At some point, one would think the liberal media will begin to feel embarassed about embargoing the news:

So far, the U.S. economy has shrugged off the surge in oil and gasoline prices. The government on Thursday probably will report the economy grew by 4.5 percent in the first quarter, up from the Commerce Department's initial estimate last month of 4.2 percent, based on the median forecast of 56 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News from April 27-30. They predicted expansion of at least 4 percent in all four quarters this year, which would bring growth for the last six quarters to the fastest rate since 1984.

Job and profit growth also have accelerated. The U.S. added more jobs in April and May than in any two months since early 2000. Earnings of companies in the Standard & Poor's 500 Index are expected to increase 17.4 percent this year, the biggest gain since 1999, according to Thomas Financial.

Meanwhile, the right-leaning New York Sun attempts to inform the public about the booming economy in a page one story (no on-line link). They predict, perhaps over-optimistically, that the roaring economy is about to produce a seismic shift in the politics of this year's elections.

Full cowbell for adjusting the 1Q GDP upwards, sort-of just like I predicted.

Posted by: Ace at 11:43 AM | Comments (10)
Post contains 239 words, total size 2 kb.

Top Ten Hollywood Players Al Franken is Still More Important Than

10. At least one of the Baldwin Brothers

9. A.J. Simon (but not Rick "Major Dad" Simon)

8. The black guy who did the "funny sound effects" in the Police Academy movies

7. Alf

6. Jessica Tandy (deceased)

5. The Amazing Kreskin's brother, the Somewhat Impressive Kreskin

4. Tina Yothers

3. Oates (but not Hall)

2. assorted roadies working with the band Enuff Z'Nuff

... and the Number One Hollywood Player Al Franken is Still More Important Than...

1. Margaret Cho

Posted by: Ace at 11:25 AM | Comments (11)
Post contains 98 words, total size 1 kb.

It's terrible.

One thing the left never seems to get is that these people want to kill them. They have convinced themselves that the terrorists "want peace" and are only provoked into murder and savagery by the Bush neocons.

It's time for them to get attuned to fucking reality. The terrorists hate most everything the lefties love. The terrorists hate abortion. The terrorists hate homosexuals-- and indeed murder them when they find them, unless they are both powerful and closeted, like Yasser Arafat. The terrorists hate empowered women. The terrorists hate sexual latitudinarianism.

And yes, the terrorists hate Madonna.

One thing I've been annoyed with is how the left is constantly suggesting that "we" give up on values and priorities cherished by the right in order to appease the terrorists.

Can't we appease them by giving them Israel?

Can't we appease the terrorists by making SUV's prohibitively expensive for all but the rich liberals who most favor them? After all, the vehicles do have a number of benefits cherished by rich liberals, comfort and status-endowment among them; but surely we can artificially raise their price so that only the very wealthy can afford them. And surely we can artificially raise the price of energy, so that the middle class will be forced to economize, while the rich continue to blast energy-wasting air conditioning through their mansions because their pampered skin glistens unattractively when the Malibu air rises above 75 degrees.

Can't we appease them by withdrawing our troops from bases around the world?

Can't we appease them by taking money from the pockets of hard-working Americans and giving it to Arab intellectuals and politicians preaching hatred against us? (As someone once observed, foreign aid is the process of taking money from the poor in rich countries and giving it to the rich in poor countries.)

And, as Thomas Friedman suggested, can't be appease terrorists by having all of our Christians give up their belief in their backward, oppressive religion?

They have plenty of suggestions as regards the appeasement of terrorists when it involves giving up values or priorities they don't share, and in fact are fighting anyway.

But have any of these people ever suggested once:

* that to appease terrorists, we should outlaw abortion?

* that to appease terrorists, we should relegate women to chattelry?

* that to appease terrorists, we should outlaw and harshly punish any "ungodly" public displays of sexuality of any kind?

* that to appease terrorists, we should throw over our silly adherence to the separation of church and state, and move towards the theocratic model favored by terrorists?

* that to appease terrorists, we should imprison and/or kill homosexuals? All right, that's too extreme. But perhaps we can appease terrorists by outlawing gay marriage...?

And, of course, we all know that the very first thing we need to do in order to fight terrorism is raise taxes.

Isn't a funny little coincidence that, among the litany of the left's suggestions for making the terrorists not hate us quite so much, there's not a single suggestion as to what the left can give up?

They're big on calling for "sacrifice" among all Americans, but the only "sacrifices" they mention are not "sacrifices" for them at all. They don't call on themselves to sacrifice; they call only on the right and moderates to sacrifice, and thus deliver victories to the left.

And this is what angers me. I would never suggest any of the above in order to "make the terrorists not hate us so much." I would never attempt to advance some conservative social agenda by using terrorism as a hammer.

Doing so would be to use terrorism for my own political ends. I wouldn't be guilty of terrorism myself, but I surely would be guilty of gleefully using terrorists as my catspaw to advance my political agenda.

And yet the left repeatedly does this. They are constantly making use of terrorists as their objective allies -- "objective allies" in the sense that they are, as an objective matter of fact, joining terrorists in making their demands on our nation -- to advance their agenda.

I don't wish ill on Madonna. I do wish her to stop making her horrific music, and I do wish her to stop assaulting the public with her tasteless self-promotion; but I want her to make that good judgment on her own, uncoerced.

I suppose I would appreciate it if Madonna, who's been quite happy to point out the "evil" of the men who fight terrorists in order to protect her, might have something useful to say about terrorist violence.

But I doubt that will ever happen.

The left is always asking, "Why do they hate us?" But that "us" is lie. They don't mean "us." They don't mean "us" because "us" would include them, and they don't mean themselves. They do not believe that they themselves are hated by terrorists, or indeed could ever be hated by anybody, except for the "religious right" and the "right wing conspiracy."

When they say, "Why do they hate us?," they mean-- as they always have -- "Ask yourselves why they hate you, you ignorant, jingoistic, capitalist, unenlightened fat-and-comfortable Americans who we also despise for many of the same reasons."

Perhaps Madonna will begin to undestand-- no, dear, they hate you too. Indeed, they hate you especially.

They sure the fuck don't hate me. They've never heard of me, and, alas, probably never will.

But they have heard of you, and seen what you represent. And they hate you, dear, personally. And they even hate your children, who of course haven't done anything to anyone, ever.

So next time you ask "Why do they hate us?" perhaps you should consider the question carefully, for the first time in your life, with the understanding that you, Madge, are indeed part of "us."

And perhaps you will rethink your vapid, treasonous attack on your fellow Americans are guilty of little more than wanting to live their lives -- fat, comfortable, hopelessly bourgeois, pitiably unglamorous and unfabulous -- withoug being murdered in cold blood.

And the next time you or your fashionable friends condemn Israel for daring to protect its children against terrorist violence, perhaps you'll comprehend that, unlike you, they can't avoid the threat of their children being butchered by terrorists simply by cancelling a couple of fucking concert stops.

The nation of Israel can't protect itself by just adding a couple of extra fucking concert dates in Italy and Spain.

Neither can America.

Michael Moore, infamously, was aghast that the terrorists attacked cultured, enlightened, liberal New Yorkers, rather than the Texans or Kentuckyans or Ohioans who really fucking deserved it.

Maybe the left would do well to understand that the right -- which is disproportionately suburban and rural -- is joining this fight not to protect Pocatello, Idaho, but to protect all those liberal, progressive New Yorkers whom Michael Moore cares so much about (even as he, by unmistakable implication, expresses his lack of care about the safety of other Americans).

This war is being fought primarily to save New Yorkers. And Washingtonians.
And Los Angelenos. And San Franciscans. And Miamians. And Chicagoans. And Bostonians.

Conservatives seem willing to fight to save the lives of liberals. If only the favor were to be returned someday.

Posted by: Ace at 12:05 AM | Comments (30)
Post contains 1237 words, total size 8 kb.

While the liberal media focuses only on US deaths and the absurd Abu Ghraib non-scandal, they conveniently miss the opportunity to note that, through the month of May, US forces have been taking names and kicking ass.

May 7: 20 insurgents killed in Najaf

May 15: 10 insurgents killed in Najaf

May 22: 18 insurgents killed in Karbala (other reports put that figure as high as eighty)

May 23: 32 insurgents killed in Kufa.

Nevermind the nearly thousand killed in Fallujah. Nevermind that Sadrists forces have executed their very own Exit Strategy in Karbala.

But none of this is important, of course.

Only Abu Ghraib matters.

Posted by: Ace at 09:22 PM | Comments (3)
Post contains 124 words, total size 1 kb.

Rabid Jew- and America- Haters Stink Up the Ace of Spades HQ Blog

You probably don't want to read the crap these douchebags have posted in the comments. It's pretty vile.

Where the fuck do these people come from?

Incidently, "nameless," I'm not a Jew (I'll drop the "we" schtick for a moment). I'm a non-practicing Episcopalean/Roman Catholic guy who can tell Jesus from John the Baptist but that's about it.

Jewish blood? Not a drop. I'd pass the Nuremberg Racial Purity tests you're such fans of.

So. Ace of Spades: Not a Jew.

I'm just a fan of their work.

Big fucking fan.

Every time they blow up some of those death-cult Palestinian cowards/cunts... oooooh. Goosebumps.

A friend of mine once said, in jest, "Geeze, I'd like to be anti-semitic and all, but I wouldn't want to associate with the sort of people giving anti-semitism a bad name."

Truth be told, I'm not especially a fan of Israel. They're a bunch of socialist douchebags. They're basically a bunch of Torah-toting Europeans... except that they're pretty realistic about the vile monsters of the world, such as yourselves, and the proper way to deal with such vile, useless monsters.

But between a bunch of socialist douchebags and the likes of gay-panic murderers like you... give me the socialist douchebags, every day of the week.

Posted by: Ace at 04:09 PM | Comments (14)
Post contains 231 words, total size 1 kb.

Ah, Sarin. The word that few on the pro-Saddam left can hardly stir themselves to utter.

Their current theory seems to be -- to the extent they're willing to announce it at all -- that this was just a shell that somehow eluded Saddam's dilligent efforts to destroy it. He just sort of missed it, despite his best efforts to rid himself of these accursed weapons. But, drat his bad luck, now it's turned up, in the hands of terrorists, wounding two US troops.

Here's the problem.

The "accidental retention and disovery" theory would seem to require a lot of such shells in production. It is only plausible that Saddam "just missed" this one shell if there were a lot of them laying about.

Trouble is, Saddam never delcared having such binary-form sarin shells in production. He only admitted to having a few "prototypes" and that the program never reached full production. And of course he claimed to have destroyed all of those.

If this shell was indeed a "prototype," one of just several produced in his laboratories, how is it possible that he could have lost track of it? One could lose track of one shell among thousands which are distributed to artillerymen in the field; but one could less plausibly "lose" one shell of a dozen or so which were never distributed to men in the field, and which, of course, would have been kept securely in his death-labs.

If this was just a case of a shell be accidentally "lost" and then conveniently discovered by terrorists, it indicates that Saddam's declarations were false and that he was producing WMD's that he claimed not to be.

So which is it? The left cannot have it both ways here.

They either have to concede that Saddam was illegally and secretly producing undeclared WMD's in great numbers. That's the only way that such a shell could be "lost."

Or else they have to admit the possibility that this wasn't just an "accidentally" lost by Saddam, but rather deliberately retained and hidden.

One way or the other, either by producing far more binary-form sarin shells than he admitted, or by producing only a few while deliberately retaining them for future use, Saddam Hussein was deliberately in breach of his obligations to declare and destroy all of his WMD's.

Posted by: Ace at 03:48 PM | Comments (3)
Post contains 405 words, total size 2 kb.

So says Larry Sabato, and we believe him:

THE ECONOMY

Here's where President Bush and his campaign have a legitimate beef. The economy has clearly started to roar. New jobs are being created by the hundreds of thousands each month, almost every economic statistic is improving beautifully, and interest rates remain at historically low levels.

Yet a large majority of the American public thinks the economy ranges from bad to terrible--far worse than they saw it a couple months ago.

Some might say that this is just a reflection of the electorate's bad mood, induced by the prisoner abuse scandal. That may be part of it, but the national news media--especially the major TV networks--bear great responsibility. Since the economy started its sharp climb upward, the only economic stories consistently covered have been the price increases in gasoline and milk.

Doesn't President Bush deserve some credit for economic success, having passed his central economic package/tax cut in 2001? Wouldn't he be taking it on the chin if the story were the reverse?

It was, and he did, for three years of his term.

Ah, but the media say, "bad news is news; good news isn't news," to explain away the lack of positive coverage. Go back to 1996, as the Crystal Ball did prior to writing this e-mail, when another President facing a shaky reelection got a lift from the economy just in time. You'll find that Bill Clinton secured Big Media's praise in story after story, talk show after talk show, for his "courageous" 1993 economic package/tax increase--which was frequently and directly tied by reporters to the economic upturn of '96.

Can the media understand why so many conservatives see an anti-Republican double standard at work, especially on the network TV evening news programs?

Posted by: Ace at 11:38 PM | Comments (8)
Post contains 311 words, total size 2 kb.

But that's not a connection, is it? That's merely a "tactical" connection, as Chris Matthews would say.

Thanks to Best of the Web Today.

Posted by: Ace at 03:41 PM | Comments (1)
Post contains 64 words, total size 1 kb.

We stumbled upon this compilation of the other ten worst album covers in history.

Good stuff. The Man O War cover is the best. Except for the Playmakers cover, which is really the best. Except for Millie Jackson sitting on the toilet, which is obviously, without any doubt, the all-time best.

Via Diesel Tangerine.

And in case you didn't see the update, the link to the creepy-cute game which wasn't working before has now been fixed.

Update! Okay, the link in the main post was fixed, but the link in this post wasn't. Now it is.

Loose shit. Lots of it. Going on.

Here.

Posted by: Ace at 01:53 PM | Comments (6)
Post contains 112 words, total size 1 kb.

Another bad day for the bad guys. The AC-130 gunship apparently ripped apart so many of these good folks thery're having difficult counting the bodies.

This MSNBC story is incomplete and is behind the current television reporting, but it's a start.

Posted by: Ace at 01:40 PM | Comments (2)
Post contains 81 words, total size 1 kb.