abused at work."

From the BBC of course, the go-to source for jihad-rape apologism.

I'm fucking sick of it. What about the forelash? You know, the first lash? You can't have a backlash without a first lash.

Like, say, the repeated gang-rapes of "Infidel whores" by YOUEE's and the justification of such -- even open incitement for further gang-rapes -- by top "clerics" in the Religion of Protecting Women's Honor By Raping The Whore Out of Them?

Seems to me we wouldn't have all of this (largely imaginary) "backlash" if Muslim communities did not excuse, justify, and actively support terrorism and terrorism-by-rape.

I'll believe there's real "fear" about anti-Muslim pogroms when the entire Muslim community rises up to stamp out these outrages that produce the "backlash" they claim to fear.

Thanks to Brendan, who says "Didn't see that one coming."

In related news, "moderate stingrays" say they fear "backlash" from Australians, but they note that "breastplate-less meat" is "encouraging" the killings of gonzo nature documentarians.

I have a three point plan.... to avoid all this "backlash."

1) Stop killing us

2) Stop raping us

3) Stop rioting and destroying vehicles, businesses, and homes

I realize that's asking an awful lot, but I want to do anything possible to avoid anti-Muslim backlash-- even if that includes the unprecented call for an end to jihadi-brigandism.

Posted by: Ace at 01:05 PM | Comments (87)
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