Thanks a lot to Scherado for following this and alerting me to the resolution. Third item:

(Agawam) -- Federal officials say materials thought to be suspicious in an Agawam home pose no threat. But the officials and Agawam police still arrested Michael Crooker at his home for federal firearms charge. When they were searching his house, authorities say they found some suspicious materials that were later determined not to be a threat. They would be elaborate. A-T-F spokesman Jim McNally says Crooker is a convicted felon.

Sorry to worry everyone. But that was what my source told me.

[Originally: Explosives-Making Materials, Possible Chemical Weapons Discovered at Massachusetts Apartment]

Michelle Malkin blogs the discovery of explosives and possibly chemicals in an Agawam, Mass., apartment by DHS officers.

A source in federal law-enforcement tells me that federal agents specializing in Hazmat disposal have been summoned to the site. The fear is -- only a fear -- that it's possibly Sarin.

Treat that last bit as chatter among law-enforcement types, but among the LEO's concerned.

Posted by: Ace at 02:59 PM | Comments (9)
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Chuck sends this graph of Andrew Sullivan's traffic rating, as calculated by Alexa:

Note that December 26, 2003 was when Smitty HQ went live. Check out the steep decline begining on that very date.

Advantage:

Smitty.

Update: "Chuck," who isn't Chuck at all, confirms Madfish Willie's statement that the graph does show declining traffic:

His site was formerly something like the five thousandth most popular site; now it's more like twenty thousandth.

Alexa, I'm guessing, rates all sites, not just blogs; hence, Sears, the US Goverment, MSNBC, etc., are all also on the list, and hence a lowly blogger will be rated fairly low.

I sort of thought that the biggest bloggers got a decent amount of traffic, comparitively, and so big bloggers like Sullivan would still be in the top thousand or so; I guess ol' Smitty is wrong again.

Update: Doug says that Andrew's traffic is as strong as ever, and then cites SiteMeter as evidence for this proposition.

Well. After first picking up my jaw off the desk from seeing what serious traffic looks like, I'm afraid I don't see what the hell Doug
is talking about. I think he's misreading the chart.

Sullivan's traffic has fallen a great deal since the first full month (February) that SiteMeter was recording his traffic until the last full month (May). Doug claims Andrew's traffic is actually "up" from January, but January is just low because he began using this tracker part of the way through the month.

January's traffic seems low (resulting in a rise into February) because Sullivan didn't have SiteMeter installed for the entire month, unless you assume, without evidence, that he began SiteMeter on January 1. The reason January's traffic is low is the same reason June's is-- it's not a complete month of traffic, but only some fraction of a montn.

Update: Okay, I started December 2003, not December 2004.

Posted by: Ace at 01:51 PM | Comments (38)
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I've never felt comfortable with the "Ace of Spades" alias. If you knew me, you'd know I was no Ace of Spades. I'm a Six of Clubs at best.

I feel as if I've been living a lie these past six months, and I am no longer capable of maintaining this fascade.

This site will no longer be known as Ace of Spades HQ, and I will ask you kindly to no longer refer to me as "Ace."

I have chosen a new name which I feel better suits my personality, my temperament, and the core of my humanity. This new name is also the name I use when practicing the ancient Hebrew mysticism called "Khaballah."

Please begin referring to me as "Smitty."

Thank you for understanding.

Posted by: Ace at 01:44 PM | Comments (21)
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OTLM slams the WaPo's prognostication that the beheading would "broaden" opposition to deploying troops to Iraq, and then notes a 20% increase in South Korea's support for that deployment.

Pardon to any Spaniards who aren't miserable cowards and appeasers. I know only half the country is such.

Posted by: Ace at 01:03 PM | Comments (11)
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I joked about it yesterday, but K-Lo at NRO raises a very interesting question:

Why did a California judge determine that the press had a right to paw through these divorce papers, when neither party to the divorce agreed to make them public?

Was it because the nation had some right to read uncorroborated charges made in the context of a child-custody dispute detailing alleged sexual behavior which is not illegal (and indeed is celebrated in some quarters)?

Or was it because Jack Ryan was a Republican candidate for office?

I suppose this is typical right-wing paranoia. We all know that judges don't have any partisan political biases.

No Time to Verify The Charges Update: NRO can't help noticing that the media seems to report first, verify later when it comes to Republicans. Democrats, of course, get the opposite treatment, and just coincidentally have rape allegations published only after the conclusion of impeachment hearings.

Why Distinguish Between Extra- and Intramarital Sex? Update: Hal offers:

The difference between extra-marital sex and extra marital sex is not to be sneezed at. -– George Will (in an article that is actually about punctuation)

Posted by: Ace at 12:44 PM | Comments (29)
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The booming economy is forcing Democrats to attempt to better balance their message between "specious claims" and "total fucking bullshit":

...Democrats are edging away from their charges that President Bush is presiding over a "jobless recovery," which has been a staple of their campaign rhetoric. That argument is giving way to the line of attack that working America is suffering a "middle-class squeeze."

Certainly the new version of the economic debate is harder for Democrats to win. Voters are less likely to turn out an incumbent if they see the economy broadly improving, even if they still have some specific pocketbook complaints.

The changed terrain increasingly has Bush advisers comparing their candidate to Bill Clinton, a politician they're usually loath to invoke. Mr. Clinton launched his 1996 re-election campaign amid doubts about the strength of the economy, but by that November, voters were widely persuaded a solid boom was under way.

The Kerry strategy "is similar to what Bob Dole tried to do in 1996," says Bush campaign strategist Matthew Dowd, referring to Mr. Clinton's Republican challenger. "At first Dole thought he was going to run on the economy, but when it started turning strong, he switched his message to 'middle-class squeeze.' " By November, Mr. Dole was left to wonder on the stump, "where's the outrage?" as he pulled just 41% of the vote.

...

The current reality is a mixed picture. Forecasters expect the economy to grow by 4.7% this year, according to a survey by Blue Chip Economic Indicators, the fastest pace since Ronald Reagan won re-election in a landslide in 1984. Employers have created 1.2 million jobs since August, and the unemployment rate is 5.6%, down from a peak during Mr. Bush's term, last year, of 6.3%.

...

Yesterday, a statistical duel broke out between the two campaigns, with Bush aides releasing a two-page "policy memo" comparing the U.S. economy in 1996 and 2004, purporting to show that conditions were about as good as they were during Mr. Clinton's re-election bid. The list showed numbers like short-term job growth about comparable, while the Bush era registered more money spent at restaurants, per capita, and more passengers taking cruises. Four hours later, the Kerry campaign shot back with its own data page accusing their rivals of "misleading statistics" and slower wage growth and faster tuition growth under Mr. Bush than Mr. Clinton.

A USAToday editorial, meanwhile, calls "shenanigans" on Kerry's "Middle-Class Misery Index":

Kerry's downbeat economic talk may be inevitable for a candidate challenging an incumbent's record in the wake of a recession. But as the economy blooms, his index's credibility is wilting...

By talking down the economy, Kerry may hope to pick up votes in economically struggling states where the November election may be decided. But in doing so, he risks sounding out of touch with millions of Americans who see signs of an improving economy — and want a president with a sunnier outlook. The recent death of former president Ronald Reagan recalls just how powerful an optimistic message can be.

Exaggerating the nation's economic misery is not wise policy or politics. The nation is looking for an upbeat problem-solver, not a gloomy naysayer.

And a tangible political upshot to all this is Kerry's frighteningly small lead over Bush in New Jersey, 46-40, despite Al Gore's 16 point margin in 2000. Furthermore 54% of New Jerseyans think the Iraq War was wrong. So why isn't Kerry doing better in New Jersey?

Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that New Jersey is one of the states doing best under The Bush Boom.

New Jersey could be a leading indicator of what the rest of the nation will be feeling come November. And that doesn't bode well for John Kerry.

Here's a small factory-refurbished cowbell I was able to get at a discount price:

Update: This guy's worth reading, too:

Forgive me while I leak information vital to our national security: The economy is kicking butt.

I assume this must be closely guarded information because you have to go deep undercover to find it in The New York Times or The Washington Post.

Posted by: Ace at 12:18 PM | Comments (6)
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Not so much "gossip" as "interesting news which the regular media deems contrary to its partisan interests and thus refuses to report."

Clinton, you will be shocked to hear, has actually been less than candid regarding a story he's been telling for years (third item):

[Clinton alleges that Harvard professor Roger Porter said to him:] "The press has to have somebody in every election, and we're going to give them you. . . . We'll spend whatever we have to spend to get whoever we have to get to say whatever they have to say to take you out."

A mild-mannered presidential scholar at the Kennedy School of Government, Porter says there's one problem with Clinton's account of the conversation. "It never happened," he told The Washington Post's John Harris yesterday. "I will attest to you and swear on a stack of Bibles that I never had a conversation with him like that. He's making up the story."

Porter said he did work on a friendly basis with the then-governor of Arkansas on education, and once -- a year before the purported July 1991 conversation -- joked that Clinton should run for president as a Republican because he was too moderate for his own party. Porter, who works with the White House Historical Association, bumped into the former president just last week at the unveiling of Clinton's portrait. There was no mention of the story, which Clinton has been recounting to aides for years. "The fact that Bill Clinton has now repeated this story over and over does not make it true, although I suspect it has now become a legend in his own mind," Porter said.

Fascinating.

Let's be realistic here, shall we? Everyone is the hero of his own life story; few people actually think of themselves as "The Villain" in someone else's story. Almost everyone casts his lawbreaking, lies, and betrayals as justified in the context of his own life. Witness Bill Clinton.

It is simply implausible -- it is precisely contrary to normal human behavior -- for someone to think he's doing wrong.

It is ridiculous that someone both believes himself to be doing wrong and then proudly admits this to the person to whom he is doing wrong.

I've had enemies in my life. (Well, not "enemies," but whatever.) None of them -- not a one -- ever came up to me and said, "I think what you're doing is just swell and the best for everyone, but I'm going to oppose you because of my own very cynical and unprincipled motives."

And yet this keeps happening to Clinton and his associates. Mild-mannered Harvard historians tell him "We're going to get you." Ken Starr walks up to James Carville at an airport and loudly proclaims "We're going to roll your boy." "Roll," of course, means "mug," and "mug" doesn't mean "oppose through principled and ethical means."

Um, yeah.

Not even Darth Frickin' Vader told Luke Skywalker "I'm doing this because I'm evil." He justified his actions in terms of finally bringing order to the galaxy.

And yet Roger Porter and Ken Starr both spontaneously confess their evil motives to Clinton and his paid mouthpiece.

And on a very related note, read the first bullet-pointed item at the end to find Joe Biden making a heroic declaration to Cheney and Rumsfeld that they should resign due to their incomptenece, who are both so cowed by his righteous indictment that they endorse his statements by their guilty silence.

One would almost suspect that these people are makin' shit up on the fly.

Unbelievable! It Just Happened to Me Update: Joshua Micah Thomas Chandler Estevez Oakenshield Marshall just wrote me an email stating that he knows his position on Iraq is wrong -- "viciously wrong," in his own words -- but that he's deliberately undermining the war effort, and America's national security, "only to unseat George W. Bush for unpatriotic partisan reasons."

Wow. Okay, now I believe.

Goodness Gracious! Another one! Wonkette just Telexed me to admit that she's not very funny at all and grievously overhyped and that, in her words, "if there were any justice in the world your site would be much, much bigger than mine."

Then she offered me anal. Which I thought was quite generous of her, really.

There's a Law of Comedy That a Premise May Be Used Three Times Before It Gets Annoying Update: All right, now Oliver Willis just sent me a Cheese-o-Gram from Hickory Farms along with a note stating that he reads me everyday, "just to see what actual politically-oriented comedy looks like," and is an enormous fan.

And here's the kicker: Then he offered me anal, too. He says he's not gay or anything, but that I've "just earned that right on the basis of [my] D&D post alone."

Thanks, Odub! I'll let ya know!

Posted by: Ace at 10:20 AM | Comments (27)
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They report the strike on the Al Qaeda safe-house/wedding hall killed 20 foreign fighters/dancing celebrants.

Famed Baghdad wedding singer, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was scheduled to sing Hava Negaleh at the festivities, but intelligence sources say that he was forced to cancel at the last moment in order to perform a magic show at a Sadr City Chucky Cheese.

Reports say the airstrike resulted in multiple large secondary explosions, which usually indicates the presence of on-site explosives and/or wedding cakes.

Al Jazeera reports that all 20 of the casualties were women and children, who were, per Iraqi wedding customs, all wearing the traditional wedding-party handlebar moustaches and carrying "Festival Tubes," also known as Soviet RPG-7 grenade launchers.

Posted by: Ace at 09:00 AM | Comments (8)
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What a shock.

Afghanistan's Defense Ministry says the beheadings, if they happened, weren't carried out by the Army, but by local militias which sometimes fight alongside the Army but which are not under Army control.

It is time, once again, to remind everyone that the Geneva Convention is a reciprocal contract, and that our enemies haven't signed it and do not heed it.

Posted by: Ace at 08:48 AM | Comments (2)
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"Accurate," defined as usual as "putting Bush in the lead in the electoral college."

But the lead is based on tiny margins in a few key states. A couple hundred thousand voters changing their preference would give the presidency to Kerry.

Posted by: Ace at 08:44 AM | Comments (2)
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