Animal Arena Combat week continues.

I apologize for this link in advance. This is video of someone somewhere putting a bear in a zoo-cage with a lion, which is obviously cruelty to animals. Still, the deed is already done, and the makers of this video aren't profiting from it (one good thing about the net, though it denies profits to criminals as well as to the ethical).

Also a Warning for the cheesecake photos and come-on links all of the site hosting the video. Not entirely safe for work, though it's not outright porn.

Anyway: video of a lion vs. a bear.

Don't hate me because I'm irresponsible.

Thanks to Karl.

Posted by: Ace at 08:27 AM | Comments (100)
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Al Qaeda looking for media designers.

Al Qaeda has put job advertisements on the Internet asking for supporters to help put together its Web statements and video montages, an Arabic newspaper reported.

Asharq al-Awsat said the advert did not specify salary amounts, but added: "Every Muslim knows his life is not his, since it belongs to this violated Islamic nation whose blood is being spilled. Nothing should take precedence over this."

UPDATE: Hubris brings the funny:

WEB DESIGNER/DEVELOPER
The successful candidate will have a thorough knowledge of HTML and Dreamweaver/ Contribute authoring environment, as well as knife-sharpening. The individual must also have excellent oral and written skills to communicate with other team members about jihad, site navigation, filthy Jews, content management, and related topics. The individual must be able to work independently if other team members get their asses blown up. Active delusions of grandeur are critical in this fast-paced environment. This is not an entry-level position.
SALARY: Al Qaeda is proud to offer extremely competitive compensation packages. Every Muslim knows his life is not his, since it belongs to this violated Islamic nation whose blood is being spilled. Nothing should take precedence over this.
*Al Qaeda is an Equal Opportunity Employer*

Nice.

Posted by: LauraW. at 07:23 AM | Comments (5)
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Last week I linked to The Independent's profile of an upcoming book on 'words for which there is no equivalent in the English language.' The BBC covered it too, and had their viewers write in with favorite examples, the more interesting of which they revealed here.

The viewers cheat a little - some of them aren't words, more like phrases that encapsulate something so handy we should have them too - but they're all pretty interesting.

I particularly like that the Japanese refer to the balding man's combover as a 'bar code.'

Also nice, though I'd hear it before: 'l'esprit d'escalier', or spirit of the staircase. This is used to describe the precise moment a person comes up with a clever retort to an embarrassing insult. It is usually after leaving the party, and walking down the stairs that the quip comes to mind."

(via Kottke)

Posted by: Dr. Reo Symes at 04:31 PM | Comments (13)
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Confederate Yankee has been covering the coverage and has lots of links.

Meanwhile, of course, left-wing blogs "question the timing."

I really want these people to decide if terrorism is a real threat or a fictitious one. If it's the latter, don't blame Bush the next time terror strikes, as you are on record as deeming it a phantasmal fear. If it's the former, then shut the fuck up when prudent steps are taken to thwart potential attacks.

And of course Bush is willing to do more than gin up a phony terrorist threat to "divert attention" from... well, from whatever it is Democrats would rather be talking about at any particular time.

Case in point: a Daily Kos diarist informs you how to "protect yourselves" when the evil sadists (her words) in the Bush Administration start "lashing out" over the always-on-the-horizon indictment of Karl Rove.

How will Bush lash out? Why, he'll push the nuclear button, that's what he'll do.

I have worked with some sadistic patients. They feel empty inside and/or full of rage. They are certain they have been deprived of love and do not carry a fund of memories of being cared for inside them. They find ways to be with others - charm, but they often haven't a clue as to why people don't really like or trust them. Oh yes, they know how to exert power over people and keep them in their place. That is the essence of sadism - I am the master - you are the slave. Bush and Rove clearly deserve each other.

Why this matters now is the possible reaction of Bush to Fitzgerald's next serious move. My fear is that the inner emptiness in Bush will respond with absolute panic to the potential loss of Rove and his other pals. Panic in a sadist who believes in the apocalypse is something serious about which we all should be worried.

He could set off a nuclear holocaust. He could merely nuke Iran or North Korea (the latter is less likely for the moment). He will be drawn to do something to make him feel powerful and less humiliated. What can we do about it?

I am writing this diary because I think there is something we can and should be doing now before he is "compelled" to react to the worst news of his life.

We should be predicting his irrational destructive reaction to everyone. With any luck it will get back to him and his courtiers and could slow him down. Or at least some of his marginally sane advisors could slow him down.

Btw, I was worried about his creating a "terrorist attack" just before the election for the obvious reasons and was reassured to learn that the democratic leadership and Kerry campaign were well aware of that possibility and the repugs knew that he was being watched for any such dirty trick which reduced the likelihood of it happening.

In the same spirit, I think we should make sure that as many people as possible should be aware that a man with such a hair-trigger response to humiliation and who has his finger too close to the wrong buttons will be watched and prevented by saner minds from doing his best (which is unfortunately everybody else's worst.)

I liked it better the first time I heard this, when it was called The Dead Zone.

The Kosmonaut in question wants you to always remember we're dealing with fundamentally deranged people here.

Point. Well. Taken.

Thanks to cutaway for the last.

Oh... Remember the left going bananas over Bush's failure to imagine using aircraft as missiles?

They can't seem to imagine bombing a subway system, despite the fact that it happened in another major city, just three months ago.

Posted by: Ace at 03:33 PM | Comments (19)
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If by "offensive" you mean slaughtering innocent civlians, of course.

Generation Why? remembers a letter between OBL and Zarqawi calling for a "fateful confrontation" with the West to coincide with Ramadan, and wonders if recent attacks, and the NYC subway threat, are part of this "military assault."

Posted by: Ace at 03:10 PM | Comments (2)
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Retracted. See update.

It's Animal Arena Combat week here at AoSHQ. This time, a mule supposedly killing a cougar that had been stalking it.

No picks of the actual fight, but the mule does have the cougar carcass in its teeth in a pic.

Aaarggh, Always Go With Your Gut Update: With no pics of the actual fight, I suspected this was just a mule picking up an already dead carcass.

Snopes says this is exactly what happened.

Although I suspect Snopes is just one of those Internet political partisans attacking me to prevent the real truth from coming out.

I stand by the underlying truth of my story. There's a live mule and a dead cougar. So you tell me who "won."

Frankly, I suspect a coordinated attack by political partisans -- how did all of this information come out even before I'd finished completing this post?

Hmmm? Hmmm? HMMMMMM??!!

Posted by: Ace at 02:46 PM | Comments (20)
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Sigh. I wonder if he'd be into Betsy.

That links to an audio file of the remark (click "said"). Though it seems balky right now, maybe due to low bandwidth.

For a transcript, go to Are You Conservative?

Howard Dean.

Hide the salami.

The man's just too damn sexy. Sometimes I think he's sending out dirty little messages just for me.

Fun With Real Audio: Might be fun to stitch "Yeaaaarrhhh!" and "hide the salami" into a soundbite.

Posted by: Ace at 02:30 PM | Comments (9)
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Good idea:

I have supported a Balanced Budget Amendment in the past and I would support it again. But what weÂ’ve got to do is change the structure of the system here where the system legislators believe it rewards them to spend money rather than save it and itÂ’s just structured wrong.

I put in a proposal, weÂ’ve got it in on the House side, and weÂ’ll get it in on the Senate side in the next couple of weeks, that does a BRAC type of structure for the rest of government including entitlement programs where you have a commission look at the totality of government. Are these programs effective? Are they duplications? If they are, then propose eliminations of whole programs -- or maybe the program accomplished its purpose -- or maybe it was never effective in the first place. They do those appraisals and then present in front of Congress a bill that says these 363 programs should be eliminated and give Congress one vote up or down without amendment whether to keep them all or to eliminate them all.

I think weÂ’ve got to change the structure and the BRAC structure has been successful in changing, reducing a number of military bases, consolidating them successfully and I think we ought to use that structure throughout the rest of government. We have to get spending under control. We have not been able to do that and we need to change this structure to be able to get that done.

Thanks for the tip to The Apologist.

Posted by: Ace at 02:25 PM | Comments (9)
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Pinkerton nails it. With the MSM firmly in control, defeatist "public" art like Maya Lin's Vietnam Memorial* got built without much of a peep.

But now the New Media defeated the anti-American IFC.

And, as he demonstrates by citing one screeching NYT op-ed or "news article" after another, the liberal legacy media is pretty pissed off that some of their power has been taken away.

*Yes, I know, many families of the casualties of that war do seem to like the bleak solemnity of the Vietnam Memorial. I'm ambivalent myself. But Pinkerton is quite right that the left loved the concept because it was so blatantly anti-war.

Posted by: Ace at 12:15 PM | Comments (33)
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Might be.

He hasn't received a letter naming him a target of investigation, but he has been warned that his upcoming testimony may be used in a possible indictment. He was not previously warned about that possibility.

Fitzgerald, I've read (can't remember the cite), is supposedly working on a novel theory. While none of the acts taken by Rove, Libby, etc. were actually criminal, the acts were taken with a "criminal purpose." Apparently the theory is that this was a criminal conspiracy without an actual criminal act, just a "criminal purpose."

Do any criminal lawyers know if this holds water at all? I thought you needed both the criminal act and the criminal intent to be guilty of a crime.

Posted by: Ace at 11:29 AM | Comments (51)
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