Hosted by PunditGuy.

He's asking for donations to help pay for the extra bandwidth that hosting these videos will cost him, but he vows he'll donate 50% of every donation to the American Red Cross' tsunami relief fund.

Posted by: Ace at 02:12 PM | Comments (7)
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So as not to distress the tourist industry?

Right now I'm filing this under too-bad-to-be-true. I hope the this sort of stunning malfeasance isn't possible outside of a Jaws movie.

A Contrary View: Remy Logan (X-Man fan much?) offers the following:

Tsunami prediction is only a little more accurate than earthquake prediction. Hawaii has received 3 alerts since 1960, 2 were false alarms. I was in Hawaii for the last big tsunami prediction, which turned out to be a false alarm (fortunately). The news media tracked the surge across the Pacific. The entire island of Oahu was brought to a standstill and tens of thousands were still on the road in harm's way at the predicted time. The "wave" was only a few inches and could only be "seen" by reviewing wave sensor data after the fact.

I was also in Hawaii when Hurricanes Ewa and Iniki were supposed to devestate Oahu. The island of Kauai took the brunt of both hurricanes, and Oahu was left relatively unscathed. I've experienced more damage from freak windstorms and heavy rains that weren't projected to cause much damage (but did).

The bottom line, hindsight is always 20/20. The Thai officials didn't haven't accurate information, and based on historical precedence decided there wasn't a danger. It's easy to say they should have been cautious and sounded the alarm. I'm sure that if there is a similar threat in the next 50 years they will. But, historically speaking, no one alive today will be around the next time something like this happens.

In Hawaii, the one tsunami that was devestating was so unique, that no one then knew what it was. Just like happened on Sunday, people then were awed by the site of the suddenly emptied beach and instead of running for the hills, ran out to see the flopping fish.

Posted by: Ace at 01:59 PM | Comments (7)
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Enough already. There are genuine terrorists out there, and, I'm sorry to say, most of them happen to be Muslim.

Being a tolerant, multicultural sort of guy (really! but not to extremes), I do wish in fact that terrorist evil were more of an equal-opportunity endeavor, with terrorist cells made up precisely how TV shows usually depict violent street gangs (one black, one Hispanic, one Asian, and one white guy who always wears a mohawk). Because, you know, uneducated, violent street thugs are renown the world over for being among the most tolerant and multiculturally-attuned people on the face of the earth.

That's how gangs look, you know. Multi-ethnic.

I wish that the problem of global megaterrorism did not implicate one particular discreet ethnic group.

But it largely -- almost exclusively, actually -- does. That's reality.

And Hollywood, which apologizes for its occasionally nasty fare with the excuse that "we're just showing the world as it is," seems pretty damn uncomfortable with "just showing the world as it is" with respect to this one problem, the central problem of our age.

And, as Dave points out, even when Muslim terrorists are involved, they're almost always just patsies being used by Evil White Guys, anyway.

Serbians and Slavs seem to be the favorite Evil White Guys of the moment. I don't think that's really fair, either, but I don't hear them complaining. At least not too loudly.

One disagreement with Dave-- how did the masterful film True Lies depict Muslims in a stereotypical fashion? Bear in mind, it wasn't depicting Muslims so much as Muslim terrorists, and the film included the obligatory (but necessary) good Muslim on Arnold's team.

Posted by: Ace at 01:20 PM | Comments (11)
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...comes via Michelle Malkin.

The Washington Times notes, correctly, that Sontag blamed America for 9-11 and called the white race a "cancer" on the world. Look, she believed that-- she was proud of those thoughts. Why should liberal obituary-writers "chill" her right to free speech, even in death, in order pretty up her beliefs for public consumption?

Don't expect a similar whitewash should, say, Pat Buchanan die. His 1992 RNC speech will be mentioned within the first three paragraphs.

Posted by: Ace at 12:41 PM | Comments (5)
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CORRECTION: This item originally ran with a photo taken from Free Republic. Several posters have written to tell me the photo is from China several years back, and furthermore is an artifact of some trick (or tricky) phtography.

The photo runs after the jump. [End correction; thanks for your input.]

Yeahp, seems as good a time as any to link the disaster to America's tax policy and to global warming.

But conservatives should be castigated, of course. The left uses this almost-incomprehensible tragedy to score political points, and the right dares to say 1, you're just being idiotic and 2, you're being almost inhuman in your rush to use the dead to advance your political agenda, even as the corpses are still being counted.

But "both sides" need to cool it with the politics, right?
more...

Posted by: Ace at 12:35 PM | Comments (16)
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I've been wondering when some dolt would blame seismic activity on too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

This idiot doesn't quite do that, alas, but he does endeavor to link the two nonetheless.

And of course the New York Times is more than happy to publish his idiotic letter.

You Make the Call:

A liberal commentor/insulter named Ryan says the following:

Ace,
You seem to have a lot of misdirected anger.
You are not a welcome opponent in an argument as it always seems to come down to the mythical liberal media and all the crybaby liberals doing this or doing that. Start using logic, start being rational. That goes for you and your psychotic rightwing followers who sit there and scream all day long about how stupid, evil, uncaring, weak, do-nothing liberals are. You clearly have no world view. Its your view, for better or worse. You have a square peg view and will cram it into the round hole world. There is no bend, there is no compromise.

Don't tell me that the liberals use every event for political gain. That is wrong and just sad. And so are you Mr. Of Spades. Go stick that in your little blogerator you closed minded nerd humper.

Logic. Crybabyism. Psychotic. Etc. Well, as long as you're being so very rational and civil, Ryan, I guess it would be churlish of me to respond in an insulting fashion.

So I would just suggest that everyone compare Ryan's thesis to the letter just published by the New York Times:

It's easy for George W. Bush to express sorrow and to send condolences and even some aid for the Indian Ocean tsunami devastation, since he appears to bear no culpability, as he does in other situations in other parts of the world.

But the next time there is a severe offshore earthquake and resulting tsunami, the sea level will be just a little bit higher, and the water and destruction will go a bit further inland and kill even more people. And for that, he will bear some culpability for not even wanting to consider global warming, much less do anything about it as the leader of the country most responsible for man-made warming and ice-cap melting.

Doesn't make sense to me. Six inches extra of sea level won't make much of a difference when you're talking about a twenty-foot swell. Further, the whole idea is that the rising sea-levels will flood currently-populated areas, forcing humanity, at some great expense, to move back away from the advancing seas, to resettle further inland. In other words, even granting the premise of the "rising sea level" scaremongering, should another tsunami hit, it won't be intensified by the supposedly-risen sea level, as we'll have all moved back from the shores and effectively be in the same position we are now, at least as regards the threat of a land-invading tsunami.

But any tragedy can be used to attack the Bush administration.

Add that to the "stingy" attack -- and the call for the US to raise taxes in response to the tsunami! -- and the fretting that Bush remains on a scheduled vacation while they're still counting the dead from a tsunami.

Has anyone on the right sought to blame this calamity on the left? I haven't. To the extent the right has commented on this politics of this disaster, it has only been to rebut the inappropriately-political and utterly cynical opportunism of the left.

But, once again, you be the judge.

Posted by: Ace at 11:39 AM | Comments (25)
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Two problems: No Margaret Cho? No Michael Moore?

What kind of slapdash outfit are they running over there, anyway?

Posted by: Ace at 11:29 AM | Comments (3)
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More attention is being paid to some talentless legacy media goldbricker's attack on Powerline (and bloggers generally) than is probably warranted.

It reminds me of the general pettiness and defensiveness of "professional" monopolies in general. There are big disputes, both legislatively and in the courts, over such matters as whether mere opticians should be permitted by law to evaluate someone's eyesight before making them glasses, or whether only an MD-holding optometrist should be allowed to perform such relatively simple (and, of course, perfectly safe) tests.

It's a fact that your local optician can probably test your eyesight and prescribe the right lens for your eyes just as well as any doctor. But of course the doctors don't want to allow them to do so; they don't want the competition, especially from their professional and educational inferiors. And so there are always these idiotic claims that it's necessary that we desperately need legislation to prevent these dangerous opticians from performing these simple tests, in order to safeguard the public from their reckless, less-educated uncouthness.

And of course it's all bullshit. The optometrists just want to keep as much business flowing to them as possible.

The legacy media hasn't quite called for legislation banning bloggers yet, although CBSNews (who else?) has fretted about that "blogs are providing a new and unregulated medium for politically motivated attacks" -- the implication being, of course, that perhaps this whole First Amendment thing is a bit overrated, at least as applies to non-credentialed reporters, and perhaps these upstart opticians really ought not be permitted to check for astigmatism without being licesed by the state, and subject to its regulatory power.

There's a good reason for the mainstream media to be defensive. Unlike most professions, which actually require a good deal of serious academic training, journalism is in fact something anyone can do right out of high school (and of course IN high school, as many have done). And of course twenty years ago the idea of getting a "degree" to teach you how to ask questions and then write a concise report about the answers was a little laughable.

They've concocted a faux-profession for themselves in an effort to exclude competitors.

And worse yet-- most of them aren't particularly good at their jobs, and they know it. They could be easily replaced by better writers and analysts who'd work for, get this, less money (hell-- most bloggers work for FREE as it is), and that's got to weigh heavily in their minds. Their cushy lifestyles are being threatened by unaccredited barbarians, and their basic incompetence is being exposed by the same unwashed hooligans.

And so they attack, attack, attack. Making spurious claims about how the public must be spared from their "Wild West" and "unregulated" musings. Or else, you know, we'll have anarchy.

Food riots. Atonal music. All of the rest of it.

But it's not quite working. As has been pointed out, the preferred stance is of course to say "I will not dignify these lowly creatures with a response." But more and more, they find that that position will not obtain, and they're being forced to respond.

And they're not responding particularly convincingly.

So, Nick Coleman wants to make small-dick-jokes about Powerline Blog. I can't really scold him too badly on that score; I make dick jokes myself.

Except mine are funnier.

So if it's dick jokes you want, why go to the legacy media?

Bob Dole's cock demands the contrived monopoly on information-gathering and dissemination be overthrown.

And you should listen to Bob Dole's cock. It was almost President.

Posted by: Ace at 11:21 AM | Comments (7)
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I find it hard to post about disasters like this, claiming more than 60,000, perhaps even 100,000,, more than half of them children. I find my words too small and poor for the magnitude of the tragedy.

Michele at a Small Victory tries to wrap her mind around the dimensions of the catastrophe.

She also posts an exhaustive list of agencies which are trying to provide relief to the survivors, and to which you can donate.

And there's always Amazon's on-line relief fund, which has just passed $2 million in American stinginess.

I just donated myself, using some of that crazy blog-money you've been nice enough to send to me. Not a lot, but together it all ads up.

Posted by: Ace at 10:58 AM | Comments (10)
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Yeahp. Almost one year.

But before I start the festivities, let me say thank you once again to all of you who check in here. It's really very flattering, and I appreicate all of my readers. And of course my commenters and tipsters, without whom this site would have pretty much shut down entirely after Rathergate.

And of course the other bloggers who link me.

(And the donors, too! Let's not forget them!)

It's been a fun year. Man, it really did go quickly. One year ago, I decided that I really couldn't stomach Oliver Willis getting attention while I got none, and that I really had to get me a piece of that crazy blog-money. One year later, I'm at least tied with Willis in terms of traffic and links -- ummm, not really something to brag about, I know -- but I still really haven't seen much of that crazy blog-money.

Still-- it's been a blast. From time to time I've pretty much gotten sick of this blog -- "That can't be true," you're all saying, "because every day there's just such a torrent of brilliance streaming out of your keyboard!" -- but most of the time it's been a lot of fun.

It was especially fun climbing up that Ecosystem thing. As I've said before, every time I moved up into a new category it was like levelling up in Dungeons & Dragons, and time to pick out my new +3 flaming longsword of truth. I'm in now what you might call a stall -- sort of stuck at 10th to 12th level, you know, when it gets harder to earn expeirience points -- but still it was wonderful that so many of you voted for me for Wizbang's Best Blog poll. I didn't level-up with that, but it was like drawing the King of Diamonds from The Deck of Many Things and getting a kick-ass warhorse who responds to my psychic commands.

Right now I'm sort of looking over some of my past stuff, to see if I can find some forgotten material that was kind of funny but that no one really saw or remembers.

Like this piece, for example. It's a long and not particularly inspired rant against Whoopie Goldberg -- more funny than true -- but it contained this put-down, which made me chuckle:

I would say that watching Whoopie on Comic Relief was much akin to suffering through the Yoko Ono songs on a John Lennon album, except that I wouldn't want to malign the dead by comparing Lennon to Billy Crystal and Robin "I'm 'improvising' all this shit I've been doing for 30 years" Williams.

So the analogy doesn't really hold. Let's hypothesize that Yoko Ono put a lot of her screechingly painful songs on Foghat albums. Okay, then: Watching Whoopie Goldberg on Comic Relief was much like having to listen to Yoko Ono songs as the price for hearing all that amazing Foghat.

Anyway, once again thanks for making this site possible. When I'm at my keyboard, I feel like a little internet Evita Perone, especially because I'm generally wearing a dress and holding the hand of a distinguished Hispanic man wearing sunglasses.

And Still Kinda Funny: Inspired by AoS reader contributions, Ace's Dreadful Debate Drinking Game.

Posted by: Ace at 09:17 PM | Comments (36)
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