FRIDAY!!!!

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 04:14 AM | Comments (2)
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I'll keep this short to keep from stepping on Genghis's post, but the following video has had me laughing for the last few days. more...

Posted by: Open Blog at 07:45 PM | Add Comment
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(I know, I knowÂ…the backlog of tips keeps piling up)

Meanwhile, Discovery (via MSNBC) has a story about a microbe-powered fart machine meant to improve fuel cell technology. Riiiiiiight.

”It sounds like a gag gift instead of serious science, but a new electrical farting machine could improve fuel cell technology by turning CO2 in the atmosphere into methane.”

“The technique won't combat blobal warming directly, since both CO2 and methane are potent greenhouse gases, but it could help store alternative energies such as wind and solar more efficiently.”

TonightÂ’s overnight open thread is sponsored by the Sloth.

Unlike our last few animal sponsors, the sloth is pretty well known. But thereÂ’s just something compelling about this pic. If I saw that crawling across the highway, I wouldnÂ’t run over it. No, IÂ’d stop, get out, and kick it to death just for looking like it does. Does that make me a bad person? I sure hope so.

Notice: Posted by permission of AceCorp LLC. Please e-mail overnight open thread tips to xgenghisx@gmail.com. Otherwise send tips to Ace.

Posted by: Open Blog at 07:33 PM | Comments (47)
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Ok, ok, okaaaaaaay. Maybe something useful came out of it. But we still should have used other methods anyway, which also maybe would have worked as good as TORTURE, which we only recently are willing to concede might have done, something.

"I think people would tell you that there was information that was procured that was helpful and information that was procured that was made up," Gibbs told reporters.

"Nobody could ever likely tell you that any information derived couldn't also have been derived from another means," he added.

Well no shit Shirlena. Yes, I suppose nobody could ever likely tell you that.

(I think I've mentioned it before), this mumbling dorkbat makes Scotty McClellan sound like Henry V at Agincourt.

Information procured that was useful. Information procured that was made up.

Any information procured that saved American lives?

Do tell. Is that the "useful" crap?

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 05:27 PM | Comments (1)
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He is a shareholder, but he's also Bill O'Reilly's ambush guy. It's the response, not the question, that is heartening.

Video below. more...

Posted by: Ace at 02:43 PM | Add Comment
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After late last night's/early this morning's news from Pakistan, this should make everyone even more comfortable....Russia and Georgia might be about to go at it again.

Last week the Russians told NATO if they had any plans to train with Georgia to cancel them and then the Russians deployed the 22 ships of their Black Sea Fleet.

That was followed earlier this week by a redeployment of Russian ground forces.

Russia has stationed its forces just 25 miles (40 kilometers) from the Georgian capital, in violation of the EU-brokered cease-fire that ended last year's brief war. And in recent weeks, it has sent even more troops and armored vehicles to within striking distance of the city ahead of street protests against Georgia's president.

And now comes word of an overnight exchange of gun fire along the administrative border separating Georgia from its breakaway region of South Ossetia.

Yankee Sailor is following this and has gamed out what a Russian attack might look like from the Russian perspective and what the Georgian defense effort might look like.

Remember when the Russians moved last year, it wasn't the Georgian military that prevented total defeat but political pressure, including the dispatch of US and NATO assets to the area.

Something tells me Obama won't be acting as swiftly and forcefully as Bush did.

Remember that Obama's first reaction last summer was to blame both sides for the violence. Only after cribbing from McCain did he put the blame on the Russians for their aggression.

I don't think the Russians are as interested in hitting the 'Reset' button as they are the 'Let's Finish It' button.

Gird your loins indeed.

Posted by: DrewM at 12:45 PM | Add Comment
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I know I dropped the "c bomb" last week, but that was something I don't do very often, and on top of that, I had no advertisers then.

I'm trying to get some advertisers -- with the lone exception of a Killing Time ad from blog-friend Pegu, I haven't made a dime this whole month -- and so I'd appreciate if people calmed down a bit with the language.

Yes, I know I did it. I am not assigning moral fault or anything. It was my bad.

But I would appreciate it if commenters cooled it on unnecessarily obscene language and statements that might, as they say, scare the horses.

Pajamas Media had an amazingly loose policy on what I (and you) could say here. As in, it was never even discussed. But I doubt that all advertisers will be so open-minded.

So please, please, please: The occasional profanity is fine, especially if it's humorous, but watch out for the really tough ones, especially if it's just for the purpose of a bit of angry venting which could easily be achieved with other words.

Kinda... just don't try to trump me as far as content and language. Let me be the guy who goes the furthest. I can always quickly delete something if I realize I've crossed a line; it's harder, though, to go through lots of comments finding stuff that might raise flags.

Sorry about this and all, but there are, you know, market forces at work.

A lot of obscenity... like f-bombs and "bullshit" is barely even obscene anymore, so ubitquitous is it on the internet. The ones to watch out for are the male and female versions of the c-bomb, tossing out "bitch" unnecessarily, angry gay baiting, talk of shooting and hanging people even in jest, etc. Some political correctness there, yeah, but consider that Netflix, for example, may not want an ad running next to a post with a lot of such sentiments.

I'm not saying write like angels. I'm just asking to tone it down a little, especially when it's just for the sake of angry venting.

Guidance: If you don't know what I mean, just skim the comments for my posts.

Look, "douchebag," "fuckweasel," "cockholster," "pooter"... all that stuff is fine. Fuck is fine... just be judicious about it. (As in -- if it's merely a random intensifier with no more meaning than "damn" or "golly!," why use it?)

The ones to look out for are the c-word, "bitch," especially as applied to a woman, and the other c-word, especially as applied to a gay dude.

If it's funny, it's fine. But if it's unnecessary and angry, and not funny, why use it?

As I said in the comments: If you want to say Nancy Pelosi is a rotten lying hag, then do so; calling her the c-word is doubly disadvantaged: On one hand, it's just generic vulgarity, and so it actually isn't as insulting and descriptive as "rotten lying hag."

On the other hand, it's a red-flag vulgarity, so even as it's less effective than "rotten lying hag," it's more offensive to more people. It's less offensive to her, but more offensive to readers (especially women) and advertisers.

So it's lose-lose.

I am just asking for a step to be inserted in the commenting process before hitting "post:" Ask if the all the profanity, especially the still-taboo profanity, is necessary or adds anything.

If it does, fine. If not, just take it out. "Save it up" for when it can be used to greater effect.

I trust you guys. I know that 90% of you will use good judgment and, if anything, you'll probably skew too clean.

You don't have to be clean. And certainly not too clean. Just 20% cleaner will do.

Posted by: Ace at 11:24 AM | Comments (3)
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ANHFF Geoff tells me this weak spin has taken over CNN and MSNBC, both in a desperate scramble to absolve all Democrats for waterboarding, so that prosecutions can go forward against Bush administration officials without appearing too vindictively partisan.

Pelosi, now:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is pushing back on GOP charges that she knew about waterboarding for years and did nothing.

Pelosi says she was briefed by Bush administration officials on the legal justification for using waterboarding -- but that they never followed through on promises to inform her when they actually began using "enhanced" interrogation techniques

"In that or any other briefingÂ…we were not, and I repeat, we're not told that waterboarding or any of these other enhanced interrogation techniques were used. What they did tell us is that they had some legislative counselÂ…opinions that they could be used," she told reporters today.

Even if that's true -- which I doubt, and Rep. Boehner contradicts -- notice how weak an attempt to absolve herself it is. She "merely" knew that WH lawyers had blessed the tactic as legal, and intended, of course, to use waterboarding in the appropriate case. But she claims she didn't know it actually happened, so she's... off the hook?

That's like a parent watching his teenager stocking the house with kegs and condoms and then claiming "Well, I didn't know he'd be having a party while we were away."

What do you think he was doing? Getting ready to make beer-filled condom-balloons?

Furthermore, if she knew the administration deemed the tactic legal and didn't object, what the hell is she doing now claiming she knew it was illegal all along and people ought to be prosecuted for it?

AHFF Geoff sets the wayback machine for a 2007 story in the WaPo:

In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA's overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.

Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.

"The briefer was specifically asked if the methods were tough enough," said a U.S. official who witnessed the exchange.

...

With one known exception, no formal objections were raised by the lawmakers briefed about the harsh methods during the two years in which waterboarding was employed, from 2002 to 2003, said Democrats and Republicans with direct knowledge of the matter. The lawmakers who held oversight roles during the period included Pelosi and Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) and Sens. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), as well as Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.) and Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan).

Individual lawmakers' recollections of the early briefings varied dramatically, but officials present during the meetings described the reaction as mostly quiet acquiescence, if not outright support. "Among those being briefed, there was a pretty full understanding of what the CIA was doing," said Goss, who chaired the House intelligence committee from 1997 to 2004 and then served as CIA director from 2004 to 2006. "And the reaction in the room was not just approval, but encouragement."

Pushback is requireed.

Release the minutes of the briefings, now, President Transparency.

Posted by: Ace at 11:12 AM | Add Comment
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The recap from Hot Air continues. Again, apologies, but these seem big, and I have to note them, even if it's embarrassing to keep linking Hot Air.

Rice approved the waterboarding. Which yes, makes it hard for Bush to claim he didn't know, but I doubt he'd claim that anyway.

Then again, when a vindictive winner's-justice radical regime is coming after you for jail time, who knows what a man might say.

McCain attacks.

Shepard Smith Yells Yet Again: We are America! We do not fucking torture!" Yes, he dropped the f-bomb. Followed by "I don't care if it works or not!"

We are America. We are not going to be watching Shep Smith much longer. And I don't care if 80 year old biddies think he's cute or not.

Thanks to EdwardR.

Posted by: Ace at 10:39 AM | Add Comment
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First Tricorner Tea Party Babe writes, and now this.

Yes, check the post below: For once, someone posted a story that had already been posted, and for once it was someone else reposting a story I posted.

DrewM. has made my week.

Don't be upset, DrewM. The odds were long against it ever happening, but given enough trials, the improbable is guaranteed to happen.

* Technicality: Actually, I added my thing as an update, so it's possible that it was me reposting DrewM's story after all, yet again.

But I added mine pretty darn quickly. I'm scoring it as a win. No one can take this away from me.

Enjoy the infamy, DrewM. You're the only person on the internet I ever beat to a story. The only one.

Posted by: Ace at 10:27 AM | Add Comment
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