I am not saying it's true. But it's not as if it can be overlooked.

The Smoking Gun has the dirty details from Mackris' complaint, and they are in fact dirty.

Not filthy-dirty, but dirty.

Update: Let me recommend again Jim Lindgren's discussion of when "negotiations incidental to a possible bona fide lawsuit" become criminal extortion.

Posted by: Ace at 02:47 PM | Comments (15)
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Bad news at the top of KerrySpot. The WaPo poll has Bush behind by Kerry 49-48, and Kerry's got a small lead in Ohio to boot.

Let's not go all to pieces like the liberals did last month. It's going to be a tight one; Bush may need some help, as they say about teams on the wildcard bubble.

But you have to vote.

Posted by: Ace at 01:56 PM | Comments (13)
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H/t to Drudge. So, to get those possibly-drifting Jewish voters back into the Democratic camp, some moron has come up with a Jewish superhero -- a Jewish grandmother named "Bubbie" -- and put together a cartoon of her kicking the ass of the GOP.

It's every bit as funny as you'd think. By which I mean: Not funny. Fucking embarassing.

I did a Jewish Grandmother schtick the other day. But my schtick was ironic. (Not funny, mind you, but ironic.) I mean, the Jewish grandmother thing is such a cliche that it's only funny when you're playing it as a cliche.

Not for real. Then it's just fucking stupid and trite.

This asshole really seems to think that Jews need a Jewish cartoon character to inspire them to vote the right way.

Eh. Or, should I say: Feh.

It remains an amazement to me that I am not yet on television.

Update: The Hebrew-sounding synth music is really subtle, too.

I'm not saying it's racist or anti-semitic, mind you. It's just... jackass.

In order to do my part to convert Jewish voters to the GOP, I'm going to spend the next week talking about nothing except Fiddler on the Roof and Ben Gazzarra.

Better Still: I'll get Bowzer to guest-blog. That'll bring the Jewish vote.

Because, if I know one thing about politics, I know this to be diamond-hard fact:

Jews. Love. Fuckin'. Bowzer.

Bowzer.

Posted by: Ace at 01:04 PM | Comments (7)
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A lot of people don't seem to get the racist Jeff Danziger cartoon. It's not funny whether you get it or not, but here's the attempted joke. I think.

Condi Rice is being parodied as, I think, Butterfly McQueen from Gone With the Wind. This character -- a black maid/slave, I think, but I've never seen the film, so don't hold me to that -- says something like "I knows all about birthin' babies" early in the film. Then, when she's actually called upon to deliver a baby, she famously cries out, "I don't know nothin' 'bout birthin' no babies." (Thanks to Phil for clarifying this.)

So, the cartoon is saying that Condi Rice is a black slave, and putting derogatory "black slang" into her mouth which is accepted in GWTW (I guess) but which is obviously considered insulting now.

And they have her, ahem, nursing aluminum tubes, making the "joke," I guess, that while before the war she knew all about about aluminum tubes, now she doesn't, and confesses ignorance.

That's what we call a real knee-slapper round Ace o' Spades parts.

Basically, I think Danziger just hates Condi Rice and wants to find an acceptable way of calling her, well, the n-word.

I don't think he succeeded.

If you want to call someone a "ni***r," Danziger, why not have the guts to just come out and say it?

You effete douchebag.

See? Not this passive aggressive bullshit.

Meanwhile, Hugh McBryde says he recieved the following response to his complaint about the cartoon. I don't know where the cartoon appeared on the NYT, if anywhere; they don't publish Danziger in the paper, at least, though it may be linked on the website somewhere.

Mr. McBryde:

It is of considerable importance to us. I haven't gotten back to you again because I didn't have all the facts. I still don't, but I can see that I should have given you an interim report.

Obviously the cartoon is racist and deeply offensive. Whether that means that Danziger himself is racist I don't know and don't much care. My only real concern is whether and to what extent this cartoon had any relation to The New York Times. (It certainly was not published in the newspaper.) As soon as I can answer that question for you, I will. In the meantime, thank you for bringing it to our attention.

Best, Bill Borders

I can't vouch that's a genuine response, and I can't really even vouch for Mr. McBryde, but I guess I provisionally trust that this is real.

Look, the cartoon is offensive. There's no getting around that.

Apologies: I used the c-word -- the bad four-letter c-word, not the fun Norm MacDonald one -- in this post originally. I think this is the second or third time I've resorted to that word on this blog, and the second or third time I've quickly edited it out.

It's one of the harshest curses out there, and it's not even a playful one. I shouldn't have used it, and I'm sorry if I offended anyone by it.

Posted by: Ace at 12:49 PM | Comments (14)
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RedState has the transcripts for the upcoming SwiftVet ads.

"How can you expect our sons and daughters to follow you, when you condemned their fathers and grandfathers? "

The ads will be previewed on Brit Hume tonight. And he says an ad just might run on Monday Night Football.

Posted by: Ace at 12:07 PM | Add Comment
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Karol from Alarming News got herself a job working for Pete Coors in Colorado, and she photo-blogs the President's trip there.

Coupla cute pics of Jenna, too.

Posted by: Ace at 11:20 AM | Comments (2)
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This column is well worth reading, but it's bound to be controversial.

Basically, Steyn asks the hard questions we don't like to face:

None of us can know for certain how we would behave in [Kenneth Bigley's] circumstances, and very few of us will ever face them. But, if I had to choose in advance the very last words I’d utter in this life, “Tony Blair has not done enough for me” would not be high up on the list. First, because it’s the all but official slogan of modern Britain, the dull rote whine of the churlish citizen invited to opine on waiting lists or public transport, and thus unworthy of the uniquely grisly situation in which Mr Bigley found himself. And, secondly, because those words are so at odds with the spirit of a life spent, for the most part, far from these islands. Ken Bigley seems to have found contemporary Britain a dreary, insufficient place and I doubt he cared about who was Prime Minister from one decade to the next.

...

While Ken Bigley passed much of his life as a happy expat, his brother Paul appears to have gone a stage further and all but seceded. Night and day, he was on TV explaining to the world how the Bigley family’s Middle East policy is wholly different from Her Majesty’s Government – a Unilateral Declaration of Independence accepted de facto by Mr Blair’s ministry when it dispatched Jack Straw to Merseyside to present formally his condolences to the Bigleys, surely the most extraordinary flying visit ever undertaken by a British Foreign Secretary. For their pains, the government was informed by Paul Bigley that the Prime Minister had “blood on his hands”. This seems an especially stupid and contemptible formulation when anyone with an Internet connection can see Ken Bigley’s blood and the hand it’s literally on holding up his head.

...

By contrast with the Fleet Street-Scouser-Whitehall fiasco of the last three weeks, consider Fabrizio Quattrocchi, murdered in Iraq on April 14th. In the moment before his death, he yanked off his hood and cried defiantly, “I will show you how an Italian dies!” He ruined the movie for his killers. As a snuff video and recruitment tool, it was all but useless, so much so that the Arabic TV stations declined to show it.

Read the whole thing.

Thanks to, errr, some guy I don't know if I can credit.

Posted by: Ace at 11:08 AM | Add Comment
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Here I am reading a typically superb Hugh Hewitt run-down of all the day's interesting news when I come across this:

For some great comic relief and genuine insight into the blogosphere, check out RightWingNews' symposium on the blogosphere, featuring superstars of the center-right Ace of Spades, A Small Victory, IMAO, and INDC Journal.

Superstars of the center-right.

Well, if Hugh Hewitt says so...

Sorry. I never promised you that I wouldn't engage in shameless self-promotion.

Update: Sobek finds it a little depressing that he got a one-day spike in traffic and is now desperate for that spike again.

I hear ya, brother. My traffic's okay, but it's down by nine thousand unique hits per day from what it was during Rathergate. Blogging is sort of like a relationship-- it can only go forward. When it starts going backwards, it gets to be unfulfilling. I love writing for people, but I loved writing for tens of thousands of people even more.

Blogging is like sex in that regard too: Hey, I'm just looking for numbers. I'll happily sacrifice some quality for a lot of quantity.

Dave from Garfield Ridge is also chasing the next big wave of hits, and he thinks he's found his niche: Documenting the "Ape-Threat" that our so-called "government" won't do anything about.

It's about time someone had the guts to say "Get your goddamned hands off me you damned dirty ape."

Posted by: Ace at 10:22 AM | Comments (12)
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Eeesh. I'm not Bill O'Reilly's biggest fan, but I don't wish ill on him either. I don't know who's telling the truth in this unseemly business.

The basic facts seem to be that an O'Reilly producer is claiming sexual harassment, and Bill O'Reilly has jumped first with a lawsuit for extortion against her.

Apparetly she wants 60 large. And by "large," I don't mean thousands. Larger than that.

Jim Lindgren examines the legal issues in play, which are every bit as interesting as speculating about the exact nature of Bill O'Reilly's alleged dirty-talk to a female producer.

Well...

Maybe that overstates it a bit. Just a bit.

I smell Top Ten.

Posted by: Ace at 10:14 AM | Comments (9)
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Suspicions swirl. Don't expect the MSM to demand that Kerry release his military records to rebut these suspicions:

An official Navy document on Senator Kerry's campaign Web site listed as Mr. Kerry's "Honorable Discharge from the Reserves" opens a door on a well kept secret about his military service.

The document is a form cover letter in the name of the Carter administration's secretary of the Navy, W. Graham Claytor. It describes Mr. Kerry's discharge as being subsequent to the review of "a board of officers." This in it self is unusual. There is nothing about an ordinary honorable discharge action in the Navy that requires a review by a board of officers.

According to the secretary of the Navy's document, the "authority of reference" this board was using in considering Mr. Kerry's record was "Title 10, U.S. Code Section 1162 and 1163. "This section refers to the grounds for involuntary separation from the service. What was being reviewed, then, was Mr. Kerry's involuntary separation from the service. And it couldn't have been an honorable discharge, or there would have been no point in any review at all. The review was likely held to improve Mr. Kerry's status of discharge from a less than honorable discharge to an honorable discharge.

A Kerry campaign spokesman, David Wade, was asked whether Mr. Kerry had ever been a victim of an attempt to deny him an honorable discharge. There has been no response to that inquiry.

...

There is one odd coincidence that gives some weight to the possibility that Mr. Kerry was dishonorably discharged. Mr. Kerry has claimed that he lost his medal certificates and that is why he asked that they be reissued. But when a dishonorable discharge is issued, all pay benefits, and allowances, and all medals and honors are revoked as well. And five months after Mr. Kerry joined the U.S. Senate in 1985, on one single day, June 4, all of Mr. Kerry's medals were reissued.

Thanks to Kristian.

And, ummm...

There may be more to this all. I think it would be irresponsible to link the rumor I'm talking about, so I won't. In this respect I am more responsible than the New York Times.

More: Beldar's on the case, too.

And you don't want Beldar on your case. Trust me on this.

Posted by: Ace at 10:04 AM | Comments (9)
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