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parodize

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Main Entry: parodize

parodize can be found at Merriam-WebsterUnabridged.com.

Okay, so maybe it's not a good word. Maybe the more-common word "parodies" would have been better.

But it's a word.

So's impliedly, by the way. I'm not even sure why that one's getting any flack.

Posted by: Ace at 10:10 AM | Comments (31)
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In LauraW's post about reactions from the DU ("Layers!"), some commenters seem to question the questioning of the timing. Why wasn't this pre-scheduled before the special election in San Diego? Or put off until a few weeks before the mid-terms in November?

Makes no sense. But we know their basic theory -- that this was a scheduled event designed to "distract" from important issues like Haditha -- must be correct, as they all inform us they're proud members of the "Reality-Based Community."

As someone at Kos says:

Yes the timing of Zarqawi's death does seem too good for Bush to be true. It reeks of distraction politics.

Too good to be true! Two days after a "bellwether" special election.

"Distraction politics!" A brilliant retard-neologism superstar is born.

So: We know this was a pre-arranged "beat" in the Iraq War. We know Bush could have dragged Zarqawi out of his cell in a black prison in Poland and had him "killed on the battlefield" at any time. We know there must be some reason he chose this moment to do so, although the suggested reasons (influence an election that already happened, or an upcoming election that is too far away to influcence) just don't make sense.

Mark the Pundit figures it out:

And today is the day the YearlyKos gathering begins in Vegas.

Man, talk about dampening the mood at that place...

That must be it. As Holmes says, when you have eliminated the impossible, the remaining solution, however unlikely, must be the correct one.

George W. Antichrist Bushitler

He's so f'n' evil he schedules political hits to harsh the mellow at lefty blogger conventions.

More From The Patriotic Kossacks: An anonymous poster collects these bon mots:

"Bush's idea of justice is bombs falling out of the sky?"

"Why is he dead again just now? I wonder if Karl's getting indicted tomorrow..."

"Those pics of Abu Z look like they just thawed him out just in time for the elections."

"Zarqawi was quite probably a psy ops job in the first place, so what does that make his "death"?

Posted by: Ace at 10:03 AM | Comments (13)
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And some other WarPorn from DefenseTech.

"Haptic" harnesses:

"(an) unobtrusive, real time, bi-directional communication system that can be embedded in the combat attire of the counter-terrorism dismount warfighter for the capture of individual location and action information with subsequent presentation to the unit commander and other team members via the tactile modality".

"If the unit commander has the information about which team members are walking, running, standing, prone, kneeling, and/or firing weapons, he will be able to make well informed critical decisions based on a significantly better understanding of the situation at any given time. Even with the lack of physiological monitoring, these data could indicate potential causalities (e.g., prone, no movement, not firing). Additionally, direction of enemy, ammunition depletion, and severity of enemy engagements could be ascertained."

In other words, little vibrators on your skin will buzz to indicate useful information, like "There are a couple of guys behind you."

The designers think this is a way to overcome information overload; as computers gather and disseminate more real-time battle information, our soldiers suffer from too much information, rather than too little.

Scale back the info the vibrating pods are intended to communicate and maybe this will be useful.

On the other hand, I can see soldiers taking these things off immediately if they keep getting buzzed all the time for no good reason.

Other stuff from Defense Tech:

A study investigates the claim as to whether dogs have an sort of animal ESP allowing them to locate mines without resort to physical senses. Shockingly, the study finds that dogs can locate mines, but that they don't use ESP to do so, so much as they use their sense of smell.

Wow.

"Pain Ray" weapon not being used in Iraq, because it takes the "area denial weapon" too long to begin inflicting pain to actually be effective in practice.

Slingshot launch into space stuided by DARPA, Air Force. Accelerate a payload on a circular track over and over until you get it up to escape velocity. Then ramp the sucker into space and watch it fly.

Very sad. A new bomb creates a very small but very lethal kill zone, increasing the liklihood of killing the target while decreasing the chances of killing innocents nearby.

Sound too good to be true? Alas, it probably is. It may cause cancer.

In the bystanders we're trying to avoid harming, I mean. Not in the dudes we just blew up.

Posted by: Ace at 09:22 AM | Comments (3)
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Again from Dr. Sanity (sorry to steal so much), an idiot calling himself talking dog:

"What a week this has been for the GOP AMERICA! Today's spectacular news is that terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has been killed in an airstrike north of Baghdad. This was "confirmed" by the Iraqi government, but actual confirmation appears on the Islamist web-site of his "organization", "Al-Qaeda in Iraq". In short, it might actually be true. There is no doubt that this will be the greatest day in the long march toward winning the key battle in Iraq in the global war against swarthy-people's extremism since the fall of Saddam, or the toppling of his statue, or the deaths of Qusay and Uday, or the capture of Saddam, or the battle of Fallujah, or the first election, or the second election, or the naming of al-Maliki.

This comes on top of the defeat of insurgent California school board member Francine Busby in the global struggle taking place in California's 50th Congressional district.

Take that, you dirty jihadists! You've been SERVED! "

Hey, Hoss, you just snarked that this was a victory for the GOP, not for you or liberals or America generally, and you compared his death to the defeat of a politician you favored.

Question your patriotism? I suppose I need to get in line and wait for you to stop questioning it yourself.

Again, my perplexation at how lefties get tagged as America-haters and terrorist-sympathizers is boundless.

Posted by: Ace at 08:49 AM | Comments (6)
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Just look how closely these houses are packed together.

Bear that in mind when we're attempting to kill terrorists and there are collateral casualties.

In WWII, we'd simply have to fire-bomb the entire neighborhood to have a 10% chance of destroying the intended target.

Tipped by Cake or Death?, who counts the number of uses of the words "alleged" or "allegedly" or "allegations" in a Newsweek article about the Canadian terror bust.

They use the word an awful lot.

On the other hand, a form of the word "alleged" appears only once in a much-longer article about Haditha.

Shocking.

Posted by: Ace at 08:28 AM | Comments (6)
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I was all set to do a parody of reactions from leftblogs, but Dr. Sanity has rounded up their reactions, and they're beyond parody.

This guy seems to be relatively even-keeled:

This is a psychological lift, but reality remains terribly grim in Iraq. Al-Zarqawi's killing doesn't dent the insurgency reality.

What a relief it is that some Democrats still view the death of a murderous terrorist as a "psychological lift."

Doesn't dent the insurgency reality? Not sure what he means by this odd sentence, but I guess it's just a reality-based community way of saying "doesn't dent the fact we're still dealing with a broad insurgency." Well... surely it doesn't end the insurgency. It's been long known that Zarqawi was an increasingly marginalized figure, despised even by his would-be Sunni insurgent allies, and, in some ways, one of America's best public-relations agents operating in Iraq. If the terrorists win when an errant American bomb kills a family, surely we win a little bit when this psychopath saws off the heads of innocent school teachers or blows up a bus filled with schoolgirls.

But doesn't even dent the insurgency? Really? Not even a dent has been put into the terrorist chassis? There's no reduction in Al Qaeda's ability to funnel money and weapons into Iraq, or carry out mass terrorism, by eliminating Zarqawi (and his "spiritual leader")? None at all?

Oh, well. At least he acknowleges it's a psycholgical lift. And surely America, and her troops, needed one.

Note: The line attributed to Daily Kos, "Who cares?," doesn't appear on the site. Perhaps it was a comment which has been deleted as embarassing. The diarist Nickie who writes about this is, as can be expected, less than enthused by the killing, but does not shrug it off with a "Who cares?" She admits this is a "great catch," but of course says his death won't end the insurgency.

Posted by: Ace at 08:22 AM | Comments (13)
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Kinda cool.

I've had that feeling for two weeks, but I didn't write it down, so I guess it doesn't count.

(But I would like credit anyway.)

Posted by: Ace at 08:04 AM | Comments (8)
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Very interesting video from Patterico.

A cop-car video-camera shows the police apparently shooting an unarmed man who is simply walking away from them.

Patterico notes:

Sure, the police claim that the suspect was armed. And they claim that he pointed a gun at police, twice.

But you just watched the video clip. It is clearly inconsistent with all of these police claims.

My question is: if the police were put on trial for this shooting, can you imagine any possible defense that could overcome this video?

I trust that your answer is: “Hell, no!”

He also writes that riots have started over less than this (except, um, the man shot appears to be white, so there won't be any rioting... could be prosecutions of the officers and a huge lawsuit against the city, though).

A second cop video camera has a better view of the action, and shows the man carrying what appears to be a gun and spinning around to aim it at the cops. The cops don't fire before that; they keep their weapons trained on him, but don't fire until he threatens them.

Video doesn't lie, exactly, but it also doesn't tell the whole truth. At least not from one angle.

Posted by: Ace at 08:00 AM | Comments (6)
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The blog triumphalism is disappointingly subdued this morning.

Some DU comments, so you don't have to go there:

140. Our very own Abu Musab al-Goldstein!
So, how many deaths is it NOW?
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133. Very curious. I wonder how this plays into neocon plans to attack Iran?
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179. I want to see the head
and it needs to be identifiable too, not in crappy 1970's
video...lol
(assuming he even exists)
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48. It's almost an "open joke" among the military and civilians who know how PsyOps operate, and the History, that Zarqowi is merely a "Pentagon creation."

And oh, don't we need some good news now? It's so predictable I could write the OP Orders.

It's all bullshit LIES paraded around for PR exploitation.
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They have to believe in him
Given the votes they have made before.

They also want to be reelected so don't want to come off as looking like they have tinfoil hats on.

Let's face it, it is easy for the MSM to make it look like that even though it's probably true. The average American needs to believe in the government. That is how the CIA gets away with so much bullshit.
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132. OMG! Anyone just see the NEW video from Iraq showing celebrations???
*SO* staged!!

CNN just showed some clips. So fake.
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145. Hmmmmmm...........
Couldn't drum enough up enough support from the "base" trying to ban the gays, huh?
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225. It's all a part of the WALTZ!
Get this FACTOID: If the USA spooks create this character, then if you are al Quaeda "why not" take advantage of his martydom? There are many layers ... sometimes it's hard to really know THE TRUTH.

Layers.

Posted by: LauraW. at 06:14 AM | Comments (102)
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He says he's going to post more sporadically, if at all.

Fortunately, even when people get busy or bored, they do come back to blogging. So we probably haven't seen the end of Stick Figure Man.

Thanks to the People's Front of Judea, I mean Innocent Bystanders, where Mrs. Peel makes everyone's day by posting on a commercial about feminine malodor. And proper pooter pH.

Posted by: Ace at 04:44 PM | Comments (42)
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