Unappetizing nudity. Now dog poop.

They've come a long way from "I have a dream."

Posted by: Ace at 07:52 AM | Comments (13)
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Not completely nude, but enough to get an, um, sense of it. She was an entrant in some "Miss Exotic World" pageant.

There's something about lefty politics and nudity that just doesn't go together, but they continue insisting it does.

Thanks to Phin. I guess.

Posted by: Ace at 07:46 AM | Comments (31)
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Hispanic kids attempt suicide at higher rates than their black or white peers.

About 36 percent of Hispanics reported prolonged feelings of sadness or hopelessness, slightly higher than previous years.

Naturally the article goes on a bit about teen drug use and sexual activity, but they completely neglect to mention a mysterious phenomenon that disproportionately affects hispanic children; being blamed for illegal fireworks use.

Regardless of family history or background, these kids are hassled constantly about shooting off bottle rockets from the roofs of urban buildings they don't even live in.

Statistics are reputed to be inaccurate because of low reporting, but by some estimates, as many as 80% of hispanic children over the age of ten have been falsely accused of using illegal fireworks at least three times during the past year.*

That's got to be freakin' annoying.

*Adding to the inaccuracy of the statistic is that it is wholly fabricated.

Posted by: LauraW. at 06:52 AM | Comments (14)
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He feels sympathy for his son's murderer; but, of course, continues to despise Bush.

Hey, all Zarqawi did was saw his son's head off, after all. Bush, on the other hand, challenged his worldview.

A man's got to have his priorities straight.

O'BRIEN: Mr. Berg, thank you for talking with us again. It's nice to have an opportunity to talk to you. Of course, I'm curious to know your reaction, as it is now confirmed that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the man who is widely credited and blamed for killing your son, Nicholas, is dead.

MICHAEL BERG: Well, my reaction is I'm sorry whenever any human being dies. Zarqawi is a human being. He has a family who are reacting just as my family reacted when Nick was killed, and I feel bad for that.

I feel doubly bad, though, because Zarqawi is also a political figure, and his death will re-ignite yet another wave of revenge, and revenge is something that I do not follow, that I do want ask for, that I do not wish for against anybody. And it can't end the cycle. As long as people use violence to combat violence, we will always have violence.

O'BRIEN: I have to say, sir, I'm surprised. I know how devastated you and your family were, frankly, when Nick was killed in such a horrible, and brutal and public way.

BERG: Well, you shouldn't be surprised, because I have never indicated anything but forgiveness and peace in any interview on the air.

O'BRIEN: No, no. And we have spoken before, and I'm well aware of that. But at some point, one would think, is there a moment when you say, 'I'm glad he's dead, the man who killed my son'?

BERG: No. How can a human being be glad that another human being is dead?

O'BRIEN: There have been family members who have weighed in, victims, who've said that they don't think he's a martyr in heaven, that they think, frankly, he went straight to hell ...

You know, you talked about the fact that he's become a political figure. Are you concerned that he becomes a martyr and a hero and, in fact, invigorates the insurgency in Iraq?

BERG: Of course. When Nick was killed, I felt that I had nothing left to lose. I'm a pacifist, so I wasn't going out murdering people. But I am -- was not a risk-taking person, and yet now I've done things that have endangered me tremendously.

I've been shot at. I've been showed horrible pictures. I've been called all kinds of names and threatened by all kinds of people, and yet I feel that I have nothing left to lose, so I do those things.

Now, take someone who in 1991, who maybe had their family killed by an American bomb, their support system whisked away from them, someone who, instead of being 59, as I was when Nick died, was 5-years-old or 10-years-old. And then if I were that person, might I not learn how to fly a plane into a building or strap a bag of bombs to my back?

That's what is happening every time we kill an Iraqi, every time we kill anyone, we are creating a large number of people who are going to want vengeance. And, you know, when are we ever going to learn that that doesn't work?

I kinda doubt he was shot at. Probably a backfire he gleefully took as an attempted political assassination.

I believe the threats. Everyone in public life gets those, alas.

The rest of the crap-- I was shown horrible pictures, I was called names -- Good Lord.

We're talking about his kid, who got his head sawed off (apparently) trying to help out in Iraq, and he's whining about being called bad names.

The moral vanity of these people is disgusting. Attempting to remake themselves into Holy Angels, they instead make themselves into monsters. Does this asshole really think it's an enlightened human response to feel as bad for the death of your son's butcher as for your son's?

He thinks that attitude makes him better than other people?

I think it makes him less than human, personally.

When he dies (which he will, of course, as we all will; no death threat intended), I hope his son slaps this stupid fuck right in the face.

Posted by: Ace at 05:43 PM | Comments (232)
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Hooookay.

Other al-Reuters headlines:

Vitamin D Found To Boost Libido, Self-Worth, But bin Ladin Continues To Mock American Impotence

World's Oldest Grandmother Wins $2.6 Million Lottery, But bin Ladin Could Still Cut Her Head Off At Any Moment

CBS Agrees To $5 Million Bonus For David Caruso's Contract Extension, But Even Horatio Caine Can't Help Bush Catch bin Ladin

US Economy Expected To Grow At Brisk 3.6% Rate, But All The Filthy Lucre In The World Won't Change The Fact That America Is Teh Ghey, and bin Ladin Is Da ROXXOR

Douchebag says what?

Exactly.

Actually, I agree terrorism, and OBL in particular, presents a threat to America.

It's just that the MSM seems to downplay this threat as something less dangerous than, say, global warming or random redneck violence against Muslims, except when they trot it out to poor-mouth an American victory.

Posted by: Ace at 04:22 PM | Comments (18)
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Bah-ZINNNGGG!

As a lot of people noted yesterday, while some conservatives pile on Coulter's over-the-top statements, the liberals indulge in murder-fantasies with impunity.

And so it goes.

Dave? Look, you were big in the eighties. But you're old. And irrelevant. And you can turn nastier and unhinged-leftier all you like, you're not going to become Jon Stewart. Or even Steven Colbert. They're young, you're old. People (for some reason) find them funny; people (for good reason) don't find you funny.

Remember being funny? Yeah, I remember about ten years ago you were doing this Jerky-Boyz ripoff gag with a walkie-talkie. That was very funny.

Since then? Not so much.

Give it up. Accept your lack of relevance gracefully. Like King Lear and Madonna as well, you should have gotten wise before you got old.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 01:53 PM | Comments (119)
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An unhinged screed which needs to be read to be believed, courtesy of Ariana Huffington's HuffPost.

Just this year, the Washington Post published a documents showing that the Pentagon had an active program to legendize Zarqawi.

"The Zarqawi campaign is discussed in several of the internal military documents. 'Villainize Zarqawi/leverage xenophobia response,' one U.S. military briefing from 2004 stated. It listed three methods: 'Media operations,' 'Special Ops (626)' (a reference to Task Force 626, an elite U.S. military unit assigned primarily to hunt in Iraq for senior officials in Hussein's government) and 'PSYOP,' the U.S. military term for propaganda work..." (Washington Post, 10 April 2006)

Leverage xenophobia response.

The Pentagon public relations staff, with the active assistance of an obsequious US press, successfully portrayed Zarqawi as a one-man dynamo, an evil genius who was single-handedly running most of the "insurgency" in Iraq, a take-off on the earlier theme of foreign fighters being the majority of the resistance.

No one, Moron, thought Zaraqawi was "single-handledly running most of the isnurgency in Iraq." It's widely known on the right that foreign fighters make up 10% or less of the insurgency. They are, however, the most barbaric, murderous, and nihilistic, and unlike the pragmatic terrorists that are the Sunni insurgents, they cannot be politically coopted, for their goal is not a share of political power but simply mayhem and death.

Yet another Progressive Genius who gets off on being so smart as to tell people shit they already all know.

But what's this? Here's something I bet you didn't know:

This, and we should remember when the British SAS was caught in the act of planting bombs last year that would have been attributed, undoubtedly, to Zarqawi.

Yeah. The SAS are doing a lot of the terrorism, in order to get their fellow British troops killed.

"They won't have Ahmad Fadhil Nazzal al-Khalayleh to kick around any more," to coin a phrase. No they won't; and it will be their loss. Zarqawi will be sorely missed in Washington.

The rabbits in the Turn-The-Corner hat get smaller with each passing day.

Let me explain to the clueless or mendacious Stan Goff -- whoever the fuck that is -- what "leverage xenophobia response." He means to suggest it is intended by America that "legendizing" Zaraqawi will "leverage American xenophia response" to poor kite-flying swarthy folk like Zarqawi.

Of course that's not what it means at all. It means the US intends to use the notion of a non-Iraqi meddling in Iraqi affairs -- by butchering them, blowing them up, killing dozens of schoolgirls on a bus -- to incense the Iraqis against the foreign (to Iraq) Al Qaeda presence.

He's either too stupid to know this, or is hoping his HuffPo readers are too stupid to know this. I suspect a nice mix of stupidity and dishonesty.

This is America and all, but no one has the right to be this stupid.

For someone who's so angry against American foreign troops interfering in Iraqi affairs and killing them, he sure is sympathetic to a Al Qaeda foreign troops doing the same.

Greg Gutfeld parodizes parodies the HuffPo wingnuts here, in a delightfully accurate and vicious satire.

"Progressxian" responds here:

What possible real relevance does al-Zarqawi's death have? Do you not read? Have you not read at least some of your fellow HuffPo bloggers postings for today, on the possibility, the tiny possibility, that al-Zarqawi was, essentially a construct of the United States?

Have to disagree with you there, pard. According to the Monster Manual, constructs are immune to critical hits and fire damage.

Even if this is not true (and I happen to believe it is),

What a shock.

what possible effect does killing him have upon the situation in Iraq? It is civil war there. al-Zarqawi was no leader, he was not even Iraqi, so other than (possibly) inflaming hatred, he served no real function.

He did kill a lot of innocent people. Maybe you noticed that? No? Ah, well, it's understandable. It wasn't widely reported.

...

There was a time I would have ignored you, just passing your trollness along. I have come to realize, however, that by doing so, you win, because the entire point of your article is to silence opposition. I will no longer remain silent. I am not afraid of the reality we face - Afghanistan nearly lost, Iraq heading that way, a government out of control and unresponsive to the real needs of the people - but it will take more than bad sarcasm to get us out of the mire we find ourselves in. There may be trolls who will laugh at you, but they are as much a part of the problem as the Bush Administration.

The Hitlerian Fascist Neocon Movement

Using the world's deadliest weapons to silence our opponents -- sarcasm, irony, and puckish understatement. Just like they used on the Jews at Bergen-Belsen.

Thanks to "Staffy" for the Gutfeld tip. After reading the comments, and realizing that HuffPo writers were actually forwarding the "interesting theory" that Zarqawi was a "construct" of the US, I searched around for anyone making this case.

The idiot I quoted is the only one I found. If anyone else has come across HuffPosters making similar lunatic claims, please let me know.

Who's Stan Goff? Well, he's a nobody; he's a terrorist-supporter; he's a cocksucking traitor.

But he's also a member of the International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosevic, along with Ramsey Clark, according to Stace.

So, there you go. That's the sort of quality people writing for the Huffington Post these days.

Arianna Huffington is a shallow, filthy little star-fucking celebrity-wannabe. It doesn't matter if you're good or bad; what's important to you is that you're a celebrity. Stan Goff is a type of celebrity, a proud member of the Coalition of the Terrorist-Shilling, and so he' welcome on her blog.

Gee, remember when the Huffington Post had celebrities like Alec Baldwin, Gwynneth Paltrow, and John Cusack writing for it/allowing their names to be used in articles written by their PR girl for it?

Now it's Stan Goff. Stan Goff!

Wow. Kind of a big drop-off in Q-Ratings, huh?

Arianna-- I know a guy who knows a guy who sort of knows a guy who once appeared as a guest star on The Man From Atlantis, playing an evil ocean polluter who could control sharks with his ass.

Want me to get in touch with him for you? I want to help you get those celebrities you crave.

Posted by: Ace at 01:07 PM | Comments (32)
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That was a CNN headline.

A psychopathic head-hunting murder-cultist. "Betrayed."

Now, yes, I know what they were trying to say. Someone close to him ratted him out. (Actually, I just hear he was spotted by normal folks living in his neighborhood, but whatever.)

Are there not, however, better ways of saying that? Perhaps "Al-Zarqawi Killed Due To Tips From Sunni Informants" or that sort of thing?

Relevant definition of "betray:"

Main Entry: be·tray
Pronunciation: bi-'trA
Function: verb
Etymology: Middle English, from be- + trayen to betray, from Old French traïr, from Latin tradere -- more at TRAITOR
...
2 : to deliver to an enemy by treachery

It connotes "treachery" and derives from "traitor." So, those who turned him in are guilty of "treachery," and may be traitors.

There are some words which have a neutral sort of meaning but are almost always associated with a positive or negative emotional charge. "Courage," for example-- the word that got Bill Maher into so much trouble. In one sense, "courage" is moral-neutral, as one can say, I suppose, that a gang-banger who shoots up a convenience store and then has a gun battle with ten cops, coolly killing many of them, has "courage."

And yet... we tend to associate "courage" with positive acts.

And so it is with "betrayal." Betrayal, I suppose, can mean the abandonment of a duty of loyalty to someone, no matter how odious the person is to whom tha duty is owed; but it generally carries a negative connotation. Betrayal, generally, is bad.

Yes, the word "betrayed" is quoted, so it came from a source. So what? There are other good words provided by sources that would make a compelling headline.

Just seems to be a very odd headline from CNN, suggesting that some evil skullduggery was involved in taking this guy out. And that he deserved better.

It doesn't help matters that the subhed calls this justified and righteous military attack a "hit."

A strange choice of words from our Elite Priesthood of Information and their vaunted multiple layers of painstaking editorial oversight.

Posted by: Ace at 11:45 AM | Comments (36)
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Ryan Sanger is there. I wouldn't say he's one of us -- he's one of those damned libertarians -- but he definitely ain't on of them, and I question the sanity in allowing him to write down their remarks.

Zarqawi is not about Iraq." As in, the real reason we wanted him dead was the USS Cole bombing.

"We're talking to the 98 percent of the unwashed who don't know what the Cole is." In response to above.

Nickie at the Daily Kos made a similarly ego-boosting statement, about how 90% of the fools in this country don't even know who Zarqawi is, and yet will "yee-haw" at the death of a man they've never heard of previously.

According to the Reality Based Community, only a tiny fraction of the American people -- the New Informational Elite -- know what the USS Cole is, and who Zarqawi was.

A week or so ago I blogged about how critical it is to leftists to imagine themselves as intellectuals and possessors of eldritch knowlege. This self-styled genius is a vital prop to their egos, and a critical distinction between They, the Smart-Set Super-Elite, and The Other, the normal people, the "ordinaries," the "civilians," the, you know, morons. One of Sager's interviewees even has the chutzpah to call them the unwashed.

So: my theory is looking pretty solid.

There's more from the League of Extraodinary Geniuses at Yearly Kos, including this piercing insight:

"If you keep looking for someone long enough, you'll find him."

I happen to have had passed to me a partial agenda for the day's events, which I share with you at no extra charge:

11:00 AM: Lecture by Juan Cole, "Towards a Coherent Heuristic Ontology Of Seemingly Disparate But Related Events In An Authoritarian-Imposed Chronological Narrative While Avoiding State Competency Hearings: How To Say 'I Question the Timing' About Everyfuckingthing Without Getting Locked Up As A Lunatic"

12 PM: Lecture by Mark "Doctor Charisma" Zuniga, "The Unwashed and Teachable Moments: Educating Your Cultural and Intellectal Inferiors As Snidely And As Condescendingly As Possible Without Getting Socked In the Jaw"

1 PM: "If You Can Imagine It, You Can Do It:" A Communal Workshop Excercise in which the gathered intellectual firepower of the YearlyKos convention attempts to split atoms... with their minds

Thanks to Instapundit, whom I just can't keep up with.

Posted by: Ace at 11:08 AM | Comments (41)
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Thanks to INTERNET, we know that putting a couple of Mentos into a bottle of Coke will cause a geyser of soda to erupt.

But these guys really take that concept and run with it. They set up a pretty extensive "Dancing Fountains of Caramel-Colored Carbonated Beverage" which is oddly relaxing to watch.

Thanks to the gone but not forgetting VonKreedon.

Posted by: Ace at 10:14 AM | Comments (10)
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