I bet you think I'm kidding about this, don't you?

Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. Wait--
first I want to jump it with my Cylon Trans-Am.

Okay, seriously. What on earth could The Hasselhovian possibly have done to end the Cold War?

You won't be surprised to hear that the answer is the same as it is for a thousand other Hasselhoff-based questions. Turns out, he sang a German pop song:

Hasselhoff was already a singing star in Austria and Switzerland when, in 1989, he had the wisdom to cover a 1970s German hit, Auf Der Strasse Nach Suden.

Renaming it Looking for Freedom, with Hasselhoff singing in English, the song raced up the charts in the late summer, just as a wave of revolt began sweeping through Eastern Europe.

By the time Berliners started hacking away at the concrete wall that had divided their city for a generation, the torch-bearing anthem had been number one for several weeks in West Germany.

With its lament, "I've been lookin' for freedom; I've been lookin' so long; I've been lookin' for freedom; still the search goes on," the song embodied the frustrations of Germany's years of division.

Can someone please start playing Hooked on a Feeling in Fallujah?

Posted by: Ace at 12:40 PM | Comments (3)
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His name is Ahmed Kaufan Galani, a "key suspect in the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania."

Now, I have to admit, I never heard of the man. But there was a $25 million bounty on his head, so he wasn't just some average Ahmed.

Posted by: Ace at 12:21 PM | Comments (1)
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And also indulges in Dowd-esque cutesey name-calling ("Frumpy gets Grumpy") while doing so.

I enjoyed this bit on David Frum's "partisanship":

Oh, I forgot. All that matters is Republican partisanship. Whatever their record. Whatever they stand for. Whoever their opponents are.

This is Sullivan's big selling point. That he's an (hah!) "independent." Other folks who are not "independent" are not to be trusted.

Well, this claim falls three different ways:

1) No one's truly "independent." Everyone has different priorities and different preferences. Those prirorities will compell them towards one party or no party, but none of us are "independent" from our own worldview.

2) It is unclear why someone who is (claimed to be) "independent" has a better claim on the truth than someone else. We all know that "independents" like to stroke their egos about how free-thinking they are, but in many cases they're either uninformed, confused, or as knee-jerk on the issues as the worst sort of ideologue-- it's just happenstance that their ideological impulses send their knees jerking to two or three different parties.

So, Sullivan's left and right knees jerk in different directions, because no "Eagle" party represents his preferred mix of socialism, libertinism, and hawkish (but loopy and naive) foreign policy. On the other hand, one party happens to fit the jerks of my own knees, most of the time.

Am I therefore less trustworthy or objective that Sullivan?

In addition, no one can miss the fact that Sullivan's allegedly independently-jerking knees have lately both been jerking to the left in perfect unison...

3) ... which is to say, Sullivan isn't an independent, and he hasn't been for quite some time. He's a Democratic partisan, pure and simple, and he became one when the Massachusetts SJC forced gay marriage on an unwilling state. Once he was tantalized by the possibility of similarly forcing his dream on an unwilling nation, he has been a hardcore Democrat supporter.

...

The whole insult of calling "partisanship" on David Frum is laughable coming from Sullivan. For what is "partisanship"? It is the willingness to bend fact or principle or long-held conviction in the interests of supporting one party.

Is this a joke?

Has Sullivan read his own site lately? What has he been doing for the past seven months, other than slowly but unmistakenly walking back previous statements and principles so as to better comport himself with his newly-adopted political party?

Oh, I forgot. All that matters is gay marriage. Whatever their record. Whatever they stand for. Whoever their opponents are.

MORE: Il Padrino points out this "Quote of the Day," followed by Sully the Shilly's (see, I can do Dowdy name-calling too) commentary:

LQUOTE OF THE DAY: "As few as five people in black robes can look at a particular issue and determine for the rest of us, insinuate for the rest of us that they are speaking as the majority will. They are not." - Rep. John Hostettler, the Republican who authored the bill that would strip federal courts of the right to consider the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act. But, of course, it could also be said about the five Supreme Court Justices who made George W. Bush the president of the United States. The Republicans love courts when they reach the right decision; they just despise them when they don't.

Not only does he seem to be endorsing the "Selected, not Elected" claims of the Wackadoo Left, but he's also speaking in babytalk. Liberals love saying just that: Republicans love the courts when they come to decisions we agree with, and we don't love them when they don't.

Ummm, forgive me, asshole: As opposed to whom, precisely? Please find me liberals who both love the court's liberal judicial activism and also loved the court's decision in Bush v. Gore.

And let's have Sullivan's take on court decisions that don't force gay marriage on unwilling states. Does he "love" those decisions?

This is full-fledged knee-jerk hack mode, guys. Not only is this ludicrously dumb partisan hackery, but you can find precisely this dumb level of partisan hackery on any chat-site you visit.

You don't need to click on Sullivan's site, nor pay him $100K for bandwidth, for this non-elevated level of political analysis. You can get just this sort of idiocy from an unwashed "peace" protestor on the street.

Or even this sign-holding philosopher.

Note: Sullivan has edited his original headline from "Frumpy Gets Grumpy" to simply "Grumpy." But the former was the original.

Posted by: Ace at 12:04 PM | Comments (5)
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Michelle Malkin is all over Muslims' claims of persecution.

It also just happens that Ms. Malkin notes that the recent traffic-stop of a converted black Muslim resulted in the discovery of the following:

A 9mm pistol

Three bulletproof vests

Hundreds of rounds of ammunition

A flight simulator and a bag of flight manuals dating to 2001

A 5-foot telescope hooked to camera equipment

Night-vision goggles and a night-vision rifle scope found in a hollowed-out computer

Books written in Arabic, including the Koran, along with hundreds of pages printed from the Internet on the Iraq war and terrorism

Ahem. Either this guy is a terrorist or else we've just discovered the secret identity of The Punisher.

I want to see that this guy is carrying around a notebook called "The Punisher's War Journal" and contact information for each of the Avengers or else I want him in jail for the rest of his miserable life.

The truth of the matter is that there are Muslims who want to commit terrorism against us, more Muslims willing to assist those who want to commit terrorism, still more Muslims not willing to actively assist terrorists but also unwilling to cooperate with police and identify potential killers in their own mosques, and a fairly sizable number of Muslims who sympathize with the terrorist cause, because, ah yes, they don't like "our foreign policy."

That's the truth. That may be hard for American Muslims to hear but it is the truth and it has always been the truth. I'm not inclined to lie about it.

Malkin's first piece reports a small number of assualts on Muslims. Obviously, I'm against that, and I condemn such assaults.

I should note, however, that it is often the case that Muslims, when asked about terrorism, condemn terrorism before justifying it by saying, "You must understand. We don't like this country's foreign policy."

The claim is made that that doesn't constitute justification or mitigation, that it's just "making us aware" of the position of Muslims. (Like we haven't been made aware of this six billion times in the past three years.)

If such statements do not consitute at least a partial justification or mitigation of terrorism, then let's put the shoe on the other foot.

What if I said, "I condemn assaults on peaceable, law-abiding American Muslims. But you must understand-- we Americans don't like the foreign-policy favored by Muslims"?

I think in that case, "but you must understand" would be interpreted as a justification, and condemned as such.

So why isn't it a justification when spokespeople from CAIR say the same thing?

Posted by: Ace at 11:41 AM | Comments (1)
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Andrew Sullivan has been called a flat-out liar as regards his claims of "increasing bandwidth costs" which necessitate another round of $100,000-plus blegging.

He also claimed that these higher costs were due, partly, to his increasing traffic. But according to Alexa's blog-rankings Sullivan's audience isn't growing:

Right Wing News also finds that Sullivan's traffic is, much like Spinal Tap's appeal, becoming "increasingly selective":

Feb: 1410869
Mar: 1250342
Apr: 1205536
May: 1233008
Jun: 1103882
Jul (incomplete): 833502

Now, he wasn't just called a liar by me. Since I've been tough on him, I could see him ignoring me.

But he's been called a liar (let's just say that's my own take on their charges) by Michelle Malkin, Spoons, and Wunderkinder, among others.

He's been called a liar. If it's not true, why doesn't he rebut the charge? Why doesn't he explain precisely how it's come to be that bandwidth is costing him more than any person on the planet?

Instead, he's choosing to ignore the charges entirely, much like Hillary Clinton. I suppose if you caught him on the street and asked about it, he'd give a Hillary style "a ha ha ha, how ridiculous" fake laugh.

A charge has been levelled, and it is entirely within Sullivan's power to disprove it, if it's not true. Evidence that he's lying has been offered; it remains at this point entirely unrebutted (and in fact entirely unaddressed).

This constitutes a tacit admission of dishonesty. It is simply not credible that he somehow missed Michelle Malkin's post (she's a power-player), or John Hawkins' (no slouch himself), or that he's just too "above" disproving a serious charge made against him on some sort of "I'm beneath that" principle.

I also seem to have missed Instapundit rushing to Sullivan's defense. If big bloggers really require such costly bandwidth, Insta-man would know.

Nevertheless, to be fair to Sullivan, I think we should email him (andrewmsullivan@aol.com) queries about his extraodinarily pricey bandwidth, and see what he might say about it. Those of you particularly concerned about Sullivan's dire financial predicament might want to send him along URL's from which he can purchase much cheaper bandwidth.

Seems to me that that would be an in-kind sort of donation that he would greatly appreciate, since you'd be saving him about $100K. Saving $100K is just as good as making it. I think it might even be fair to write "DONATION" in the subject line of such an email.

Thanks to Allah for pointing me towards Hawkins' take-down on Sullivan's claims of increasing traffic.

And Just to Clarify, Again: I've got no beef with Sullivan for trolling for donations. I'm about to execute a hoagie over donations, personally.

It's the dishonesty of the appeal that I object to. His traffic isn't rising, his bandwidth costs aren't rising, and furthermore they're fairly small costs in any event. It is dishonest for him to claim that these costs are coming out of his own pocket when he last made $120,000 in a pledge drive. He might want more money -- which I can understand -- but it's a lie to frame this as some sort of "need" in order to pay the basic costs of his shoestring operation.

PS: Please send me money. As you are aware, the costs of producing semi-colons have risen in recent months, due to increased fuel costs and labor interruptions in Malaysia (the world's largest semi-colon-exporting nations).

Now look. I try to provide a good site for my readers. And I try to provide the best, most accurate punctuation possible. But with semi-colons now costing more than ever, I'm afraid that unless I'm able to shake you folks down for additional cash I'm going to have stop using semi-colons entirely, perhaps replacing them with the amatuerish short-dash ("-": the Pabst Blue Ribbon of punctuation) or maybe some low-quality "factory irregular" ampersands that look like a cross between a percent-symbol and a testicle.

You want this site to continue with the same high-quality and varied punctuation you've come to expect? Then fork over the greenbacks. Right now I'm paying for my semi-colons out of my own pocket, and that's just not American.

Posted by: Ace at 10:24 AM | Comments (27)
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First the stroke. Now the poor man's prostate is infected.

What kind of monstrous people are we to continue tormenting this wonderful old man?

In related news, doctors report that Uday and Qusay remain in stable condition. Stable, and dead.

Posted by: Ace at 09:31 AM | Comments (3)
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The denial.

The original report claiming he'd been captured, and that DNA was being sent off to confirm his identity.

You may have trouble accessing either article. I guess this Sofia news outfit can't keep up with the bandwidth demands for this story. But they might be able to fix this problem, as the news outfit just endorsed John Kerry for President and began begging for donations to buy new servers.

But the take-away seems to be that it isn't true. Alas.

I guess everyone should have known this report couldn't be trusted:

Al-Zarqawi has been arrested by Iraqi police and US military close to the border with Syria, Russian news agency RIA Novosti reported, citing information posted on the Internet.

Ah. A Russian news agency citing "information posted on the Internet." The Gold Standard of confirmations.

Here's some internet-based information for RIA Novosti: Sending enormous sums of money to Ace of Spades HQ can make you healthy, attractive, and enormously rich.

I think I can arrange a nooner with Terrezzzza, just for starters.

Posted by: Ace at 09:19 AM | Add Comment
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"He just wouldn't shut up about the Trans-Caspian Pipeline.
I gave him every chance."

That's not a tree. That's a wild hog, hanging from its feet. Twelve feet long, 1000 pounds.

Posted by: Ace at 09:13 AM | Comments (4)
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No, not me. I tried to liveblog the convention, but I got bored. Checking back over my notes, my "liveblogging" appears to be mostly doodles of Godzilla having sex with a battleship and plays drawn up for Madden 2004 -- double-reverse halfback option out of splitback formation; clever or just too "busy"?

But one solid citizen who has been able to persevere through the pablum is Beck over at Incite. He's got a rundown of not just the speakers, but all the spinners on the various channels.

Posted by: Ace at 07:28 AM | Comments (1)
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SSS caught this unbelievable story before I did. Why wasn't I informed immediately?

In related news, Arabs are also reported to be "vigorously blocking" a declaration that proclaiming that "Death is a bad thing."

Posted by: Ace at 04:25 PM | Comments (8)
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