Wow. Glad that's over, as I'm glad ever forced-fun "whoo-hoo" aren't we being outrageous Amateur's Night drunkfest New Year's is over.

But, now that that damned night of contrived conviviality is over, I wish everyone success and health in the new year aborning.

Sorry about the lack of posting today... I was shut out of Mu.nu all day, until I was just about ready to go out on the town.

And hey-- whoever wrote in to Jonah Goldberg at NRO to get me linked, thanks an awful lot. I was expecting a crap day of traffic and got a good one. Much thanks.

Hope everyone is safe at home now and drinking lots of water and taking a few precautionary Advil.

Update: Thanks for all the Well-Wishes! Right back at all of you, in spades!

And thanks to Michelle Malkin and George Gaskell for linking my Blogoversary.

Posted by: Ace at 11:53 PM | Comments (16)
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As long as we're just asking questions-- I want to know.

I want answers.

I mean, since questions about motherhood and child-rearing have become sooo central to this campaign -- aren't we entitled to this information?

As a commenter says -- as long as the left is "camped up inside the uteruses" of Republican politicians (and their daughters, for God's sake) -- let's really open up the floor to questions.

Obama's obviously a fan of abortion. I'd like to know if he puts his personal political preferences into real-life action.

Again -- bear in mind, I've been informed by a former TNR-editor-turned-blogger (nice career trajectory!) writing at the gay gossip site and antisemitic conspiracy newsletter The Atlantic that these questions are quite important.

I've been informed that the mere fact that Governor Palin took her kids with her to witness the most important professional moment of her life makes her kids "fair game" -- and also "opened the door" to any and all questions about the Palins' sex lives and decisions regarding childbearing and child-rearing.

Let's leave the Obama kids out of it.

But we'll leave in Barack and Michelle Obama themselves. They are adults. They showed their kids on TV-- therefore their sexual histories are "fair game."

So: How many "Little Obamas" have been left in the sink? I wish to examine each and every one of Barry and Michelle's choices, just as deragned psychopathic vagina-envy professional homosexual Andrew Sullivan wishes to examine Governor Palin's.

Where are Michelle Obama's gynecological records?

These are important questions, and I will not be bullied into silence. It's my duty to ask them.

Incidentally... Barack Obama is, objectively, much more attractive than Michelle. Objectively, you understand.

Anyone buying that he's been faithful? What's your best guess as to the number of affairs he's had?

Just speculatin' about a likelihood here. I know the National Enquirer has looked into this -- but found no confirmation of anything. But, apparently, they did hear some things.

PS: If you're at an Obama event, somehow, ask the question, and get his response on camera.

Posted by: Ace at 09:00 PM | Comments (149)
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A pathological liar simply cannot be trusted to tell the truth about herself, even on a subject as routine as a pregnancy and infant son. I can't believe I'm asking these questions either. But in the absence of any answers, what am I supposed to do?

I know this puts me out of the mainstream of acceptable Washington opinion. But let me just remind Alex that doubting the existence of Saddam's WMDs put some people out of the mainstream of acceptable Washington opinion.

Warning: Link below is very not safe for work.

If he can't lay off children, I'm afraid I'm going to have to re-link Sullivan's Very Not Safe For Work/Explicit Gay Sex Content Infamous Bareback City Anonymous Gay Sex Cruising Ad every day until the election.

Every. Fucking. Day.

Give It. A Fucking Rest. You Fucking. Child-Hating. Vagina-Envy. Brain-Detrioriated. Bi-Polar. Borderline Personality Disorder. Steroid-Raging. Degenerate. Psychopath.

Andrew Sulivan -- a very versatile commentator.

Actually, this is the first time I've posted this. I posted something like it once for an hour before having a change of heart. But technically, this is the first time.

But not the last.

P-Shop? Can someone clean that ad up, slightly, but ad in The Atlantic's masthead and connect it up with the Atlantic? Like "I dig 3-ways, I dig black guys, I dig making defamatory remarks about 17 year old girls"?

If you can, let me know. We'll knock it around, make it presentable for publication. Make it funny-- and deadly.

The Atlantic "apologizes" for the Greenberg pictures but keeps this insane, heterophobic professional homosexual on its site day after day. Day after day.

Any apologies for Sullivan, Bennet? No?

more...

Posted by: Ace at 09:00 PM | Comments (128)
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Florida Cracker runs down a few good ones, then adds her own.

Did James Wolcott really pray for hurricanes to kill Americans? I guess he did. And then he dared to snark about Bush's statement about/to the tsunami victims.

Yeahp. It's all true. Click on the link and see for yourself.

Remember, this is the guy with three "ocicats," named Jasper, Roland, and something else equally gay I can't recall off the top of my head.

Posted by: Ace at 08:05 PM | Comments (22)
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As many of you know, a nobody columnist at the little-regarded Star-Tribune made a childish and largely factually untrue attack on the Powerline blog.

The Chris Muir Day by Day cartoon that runs with that link notes that this particular nobody seemed to be lashing out at Powerline in order to get some attention.

This is something of a watershed moment.

Bloggers have been rattling the cages of the legacy media to get some attention from the MSM.

This would seem to be the first time that someone from the legacy media -- granted, a never-was no-account nobody from the legacy media -- has attempted to rattle the cages of the Young Media to get the same sort of attention.

Sure, no one heard of this guy before this incident and no one will be able to recall his name in a week. And yes, this particular nobody chose to pick on one of the biggest blogs out there, the one just chosen by Time as "Blog of the Year."

So yeah, it's not really the same as the Boston Globe, say, lighting little Ace of Spades HQ up.

But still. They're cracking under the pressure. First they ignored, then they demeaned. Now they attack, just to garner traffic for themselves.

A bit like blogs.

An interesting change of circumstance.

Posted by: Ace at 06:22 PM | Comments (8)
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As you may have noticed, this site went all buggy at around 3:30 and I was unable to post for a while. I had planned to finish up the Best of Ace thing tonight, but it looks now like I won't be doing that.

I'll mix in new stuff tomorrow, though, so that tomorrow isn't almost all linking old material as today was.

Posted by: Ace at 04:21 PM | Comments (8)
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Wonder if Josh Marshall will begin scandalblogging this outrage?:

A Pentagon official who publicly disclosed information showing Russian involvement in moving Iraqi weapons out of that country has been dismissed.

...

Mr. Shaw said he had been asked to resign for "exceeding his authority" in disclosing the information, a charge he called "specious."

In October, Mr. Shaw told The Washington Times that he had received foreign intelligence data showing that Russian special forces units were involved in an effort to remove Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction in the weeks before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq began in March 2003.

...

Reports of the Russian role in dispersing Iraqi arms made news during the final days of the presidential election campaign, at a time when the Bush administration was being criticized for failing to secure tons of Iraqi high explosives that could be used in developing nuclear arms.

Mr. Shaw went public to counter a political "October surprise" campaign designed to "crucify the president" over the missing explosives, he wrote to Mr. Rumsfeld.

"The Kerry media-driven October surprise attack on us and the president stopped within hours," Mr. Shaw wrote. "If I had not had the openly hostile environment in [Pentagon public affairs], I would have moved the story differently. Getting the truth out instantly was more important than process."

All right. Two big points:

Whether to help or hurt the administration, you can't just reveal classified information because you think it should be released. Liberals seem to have trouble understanding this; but the occasional conservative seems to as well.

As much as I'd like to know things like this, there may be diplomatic reasons for keeping it secret. Such information could, for example, be used as leverage to help secure Russian help, so long as it were actually kept secret. (Blackmail only works until you publicize the dirty pictures, after all.)

Second, since one administration-friendly leaker has been fired, it is now time to unapologetically go after the administration-hostile ones. If you sign on the line that is dotted, and vow to not release this information, it's a fireable offense if you do; and most of the time, you should be fired.

Let the purge begin. The Pentagon and CIA have to be made to understand that they simply are not the makers of this nation's foreign policy, no matter how smart they think they might be and how much better they'd handle things.

Posted by: Ace at 04:20 PM | Comments (8)
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Photo credit: From Enjoy Every Sandwich, who isn't even using the pic anymore, which I think is a crime.

Well, Johnny Coldcuts isn't really on my top ten, but a couple of readers seem to like him, so I'll throw him in here as a bonus.

I made up this "character," if Johnny can be so elevated to be called a character, in this post, introducing him as a foul-mothed, time-travelling baloney sandwhich.

I didn't put much stock in Johnny's prognostications, as his memories of his visits to the future were often clouded by substance abuse and/or simple stupidity. But, amazingly enough, on June 8, 2004, he emphatically predicted a Red Sox World Series sweep. I didn't put any money on that, but anyone who did must have made a fortune.

Johnny, Geoffrey the Duck, and Simon Cowell later evaluated haikus submitted by readers (and Andrew Sullivan, Josh Marshall, and Oliver Willis) for "American Haiku." Contains Johnny's all-time best (and dirtiest) put-down.

Ripping off an old National Lampoon bit, I threatened to kill Johnny unless people donated to me, which, unbelievably enough, they did.

Here Susan Sarandon consoled Johnny as he waited on death row.

Ultimately, the Supreme Court ordered Johnny freed.

Posted by: Ace at 11:40 AM | Comments (7)
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This was probably the most important I wrote as far as launching the site. I had only been blogging since December 30, and of course I had almost no readers whatsoever. Basically, there were some of my friends from The Perfect World checking the blog out on occasion, and blog-brother Son of Nixon. And that was it.

And then on January 3rd or 4th, I wrote the D&D piece. A couple of my readers set it to K-Lo at NRO, who I don't think even got it, but she linked it anyway. No idea how many visitors I got that day -- I still hadn't even heard of a site-meter -- but it was enough traffic to pretty much shut the site down all day.

I got lucky. A lot of bloggers spend months trying to get some attention from anybody, and out of the blue I got linked by NRO four or five days after starting the site up. I went from having six or eight readers to hundreds, which is a hell of a jump for one week. And one post.

At any rate, A Question of Character: The D&D Guide to the Democratic Presidential Candidates pretty much launched this site.

I'm particularly proud of the Wesley Clark bit. In one long riff, I mention Call of Cthulhu, D&D, Traveller, Rush (the band), Dune, Led Zeppellin, time-travel, Back to the Future, flux capacitors, Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, the Bene Geserit, sandworms, Duncan Idaho, Paul Atreides, Star Trek, Mr. Spock, bugbears, and the super-geeky Moody Blues song Knights in White Satin. That is what you call a geek-culture Tour de Force. I really don't think that anyone will ever be able to top that as far as pure extreme dorkiness.

Related: Lightning bolt! Lightning bolt! Lightning bolt!

Also Related: A generic walk-through for every freaking game you've ever played.

Posted by: Ace at 10:57 AM | Comments (9)
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It turns out that, over the year, certain people suddenly caught fuckin' fire. I was pretty much the only blogger to notice and properly document this incindiary phenomenon.

First, Bob Dole caught fuckin' fire, after pinning back Kerry's ears for suggesting that the SwiftVets weren't entitled to tell their story. And boy did he burn.

The strange combustions continued. Zell Miller caught fuckin' fire on live television at the Republican National Convention.

And then stranger still, Pat Sajak -- Pat Sajak! -- penned a strong conservative opinion column and was confirmed to have, in fact, caught on fuckin' fire.

And then, of course, strangest of all came the curious combustion of Charles Schumer, who caught fuckin' fire while telling a peacenic professor to drink a nice tall glass of shut-the-fuck-up juice.

Posted by: Ace at 10:23 AM | Comments (4)
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