All the juicy stories (Al Franken got into another fight), massively updated.

Liveblogging Oliver Wills' Liveblogging: No joke-- the change in mood here is palpable. No more of the cocky gloating; no more swagger. He's less funny than usual, if you can imagine such a thing.

I don't want to start my own cocky gloating. Oh wait, yes I do; but I won't. Things change too fast.

But pretty much Oliver Willis has been reduced to doing that old Richard Belzer "Yeah, right, Reagan, yeah right" schtick. He's just in too much pain to even attempt another hilarious Dick Cheney/Britney Spears "fake news article."

Howling like wounded animals, they are. And it's only Night Two.

Wait 'till November Two.

(Okay, I guess that was cocky. Let me amend: I won't get cocky much.)

Posted by: Ace at 06:38 PM | Comments (11)
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Say it ain't so, Captain den Beste.

It's sad that den Beste is hanging up his mousepad.

But there may yet be room for hope. Blogging is pretty addictive. Blogging's only been around for a few years, but so far it looks like bloggers retire and un-retire more frequently than heavyweight boxers.

So maybe we'll once again see Steven den Beste in his blogging trunks. Rumor has it occasionally Michele from ASV still occasionally enters the squared circle.

Posted by: Ace at 06:30 PM | Comments (12)
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Tackled by guards before reaching panel. If you're TiVo'ing or DVR'ing, incident comes at 7:38 EST. Blink and you'll miss it.

More at The Omnipresent One.

Posted by: Ace at 04:11 PM | Comments (11)
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Via FreeRepublic, bad news for fans of the obsessive-compulsive detective. Bitty Schram, or "Sharona," won't be back next season.

She will be replaced by actor Ted McGinley, best known for replacing popular actors on Happy Days and Married With Children right before those shows went into the crapper.

Just kidding about that last part.

Apparently all the secondary actors tried to re-negotiate their contracts, and the producers took a hard line.

Posted by: Ace at 02:25 PM | Comments (12)
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"Friend of the site" Andrew Sullivan seems to be quite the flip-flopper his own self.

Nick Kronos tips on the climbdown:

Previously: And so, as Thursday night came around, it was hard not to think of this convention as a remarkable public relations success. It rebranded the Democrats as tough on terror but not as reckless as Bush: an essentially conservative repositioning....And it grabbed back Republican themes of patriotism, military service, responsibility, strength, wisdom. Polling showed a Democratic gain of five points in a few days.

Today: I don't believe [Kerry's] convention was wasted. He had to emphasize national security. But it's domestic policies that will win him the election, if he does win, and he hasn't yet made them the focus....

Sullivan actually gave Kerry a rave review... before he voted against him.

Andrew's vaunted "analysis" seems to consist of little else than embarassingly-emotional shrieking and "nuanced" thinking based primarily upon whoever's up in today's polls.

If Kerry gets a boost next week, all of a sudden his convention is going to be deemed a bravura performance again.

This is insight?

Posted by: Ace at 02:04 PM | Comments (3)
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It's not as if we didn't know, but honestly -- not sarcastically-- I do question the timing of this announcement.

For one, it distracts from Bush.

For another, the liberal media will now chalk up his terrific speech to mere self-interested, possibly cynical political positioning for 2008. All the good his great speech did just went virtually out the window.

Dumb, Mr. Mayor. I'm a fan of Kathy Bates proportions, but very, very dumb.

Posted by: Ace at 01:57 PM | Comments (4)
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Turns out they've got a cheat-sheet for all the "shadowy connections" linking one Republican to another.

Posted by: Ace at 01:09 PM | Comments (1)
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Ace of Spades HQ is now the #7 reference for the MSN search "gay hairy asses."

And I owe it all to George W. Bush and Mr. Paul Anka.

And, if you have a blog: Make sure you have your SiteMeter button on all of your site's pages, not just the home page. I get a lot of traffic going directly to my archive pages (the white page with one post on it), but until five minutes ago, I never had my SiteMeter recording hits to those pages. Hits would only be recorded if someone then visited the main page. If they didn't go to the main page, it was as if they never visited at all.

You miss out on a lot of hits, especially regarding your linked articles, if you do it the dumb way I was doing it.

No wonder my one and only Instapundit link delivered me virtually no extra traffic.

I hope I'm not now double-counting.

"Shadowy Connections?": Okay, so I'm number 7 for "gay hairy asses."

Now I'm also #1 (whoo-hoo!) for "the Kerry girls" on Earthlink.

Say-- you don't think that that means...?

Nah. Couldn't be.

Although I'm now going to be looking for Adam's apples on those "gals."

Okay, This Site is Just Plain Filthy Update: And now Google ranks this Top Ten list as the #2 search for "top ten erotica."

Existential Recursion Update: A post noting that I didn't get a lot of recorded additional hits from my previous Instapundit link itself gets linked by Instapundit, resulting in a traffic flood that this time shows up in the numbers.

Now I know how to get Instapundit's attention-- just denigrate his traffic-granting abilities.

This is it? This is the so-called "Instalanche"? I must say, I'm disappointed.

Posted by: Ace at 12:52 PM | Comments (17)
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Evidence Supports Prior Reports of Al Qaeda Women Smuggling Explosives Internally?

Here.

What makes this especially ominous is this report from six months ago, claiming that Al Qaeda was training female bombers to smuggle explosives inside their vaginas. The plan was to extract the explosives and then assemble the bomb in the toilet, of course.

I have no idea how this country will react to this, if this is the new tactic. As I mentioned when I first noted this story (CAUTION: contains very indelicate language), we're either going to have to subject women to highly, HIGHLY intrusive body-searches or else we're just going to have to allow Al Qaeda to blow up airplanes whenever they feel like it.

If this is the new tactic, it seems to me that this will be the Rubicon as regards racial profiling. Non-Muslim women are not going to put up with being told that they must subject themselves to unscheduled gynecological exams just to be "fair" to all women. And, as humiliating and intrusive as such searches might be, I don't see how we can do anything else but subject only Muslim women (or primarily Muslim women) to this admitted indignity.

Perhaps there's a technological solution. But that too has its problems; I don't know if many women will gladly accept dangerous X-raying of their wombs just to board an airplane.

Note: The original post linked to is not only indelicate as regards language, it contains juvenile jokes that are even less appropriate now than they were when first made. I apologize for that-- but, six months ago, this was more of a hypothetical concern.

Update: Two more terrorist "Black Widows" feared loose in Moscow.

Posted by: Ace at 11:48 AM | Comments (34)
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Current Status: Sickened, apparently due to a severe reaction to seeing GOPers wearing "purple heart bandages" ("just plain sickening").

Prognosis: Poor. Patient veers moment-by-moment from giddy McCain boosterism to being "sickened." Advise psych eval for possible bipolar condition.

Patient also seems addicted to resorting to hyperbolic emotionalism in "analyzing" political events. Prescribing a standard course of chill pills, 250mg b.i.d., for 7 days. Will check patient's progress later.

Posted by: Ace at 11:38 AM | Comments (5)
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