I'm pretty sure I wasn't on crack.

When you've eliminated the impossible, whatever possibility remains, no matter how implausible, must be the correct answer.

Ergo: Zell Miller challenged Chris Matthews to a duel tonight.

If you don't know what I'm talking about:

Chris Matthews spent the entire evening decrying the treachery of Zell Miller. When Laura Ingraham pointed out he didn't seem to consider Jim Jeffords' defection treasonous, Matthews cut her off by saying that wasn't the question he had asked.

He badgered Kay Bailey Hutchinson about this, then suggested that Miller should, in the interests of honor, stop drawing checks from the Senate, and actually quit the Senate. (No such suggestions were offered to Jim Jeffords, natch.)

Then, his big claim of the night was that all of Kerry's anti-defense votes -- ALL of them -- either had to do purely with parliamentary procedure or else were cases of voting against a big bill because he found one particular item in that bill objectionable. He could not fathom that Kerry -- a longtime liberal and dove -- could have ever actually did what liberals and doves often do, i.e., vote against a weapon system on the merits.

Finally, Zell Miller appears on camera for an interview. Chris badgers him about treachery, then keeps asking if Miller really wants to arm our troops with "spitballs." Um-- how the fuck do you answer this question? It's idiotic. Obviously, no one believes that John Kerry literally wants to arm our troops with mashed up bits of paper held together with human saliva. But Chris kept on asking.

At this point, Miller told him that he wouldn't let him do to him what he did to that "little girl you had on a few weeks ago," a reference to Michelle Malkin.

Chris then began asking if Miller thought that his speech had served the interests of unity in the country. Again, Chrissy never seems curious if Kerry's or McAuliffe's attacks on Bush harm unity in the country, but tonight he had quite the little bee in his bonnet about this point.

At this point, Miller told him:

I wish we were living in an earlier time, when dueling was permitted.

And he was not smiling. I don't know if he was serious, but he also wasn't exactly kidding.

Chris Matthews chuckled it off as the ravings of an angry old lunatic, and his paid panel -- including, I'm sorry to say, JC Watts -- then took Matthews side. Watts was quite eager to say that Matthews was asking straight questions ("Do you really think Kerry wants to arm our troops with spitballs?" is a straight fucking question, JC?) and that Miller hadn't been "set up" and all of this was quite right and normal.

Posted by: Ace at 10:16 PM | Comments (20)
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Attention liberal spinners (Sullivan, Kaus, Shamu, etc.):

Yes, when you occupy a country, you are, legally and technically, "occupiers."

Zell Miller wasn't drawing a contrast between those who correctly call an occupying force "occupiers" and those who call them "liberators."

He was drawing a contrast between those who call our troops liberators -- occupiers for a noble and good purpose -- and those who call them oppressive occupiers for the pecuniary gain of Bell Helicopter, Halliburton, and GE.

Between those who call them liberators and those who call them invaders who ravage the countryside like "Jenjis Khan." (Several searches of on-line encyclopedias have as of yet yielded no insight into who the great ravager "Jenjis Khan" might be. I'm still looking-- when I know, you'll know!)

He was drawing a contrast between those who call our military heroes and those who call them war criminals, the sort of people who might be inclined to cut off ears, cut off heads, rape, blown (sic) up bodies, shot cattle and livestock without cause, fired indiscriminately at civilians, etc.

Know anyone like that, spinners?

Posted by: Ace at 09:55 PM | Comments (4)
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CORRECTION: I misread this article and went off on a rant that turned out be much less well-founded than I thought.

Basically, I thought the LA Times never mentioned Miller's party affiliation until deep in the article. They don't mention it directly, but they do mention it obliquely in the fifth paragraph.

I still think the article is slyly written to underplay the lede -- that a sitting Democratic Senator just ripped into his colleague John Kerry -- but it's not as egregious as I first thought.

I'm leaving the article here because I don't want to bury my own mistake. But there's no point in reading further, unless you want to have a good laugh at me.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 09:38 PM | Comments (10)
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Long-time fan of Ace of Spades HQ, Andrew Sullivan, writes a post called "Me as Hamlet."

Now, I think that even Sullivan knows which candidate in this race is Hamlet. John Forbes Kerry's second vacation home in Boca Raton (for when he tires of his main Boca vacation home) is probably even named Elsinore.

Just to let you know he's got the mad acting chops, the Soporific Solipcist once again informs you he played Hamlet in high school. How many fucking curtain-calls does he get on that one?

Hey, douchebag, I played Kinickie in my high school production of Grease.* I can still blast out a show-stopping rendition of Greased Lightning at a moment's notice.**

Does anyone care? Is there any reason to continue prattling on about my j.v. thespian experiences?***

* No I didn't.

** No I can't.

*** Dungeons & Dragons club experiences are, however, always relevant and topical. That's where you make the friendships that last forever, even though you don't want them to, and would rather trade-up for someone who's idea of a good opening line isn't "Baby, your body is a vorpal weapon, and you've scored a critical hit on my heart."

Posted by: Ace at 02:28 PM | Comments (18)
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Finally, someone with Wall Street-cred notices what I've been saying for months-- Princeton Paranoiac Paul Krugman has gone over-the-moon batshit crazy:

New York, N.Y. — New York Times columnist Paul Krugman says he believes the United States needs a "mega-Watergate" scandal to uncover a far-reaching right-wing conspiracy, going back forty years, to gain control of the U.S. government and roll back civil rights.

...Krugman said there is a "complete continuity" between today's politics and the "campaign of slander and innuendo" against Clinton. "There's complete continuity going back, really, I think — but this is my next book — you really need to go back to Goldwater. A lot of this has to do with civil rights, and the people who don't like them."

Krugman described the conspiracy as "the coalition between the malefactors of great wealth and the religious right." He offered no further details about who, precisely, is in the conspiracy but said that "substantial chunks of the media are part of this same movement."

...

Now, Krugman said, getting rid of George W. Bush is "necessary but not sufficient" to repair the damage done by the right. "The answer, I think, my great hope now, is that we need an enormous unearthing of the scandals that we know have taken place," Krugman said. "We need a mega-Watergate that rocks them back."

Wow. There can be only one possible reaction to such lunatic charges: the immediate recycling and re-posting of old comedy material.

Top Ten Signs that Paul Krugman Has Lost His Friggin' Mind

10. Claims he's being "stalked" by Donald Luskin, Republican operatives, and that black guy from The Thompson Twins

9. Ends all correspondence with the disturbing sign-off, Yours, Until the Faceless Ones Find Me

8. Has gots them "spooky-eyes"

7. Is very careful about collecting and incinerating all his hair- and nail- trimmings so that Paul Wolfowitz can't clone him and "pull the old Zell Miller special"

6. Is working on a "fascinating" new economic theory he calls "The Redrum Postulate"

5. Now speaks chiefly in a lunatic gibberish of his own creation, a hodgepodge of John Kerry campaign slogans and cursewords from Battlestar: Galactica; his next book will be titled Karl Rove is a Fracking Feldercarb

4. The last "column" he submitted to the Times was a sculpture of President Bush composed entirely of animal excrement and bloody dentistry tools

3. Claims to have an invisible friend named "Wiggy," a seven-foot-tall demonic rabbit who's very concerned about media consolidation

2. Keeps asking his friends when they'll make the sequel to A Beautiful Mind, in which John Nash at last sees through the lies of his "wife" and "psychiatrists" and finally tracks down those Russkie atomic bombs

...and the Number One Sign Paul Krugman Has Lost His Friggin' Mind...

1. Seems to be buying into his own bullshit

Thanks to Dianna for the tip on York's column.

Posted by: Ace at 01:43 PM | Comments (14)
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Ted Kennedy and William Kennedy Smith Sought for Questioning; Prosecutor Says "We don't necessarily have any evidence they're the real culprits, but they seem as good a place as any to start"

I question the timing of this media-bait story coming on the night when Zell Miller and Dick Cheney speak.

Posted by: Ace at 01:18 PM | Comments (1)
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Nick Kronos thinks the prices for Kerry stocks are being artificially inflated by gaming the system -- putting in a single goofy-high Kerry bid right at closing (which is, strangely enough, how the system determines the following day's prices).

Posted by: Ace at 12:48 PM | Comments (8)
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Ambitious City-Wide Free Wireless Broadband Internet System Promises to End the Hot-Sex "Digital Divide" Separating the Races

Who says that only geeky white boys should be privileged to troll for free porn all day?

Whoever proposed this absurdity just won 85% of the male vote.

I'm always amused at the ridiculous spin liberals put on the Internet. Granted, there is a lot of cool stuff only possible due to the Internet. Like, this stupid blog.

But they talk about the Internet as if it's some sort of broadband college education or super-duper research library. Yes, there is a small but now growing number of people who get their news primarily via the Internet; but obviously you don't need super-bandwidth to access the NYT website. That's low-bandwidth.

High bandwidth is for porn, and everyone knows that. Actually, low-bandwidth is for porn, too, if that's all you have.

Here's a breakdown of what the Internet is actually used for:

90% Porn

1% Illegally dowloading movies (may include some porn)

1% Buying movie tickets (may include buying porn movie tickets)

1% Buying gifts and other goods (usually of a pornographic nature)

1% Sending stupid jokes and pictures to your friends and co-workers (90% of these jokes and pictures are technically pornographic)

1% Buying your mom flowers because you were too lazy/inconsiderate to buy her something better (you might inadvertantly buy your mom "porn flowers")

1% Wasting time at work by playing stupid games (many of these games are actually pornographic, such as ManSweeper and Titris)

1% Talking about the Simpsons and Star Trek with other idiots (may include homosexual pornographic "slash" fiction of Homer raping Chief Wiggums, or Spock delivering the "Vulcan Cock Pinch" on Kirk)

1% Using cool "L33T" slang, like "suxxor" (most of this slang is pornographic)

1% Neglecting your kids by letting them watch stupid Internet cartoons of Barney the Fucking Dinosaur (while your kids are watching Barney, pedophiles will attempt to send them pornography)

0.9% Blogging/reading blogs (certain blogs, like this one, are very nearly pornographic)

and finally:

0.1% Actually using the Internet for what the liberal Internet proponents claim that everyone does with it, like keeping up with news from foreign newspapers or researching quantum mechanics from the comfort of your own home (in between reading foreign news and researching quantum mechanics, you will take "Intellect Breaks" and enjoy some stimulating and refreshing pornography)

For God's sake. Conservatives have some of their own cherished principles which don't necessarily always comport with objective reality, but I swear, every other thing out of a liberal's mouth is some sort of fantasy-world bullshit that's laughable on its face.

Posted by: Ace at 11:38 AM | Comments (10)
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Rudy Guiliani was outstanding, but few people saw his speech, as the networks did not cover it. (Remind me if I'm wrong-- aren't these usually the same goo-goo bunch who are forever claiming they hate political ads and favor some sort of government-funded advertising regime? If they're against paid ads and in favor of candidates and parties giving free-media speeches on television, why the hell are they not, you know, covering candidates and parties giving speeches on television?)

Hopefully the Bush campaign will run a lot of ads using his speech. But his speech had too many good points to cover in even a series of ads.

I didn't think anyone could top Guiliani, but of course Schwarzenegger did just that. I think Guiliani's speech was more helpful to Bush, but Schwarzenegger's speech had more appeal to moderates and could end up being helpful to the Republican Party generally.

Even Chris Matthews seemed thunderstruck at the strength and star-power of the Repubican speakers. He asked a panel if anyone at the Dem convention had come close to equaling any of the Republican speakers, and a Newsweek editor could only offer, "I thought John Edwards was good," which didn't really answer the question directly.

So far, this has been one of the best political conventions in the modern era. The first two nights of conventions usually may not move votes, but the Guiliani-Schwarzenegger one-two was pretty much the closest we'll ever to achieving that. If those two guys didn't move any undecided voters, then we'll just have to conclude that no speech by a non-candidate can move an undecided voter.

Which sets up the spin for tonight.

Having acknowleged the obvious about the first two nights of the convention -- i.e., powerful speeches -- the liberal media can now use that as the new bar for success in the last two nights, the nights that really matter.

Can Cheney and Bush match Guiliani and Schwarzenegger? Not even on their best days. The President and Vice President may deliver the speeches of their lives, but the liberal media will only say "After the first two nights, this is a major letdown."

And to some extent that may be true. I don't expect that either man can actually top what has come before, but I think that's the wrong metric for evaluation. You can note that their speeches didn't top Guiliani's or Schwarzegger's while also noting that they gave strong speeches, but I don't expect Chris Matthews to emphasize the latter point. (Assuming they give good speeches at all-- which they may not.)

The other spin -- especially tonight -- will be that only now do we see the "true face of the Republican Party," all anger and bitterness and nasty partisan attacks, as if this is the first time a vice president ever gave a tough speech against the opposing presidential candidate. The "reasonable, cheerful moderation" of Guiliani and Schwarzenegger will be contrasted with the "venom and rancor" of the Cheney/Miller pairing.

Sure, Zell Miller is actually a Democrat, but nevermind that. The storyline is too compelling to let a few niggling details get in the way.

Posted by: Ace at 10:32 AM | Comments (9)
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An absolutely horrible situation with no good solution. The Russians will not bargain with these guys, which means that we'll have another Moscow Theater Storming which leaves a lot of civilians dead.

But of course there's little other choice.

It isn't clear to me how this is due to George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq and "angering" normally-peaceful Muslim Islamofascist terrorists, but I'm quite sure that Joshua Micah Cougar Mellencamp Marsahll will explain it all to me in his good time.

Later, of course. I'm sure he's working on a "big story" that he's afraid he can "say little about at this time, for reasons that will soon become clear."

I hate to examine the crass politics of a tragedy in the making (actually, since these bastards killed eight people just taking the school, it's already a major tragedy), but here goes:

I've never bought the theory that a major terrorist attack in the US would help George W. Bush. Yes, it could shake people out of their "Are we there yet? Can we just declare victory and pretend we've won?" complacency, but the public would also hold the Bush Administration's failure to prevent such an attack against Bush.

On the other hand: A major terrorist attack outside the US, especially directed at a country other than the US, shakes people out of their complacency but can't be held against Bush. In fact, to the extent people bother thinking about it at all, they may begin to wonder why there have been several successful major terrorist attacks in Russia but not here. Unless they think that Al Qaeda has just decided to give up, they have to give some amount of credit to the Bush Administration's handling of security.

This should be a major, major story. Not only is it the sort of "important foreign news story" that American reporters claim they wish they could report more of, but there is also an obvious human/dramatic story here-- the sort of story that gets big ratings. It's not often that you have a story that's both objectively important and has the dramatic impact that the newsmagazine shows favor.

But I think the media knows that this story helps Bush, indirectly but inevitably. And so I think we'll see this story -- both important and a ratings-grabber -- reported only begrudgingly and lightly at that.

Posted by: Ace at 10:16 AM | Comments (4)
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