... there's still my blogspot site, which is at www.ace-o-spades.blogspot.com. Don't forget that blogspot.

I don't know why mu.nu is so pissy lately. But I'll post at www.ace-o-spades.blogspot.com when/if this address goes down.

Posted by: Ace at 11:51 AM | Comments (3)
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Dummocrats.com riffs off by Blaine comments and coins a new term: Pretty in Pink Democrats.

Even worse than liberals created by Blaine's social viciousness are liberals created by genuine ass-kicking. Such Cobra-Kai Liberals often try to pick fights with people later in life, always trying to heal adolescent feelings of impotency by wrestling people. Al Franken is the prototypical Cobra Kai liberal.

This is one group of liberals I have some sympathy for. If you were about to get all up in Elizabeth Shue's shit when some surf-nazis dressed as skeletons karate-kicked your ass into next week, you'd probably be looking for some payback later in life, too.

But they're not to be confused with Footloose liberals, liberals who are convinced that this really is 1952 and America is in danger of having John Lithgow take away their right to dance.

Somewhat related are Dead Zone liberals, who wake up with night-terrors at the thought of a Republican President praying to God and then nuking the world like the mutants from Beneath the Planet of the Apes. Creepy atonal organ music features prominently in these nightmares, as do frequent flashes of James Fransiscus' little white ass.

There's also the political movement called Benderism, composed of disciples of John "No, Dad, what about you?!" Bender. These Benderites live in a state of perpetual adolescent rebellion and are convinced that not behaving like a prick constitutes "selling out to the man." They also attempt to hide their weed in the shorts of law-abiding citizens like myself.

And then there are the Fake-Laugh Liberals, liberals who like to show their political stripes by forcing whooping fake laughs at unfunny statements they agree with. Jon Stewart and Bill Maher -- and, of course, Margaret Cho -- have careers only due to Fake-Laugh Liberals.

A subvariety is the See? I Get It, That's Why I'm Fake-Laughing Liberal, who are key to Woody Allen's otherwise-inexplicable ability to get financing for his latest cinematic abortion. These are liberals who fake-laugh not necessarily because of actual political sympathies, but because they want to show that they understood Allen's ten-billionth reference to Marshall Fucking MacLuhan because, you know, they went to a good college (and/or saw Annie Hall). By pretending to laugh at yet another Woody Allen Leopold & Loeb reference, they demonstrate that they're better and smarter than you are.

Finally there is the well-known group of liberals called West Wing liberals, liberals who have effectively opted out of reality and put bumper-stickers on their car reading My President is Jeb Bartlett. They think the key to winning elections is to be even more unabashedly liberal, because that seems to work on the TV show. I like these liberals, because they're pretty much absenting themselves from actual political discourse, leaving us conservatives free to spin our nefarious plots.

It's Still Kinda Funny Update: Luckily for us, we still have NRO contributor/star of St. Elmo's Fire Andrew McCarthy on our side.

Even if Ducky is lost to us forever.

Posted by: Ace at 10:36 AM | Comments (11)
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Okay, so they're a couple of terrorist-friendly Islamist wackjobs. But we should listen to them anyway, because it's really important what "the world" thinks.

Like, scary-important. If I don't feel the collective goodwill of a million stinking Frenchmen on November 3rd, I just don't know what I'll do.

Vladimir Putin agrees that Kerry has the terrorist vote all sewn up:

"I consider the activities of terrorists in Iraq are not as much aimed at coalition forces but more personally against President Bush (news - web sites)," Putin said at a news conference after a regional summit in the Tajik capital, Dushanbe.

"International terrorism has as its goal to prevent the election of President Bush to a second term," he said. "If they achieve that goal, then that will give international terrorism a new impulse and extra power."

I expect this quote to get a lot of coverage from the MSM.

I expect a lot of things.

I'm a lunatic.

Posted by: Ace at 09:52 AM | Comments (10)
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Waah. The Guardian is crying about all the mean emails it got. They're publishing some of the choicest letters to show, for the billionth time, what uncouth, uncultured rightwing troglodytes their American cousins are.

Coupla good ones:

Real Americans aren't interested in your pansy-ass, tea-sipping opinions. If you want to save the world, begin with your own worthless corner of it.
Texas, USA

...

Feel free to respond to this email with your advice. Please keep in mind that I am something of an anglophile, so this is not confrontational. Please remember, too, that I am merely an American. That means I am not very bright. It means I have no culture or sense of history. It also means that I am barely literate, so please don't use big, fancy words.

Set me straight, folks!
Dayton, Ohio

Posted by: Ace at 09:39 AM | Comments (5)
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Has anyone else noticed this? We've all become familiar with various varieties of liberals, but Texas Democrats -- such as Bill Burkett and his promoter Dan Rather -- seem to be a stridently partisan and nasty breed.

The Weekly Standard examines the heart of lunatic Texas liberal partisanship-- the city of Austin:

...Austin is, as Jeff says, the "anti-Texas," where "Texans who don't really like Texas" choose to live. More important, it has also, in a larger sense, exported its own peculiar brand of Bush hatred to Democrats from one coast to the other.

I think that idea-- "Texans who don't really like Texas" -- explains 50% of politics, and 90% of liberal politics. People vote against whatever party seems more comfortable with the sort of people who gave them grief (real or imagined) as teenagers. For every Blaine from Pretty in Pink that exists in the real world, there are now a dozen committed liberals. Thanks a lot for that, Blaine. Maybe if you hadn't been such a prick to Ducky we wouldn't have had to suffer through two terms of Clinton.

Liberals from the coastal cities aren't quite as nasty, or flat-out lunatic, as Texas Democrats seem to be. And maybe that's because coastal liberals are more smug and self-satisfied with their liberalism -- living as they do in a reassuring liberal bubble-- while Texas liberals, on the other hand, are not protected by any such bubble. Unlike their San Fransisco correligionists, they feel threatened and marginalized, and are determined to lash out -- thuggishly, if necessary -- against their perceived oppressors.

Pauline Kael famously pronounced that no one she knew voted for Nixon, even as he managed a landslide victory in 1972. New York liberals get to remain blissfully ignorant that a little more than half the country considers their politics daft and dangerous, while Texas liberals have the evidence of that rubbed in their noses every day.

And there's a reason Texas liberals feel so marginalized. Because they are:

Yet the feeling that runs through Texas liberalism--the feeling of being besieged, outgunned, impotent if not hopeless--is well-founded. Even paranoids are sometimes on to something. For nearly a century, Texas liberals shared the majority party in Texas, the Democratic party, with conservatives. It was an uneasy alliance but it satisfied both factions with separate spheres of influence. No more. The good news for Texas progressives is that they've finally purged the Democratic party of right-wingers and now have it all to themselves. The bad news is that the party is roughly the size of a well-attended kegger. And it promises to stay that way for the next generation.

The change is notable not only for its comprehensiveness but for the rapidity with which it took place. In Texas, the first Republican since Reconstruction took statewide office in 1978. Within 20 years, all 22 statewide offices were held by Republicans. Unbudgeable, decades-old majorities in both houses of the Texas legislature vaporized just as quickly. You can't blame Texas liberals for being disoriented. "There's something about being so concentrated ideologically that makes them more strident than they'd be under other circumstances," Will Lutz, managing editor of a political newsletter called The Lone Star Report, told me earlier this month.

Jim Hightower, Molly Ivins, Dan Rather, Bill Burkett-- the lot of them are all just fucking bananas, driven crazy by an unsettlingly-quick loss of political power and by their own personal antichrist, George Walker Bush.

They really ought to just get themselves a nice hobby to occupy their time instead of always making right jackasses out of themselves.

Self-Promoting Update! Dummocrats.com riffs off by Blaine comments and coins a new term: Pretty in Pink Democrats.

Not to be confused with Footloose liberals, liberals who are convinced that this really is 1952 and America is in danger of having John Lithgow take away their right to dance.

Also not to be confused with Dead Zone liberals, who wake up with night-terrors at the thought of a Republican President praying to God and then nuking the world like the mutants from Beneath the Planet of the Apes. Creepy atonal organ music features prominently in these nightmares, as do frequent flashes of James Fransiscus' little white ass.

Posted by: Ace at 11:43 PM | Comments (31)
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I'm just posting this because I love the way all that red looks.

There are a couple of unwelcome surprises there. New Hampshire is now in Kerry's column, and Ohio is slightly leaning towards Kerry (although so slightly that RCP calls it a toss-up). Minnesota, which ought to be getable and could shatter Kerry's hopes by going for Bush, nevertheless remains a blue state.

On the other hand, it appears as though Bush could afford to lose Ohio-- but only if he picks up toss-ups Wisconsin and Iowa. I wouldn't bet the farm on that, but it's nice to know there's an out if Bush doesn't pick up the Ohio card.

The Iowa Electronic Markets continue showing a belief in Bush's odds.

Posted by: Ace at 11:20 PM | Comments (10)
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I can't imagine such behavoir from Paris Hilton:

October 14, 2004 -- HOLLYWOOD oil heir Brandon Davis just poured gasoline on the Paris Hilton N-word furor, claiming that Hilton regularly uses the racial slur as well as slurs against other minorities.

Davis, an old friend of Hilton who had a falling out with her this year, came forward after it was reported that Hilton used the N-word in a scene caught on videotape. Hilton later issued a statement saying, "Anyone who knows me knows that this is not me. I love everybody and am not a person who discriminates against anyone — ever."

But Davis tells this week's National Enquirer: "Not true. She was forever using the 'N-word.' I told her not to use it. It was offensive. But she just laughed. She is a racist, plus an idiot. Every black person she referred to was a 'n- - - - -.' "

Davis, the grandson of recently deceased oil billionaire and movie mogul Marvin Davis and boyfriend of "O.C." starlet Mischa Barton, continued, "She uses the word all the time, and I've known her all of her life. It's 'n- - - - - this' and 'n- - - - - that.' She's a disgrace. She is a racist!

"She puts down Jews and other minorities, too. And I'm Jewish. I found it depressing . . . I finally had enough of her attitude six months ago, and I finished with her. I don't want anything to do with her. I don't need anything from her. She is no longer my friend. She's just not a nice person."

True? False? Who knows. Who cares.

Posted by: Ace at 03:55 PM | Comments (12)
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At Drudge.

Zogby and Newsweek weren't just noise. Bush's weak first debate performance cost him, but not as much as it first seemed. I'm a little surprised -- I thought Bush was toast, to be honest with you -- but the public does seem to have sort of settled on him for re-election (if just by a little bit).

I did not see this one coming.

Coming Soon! Andrew Sullivan explains how the "internals" all look amazing for Kerry! Eagles up, South Park Republicans!

Posted by: Ace at 09:46 AM | Comments (17)
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JimW sends a link to a blogger who finally decided to say what we all freaking know: Osama bin Ladin is Osama bin decomposin'.

There is little other reason to explain his failure to appear on videotape -- proof of life, as they say. For a time, one could explain it by supposing that perhaps he didn't want to show himself while Al Qaeda was being so thoroughly routed-- he wanted only to appear after a "great victory."

Well, these psychotics scored their idea of a great victory in Madrid, and yet still no proof he's alive.

I'm getting pretty sick of our scary-smart CIA telling us that some audiotapes are "90% likely" OBL. Yeah, either OBL, or Dana Fucking Carvey doing a new fucking impression.

Posted by: Ace at 03:59 PM | Comments (36)
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Even CNN lowers itself to cover the anniversary:

ATLANTA, Georgia (AP) -- Dungeons & Dragons players gathered in game stores around the country Saturday to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the grandfather of fantasy role-playing games -- a pop culture phenomenon that has influenced myriad video games, books and movies.

An estimated 25,000 fans in 1,200 stores celebrated the anniversary Saturday, said Charles Ryan, brand manager for role-playing games at Wizards of the Coast, a Renton, Washington, company that owns Dungeons & Dragons.

...

Dungeons & Dragons went on to become one of the best-selling games of all time, inspiring fan devotion so great that some travel thousands of miles to play in tournaments.

There have been Dungeons & Dragons books, movies, puzzles, even a Saturday-morning cartoon show.

All quality entertainments, too.

The game peaked in the 1980s, but there are plenty of fans left. Some 4 million people play D&D regularly. Many of them laugh at a common suggestion that fantasy gamers are geeks: Of course they are, they say.

"I think a lot of people who get drawn to this game are loners, but here's a real opportunity to come out of that shell and feel safe about it," said fan Mitch Hamburger, 32.

Yes. There's something empowering about having a nicely-statted character sheet and smiting a couple of kobolds.

Look at me! I just rolled the shit out of that d4! Man, I'm fuckin' cool!

Related Dorkiness: Just on the phone with Son of Nixon.

Me: "I went to a blog party last month."

SoN (perfectly serious): "You mean like physically at a party, or just 'partying' in a chatroom?"

Me: "Give me some credit, for crying out loud."

Blog-party.

Me and bunch of dudes sitting around in a chatroom, telling each other how "freakin' wasted" we are.

That's me. Such a fucking dork that even a "friend" thinks that I'm "partying" on-line-- and then bragging about it.

Posted by: Ace at 03:50 PM | Comments (15)
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