¡Feliz Día del Hump!

The Chinese Military Shovel That Does Everything

It slices, it dices, it digs holes, it digs you out of holes, it cuts wire, it opens bottles, it's a grappling hook, and it also beats running dog white devils! And yes the US has a similar one except that ours folds in three and has an attractive camo carrying case.

I remember as a kid getting a hold of an old army surplus shovel and in the few weeks before it was taken away, my friends and I managed to do some serious damage to the backyard digging foxholes.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:51 PM | Comments (1093)
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Linda Lovelace.

Lindsay Lohan has landed the lead role in an independent movie about 1970s porn star Linda Lovelace, one of the film's producers said.

The 24-year-old actress will play Lovelace, who shot to fame with the landmark 1972 porno movie "Deep Throat," while Bill Pullman will portray Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner in the period drama, producer Wali Razaqi told The Los Angeles Times.

...

"I would say it's probably one of the most challenging roles any actor could play — and not because of the sexual content, necessarily — but more because she was so battered and beat up emotionally, that I think it's gonna take everything Lindsay has to really be able to pull it off," he told the Times.

She's only 25 years old (or whatever) and she's already at the point she needs a "bold, daring" stunt-casting to help revive her career.

It's a little too late for her to change things, but all of this young girls in Hollywood think that the way to be taken seriously is to whore it up in their private lives and star in "dark, edgy" dirty movies for their day jobs. (Dakota Fanning just proved she was "all grown up" by getting raped in a movie.)

I'm not really sure what they're thinking. Adult actresses who get a lot of starring roles tend to have clean (or clean-ish) reputations and do mainly mainstream movies. Julia Roberts isn't getting raped on screen very often.

But a lot of them seem to think the same way. "I'll show them how adult I am!" When actually adult actresses tend to take roles only a few steps removed from being childhood innocence.

Posted by: Ace at 03:46 PM | Comments (358)
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Vacation, you say? Pish-posh - Strickland claims it was a "work-focused" working trip.

Though his agency was charged with coordinating the federal response to the major oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Department of the Interior chief of staff Tom Strickland was in the Grand Canyon with his wife last week participating in activities that included white-water rafting, ABC News has learned.

Other leaders of the Interior Department were focused on the Gulf, joined by other agencies and literally thousands of other employees. But Strickland’s participation in a trip that administration officials insisted was “work-focused” raised eyebrows among other Obama administration officials and even within even his own department, sources told ABC News.

Strickland, who also serves as Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks, was in the Grand Canyon with his wife Beth for a total of three days, including one day of rafting....

One government official, asking for anonymity because of the political sensitivities involved, told ABC News that some Interior Department employees thought it was “irresponsible” for Strickland to have gone on the trip, given the crisis in the Gulf, which was fully apparent at the time he departed for the Grand Canyon.

Thanks to Dr. Spank.

Corrected: Strickland is chief of staff to the Secretary of the Interior. SecInterior is Ken Salazar.

Posted by: Ace at 03:02 PM | Comments (121)
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Does that name ring a bell? It should. Pantano became a cause celebre when, as a Marine in Iraq, he was accused of murdering two Iraqi insurgents -- but charges were dropped. It appeared to be a political move to appease the Iraqis in the first place.

And now he's contesting North Carolina's 7th district, a seat Republicans haven't held for 140 years.

Geraghty puts the seat, though, in the 99 possible pick-ups:

Mike McIntyre, North Carolina: This seven-term Democrat would be safe in an ordinary year, but he felt enough pressure back in his district to vote against the health-care bill. GOP challenger Ilario Pantano, a police officer, raised $103,000, which is more than McIntyre did; the district rates an R+8 on the Cook PVI.

Posted by: Ace at 01:30 PM | Comments (119)
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I've really never seen a high-level fugitive manhunt where the administration was so promiscuous with leaks. Every second this guy was being given fresh information about where the feds were in their hunt.

“I believe the FBI should investigate who leaked this information out before the arrest was made,” said King, a Republican member of the Homeland Security and Intelligence committees. “I think it compromised the investigation and put lives at risk. This guy was carrying a weapon.”

Faisal Shahzad, 30, was apprehended at Kennedy Airport just after 11 p.m. last night. King notes details about the man started surfacing in the afternoon, when the world had believed cops were looking for a middle-aged white man.

“To be putting law enforcement at risk of the investigation being compromised, and him getting away - it could have ended up in a gun battle,” King said. “This guy took off when he realized they were coming after him.”

King, the ranking member of the Homeland Security Committee, said he’s never seen such “totally irresponsible” behavior in an ongoing, high-level probe.

Check out the response from a presumed Obama-voting LEO:

Update: The White House declined to comment, but a law enforcement official offered: “Given his well-known history of leaking information, I’m surprised that Pete King seems so eager to launch an investigation that could well end up ensnaring him.”

I find that kind of extraordinary. It's not-so-veiled threat, isn't it?

Thanks to Gabriel Malor.

Posted by: Ace at 01:16 PM | Comments (99)
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Do as we say, not as we do.

...That's right. Members of Congress are currently allowed to profit on insider trading!

The bill, which has been languishing in the House for four years, would require elected officials "to make their financial transactions public within 90 days of a purchase or sale" and "prohibit lawmakers from trading in financial markets based on nonpublic information they learn on the job," the WSJ reports.

It seems they're above the transparency they've been calling for on Wall Street...

Tar, feathers, congress. Some assembly required.

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 12:08 PM | Comments (84)
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At Hot Air.

It's amazing to me how the media is so confident in the accuracy of their speculations about right-wing motives-- racism, hatred, anger, etc. -- and yet never seems to be able to turn this talent for psychological profiling towards Islamic terrorists.

I guess it's like the various Force telepathy tricks -- this only works on the weak-minded, and we all know, we have weak minds. I guess it's just so much easier for them to dig around our skulls than Islamists.

In related news, CNN is considering filing a suit against CBS for plagiarism. CNN ran a very similar headline just a half year ago:

Army honors dead, searches for motive in Fort Hood shootings

But then, a lot of people were running that headline:

Sunday’s New York Times “Week in Review” article about Nidal Hasan was titled “When Soldiers Snap.” The gist of the article was that Maj. Hasan had snapped — even though he had never been in combat. He snapped in advance. Just two sentences in the article were devoted to the possibility that his motives were in any way relatable to his Muslim faith.

As Chris Matthews put it, “it’s unclear if religion was a factor in this shooting.” To Matthews, not only was it unclear if Hasan’s Islamic faith was “the” factor, it was unclear if it was even “a” factor.

Likewise, on NPR, Tom Gjelten offered the novel explanation that Hasan, who has never been in combat, may have suffered from “pre-traumatic stress disorder” because he anticipated having traumatic distress. “Was he an example,” Gjelten seriously asked, “of these soldiers who are literally freaked out by what they are likely to face when they are deployed?”

And on Fox News, Geraldo Rivera, said, “I don’t know what motivates him … as far as I know … he’s a sociopath; he’s a criminal. He could have had a toothache and gone off because of that.”

Geraldo, of course, was eerily prescient -- we all know now, with the benefit of hindsight, that it was in fact due to a toothache.

We really need to enlist Chris Matthews and Dylan Rattigan and Contessa Brewer and Keith Olbermann and the rest of the MSNBC line-up -- nay, the entirety of the media firmament -- to a secret Islamist mind-reading unit. We could have this war won in days if only we put these Ninja Psychics to work scanning the minds of Islamists.

Seriously, it's scary how they so perfectly report to me my motivations and intent for every single thing I say and every single thing I do and even every single thing I merely hope for. They're in my brain so much I should charge them rent.

We've got to get the ESP A-Team into the war effort. It's just that important. Everything turns on this.

Posted by: Ace at 11:43 AM | Comments (148)
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Surprisingly, they are siding with the Democrat. I know, right?

It seems Mark Kirk (a rather moderate Republican) has spent a lot of time pointing out that his opponent, Obama supported Democrat Alexi Giannoulias, is tied to a failed and corrupt bank.

Well, this is just too much for the CBS affiliate in Chaicago. They have announced they simply won't cover the race if that's all Kirk is going to talk about.

"Channel 2's made a decision that we’re really not going to cover the Senate race if it consistently, only in your terms is about Broadway Bank," the reporter, whom a colleague identified as veteran political producer Ed Marshall says in the clip, said to be from a Monday press conference. "The bank's been taken over by the government. Alexi’s been pilloried. Tell me – what is your campaign going forward?"

Follow the link as the News Director tries to walk this back claiming they are pushing both candidates.

Yeah, that doesn't explain the "Alexi's been pilloried" comment. Awww, the poor corrupt Chicago Democrat is getting beat up for being corrupt. Don't worry, the MFM is here to protect him!

As infuriating as this is, it's nice to see that the MFM simply isn't even trying to hide their allegiance any more.

The sooner these dinosaurs collapse, the better.

Speaking of which, anyone want to buy Newsweek?I bet it's pretty cheap.

Posted by: DrewM at 11:40 AM | Comments (41)
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A riot cop falls in flame, hit by a Molotov cocktail

Video of these damn Teabaggers at the link.

They were protesting ObamaCare, illegal immigrants in Arizona, the impending loss of a white majority in the United States, and also, as a secondary matter, austerity measures forced upon the profligate nation as part of its bailout package.

Deadly riots over new austerity measures engulfed the streets of Athens on Wednesday, and three people were killed as angry protesters tried to storm parliament, hurled Molotov cocktails at police and torched buildings.

Tens of thousands of people took to the streets as part of nationwide strikes to protest new taxes and government spending cuts demanded by the International Monetary Fund and other European nations before heavily indebted Greece gets a euro110 billion ($141 billion) bailout package of loans to keep it from defaulting.

Three people died after being trapped in a burning bank along the main demonstration route in central Athens—the first deaths during a protest in Greece since 1991, when four people trapped in a burning office building were killed. Another five were rescued.

“A demonstration is one thing and murder is quite another,” Prime Minister George Papandreou thundered in Parliament during a session to discuss the spending cuts he announced Sunday. "We need to get these lunatic right-wing Tea-Bags to stop using incendiary language, and also, possibly, incendiary bombs."

I may have added that last sentence.

Thanks to Dr. Spank.

Posted by: Ace at 11:34 AM | Comments (66)
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This post notes that at first the "out liberals" (those not in the closet, like Matthews) first tried to blame the Times Square bomb on the "right-wing."

Now that it's known, as could easily have been guessed, to have been an Islamized immigrant, they have a new slam against the "right-wing" -- that we will indulge in an orgy of racist retribution for the act.

That's beautiful. They can't lose. First we're blamed for doing it in the first place. If that doesn't pan out, there's always Plan B -- blame us for an overreaction to the event and claim that that overreaction is in fact worse than the crime that provoked it.

An overreaction, incidentally, that never actually comes. Even after 9/11, there were only three or four acts of documented anti-Muslim violence in the entire 300-million-strong country.

Plan A: The right did it.

Plan B: Okay, the right didn't do it, per se, but now the right is going to go on a murderous racist crime-spree in reaction to it.

Every time. Ev-er-y time.

Either we're responsible for the crime itself or we're responsible for worse crimes (in this telling), becoming accessories-to-chaos-after-the-fact.

Either way, we're always guilty. Of something.

Posted by: Ace at 10:33 AM | Comments (225)
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