And it wasn't even an animated, living mannequin like Kim Cattral back in 1984, when she was a spry 63 years young.

The man's defense? He just thought she was British.

Old joke, yes. Just sort of proving the last stupid point I made.

Thanks to utron, but actually a lot of people sent me this tip. Thanks to y'all.

Posted by: Ace at 09:01 AM | Comments (29)
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Ann Althouse copies a bunch of "anti-feminist" jokes from Atrios, and suggests that Democrats have a long way to go before they can convince her that they're genuine feminists.

Now, don't get me wrong. I like a good slam on Atrios and his commenters as much as the next guy. Well, maybe not as much, because I really have no idea who this idiot is.

But I think there's a certain place for ribbing in life. Women do a lot of ribbing of men -- Maureen Dowd's made a cottage industry of it; she just wrote a book that I've nominated to the Guiness World Records committee as the World's Longest Friendster Profile -- and a lot of that is in good fun, and I roll with it. I think women have to be a little realistic about all of this, too. There's not a war between the sexes, but there's a permanent rivalry, and there's going to be some jibing along the way.

Quite frankly, I think the same thing about "racist" jokes. There are truly racist jokes and then there are jokes with a racial element which aren't racist at all. White liberal commedians get away these all the time; they're assumed to be "just kidding," so it's no harm, no foul. And black commedians -- whoa, nelly. They go to town on this stuff. Again, for what it's worth, I think a lot of black commedians' ribbing of whites is pretty funny. That "Nervous White Guy Voice" that almost every black comic does? It's usually pretty funny. Dave Chappelle does a good one, but a lot of them do funny White Guy Voices.

Hell, I even do a funny Nervous White Guy Voice. It's just a funny bit.

I think a lot of this depends on the "smile when you say that" principle. Is someone saying something really meaning it in a nasty way, are they using the form of humor to say something nasty they really believe but get away with it under the "I was just kidding" pretext, or are they genuinely just joshing around in a good spirit? It's sometimes hard to determine motive, but most of the time it isn't. There's a real bitterness that comes through when someone is just ranking on a sex or race, even if the form of the attack is allegedly "humorous."

I guess my point is: Grow a pair. And be a little more discriminatory in your charges of discrimination; yes, there are, I guess, men who still really have no use for women other than the obvious (plowing the fields, so to speak, and by that, I mean sticking a yoke on them and making them drag a plow through frozen earth for next year's corn plantin'). And there are a lot of people who really have a high degree of racial animus, if not genuine philosophical racism.

But I think most people actually are pretty on board with this whole "tolerance" thing, and one shouldn't declare a jihad on joking in order to stamp out real sexism or real racism. The presumtion should be "kidding" first, not "sexism" or "racism" first, and that presumption should hold absent some good evidence of a real animus or hatred.

Tolerance has to make room for reality, and the reality is that, no matter how committed a tolerant liberal you might be on such matters, there is, and probably will continue to be for a long time, a good deal of rivalry and annoyance between the sexes, races, and sexual orientations. It's not actual hatred; it's just differences, inability to understand where people get some ideas (OJ is innocent, Madonna is an important artist, boots are made for hoardin'), as well as some quite-inevitable quantum of envy and resentment.

Joking is the way humans have sublimated petty resentments into a socially acceptable form of expression for, I'm guessing, 100,000 years or more. Some "jokes" aren't really jokes at all, and some have far too much bitterness and bite in them, but many are pretty harmless and not at all very seriously meant. I really would be loathe to lose some good-spirited playfulness in the cause of securing some utopian vision of races, sexes, and sexual orientations having no differences, disagreements, or disputes between them at all, which, frankly, ain't ever gonna happen.

Even on Star Trek, Data and Worf were made sport of. And that was the 24th Century.

PS: No, I don't really shoot off bottle-rockets and then immediately tell the cops it was "a bunch of Puerto Rican kids." Usually I tell the cops it was a bunch of Chinamen, because you know how those people are with the kung-fu, acrobatics, and fireworks.

Posted by: Ace at 08:30 AM | Comments (27)
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Eulogized at SondraK and BlogIdaho.

You know when animals are so ugly they're actually cute? Well, he wasn't one of those. He was actually ugly. But he had a tremendous heart.

I guess. I never met the dog. He might have been a real dick.

But it seems like a nice thing to say.

Posted by: Ace at 08:00 AM | Comments (8)
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Projected to grow at a 3.3% clip, and these projections tend to understate growth in a strong economy.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 07:57 AM | Comments (6)
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I think commenters have more to say about this than I do, so I'll just put this up for purposes of creating a thread.

A rival network news director asks: "When has an 'X' ever aired on CNN before? Who had the graphic sitting in the key signal? Who generated the 'X'?"

I'm at my wits' end trying to figure out which rival news network this could possibly be.

It's a Feature Not a Bug Update: CNN claims it was all a "computer bug," but also says they are unable to reproduce the error to show you how it might have happened.

That was a pretty brief investigation.

Posted by: Ace at 07:51 AM | Comments (30)
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So says the UK Mirror, which I would usually deeply discount as regards credibility, but their sourcing seems to be legit:

PRESIDENT Bush planned to bomb Arab TV station al-Jazeera in friendly Qatar, a "Top Secret" No 10 memo reveals.

But he was talked out of it at a White House summit by Tony Blair, who said it would provoke a worldwide backlash.

A source said: "There's no doubt what Bush wanted, and no doubt Blair didn't want him to do it." Al-Jazeera is accused by the US of fuelling the Iraqi insurgency.

The attack would have led to a massacre of innocents on the territory of a key ally, enraged the Middle East and almost certainly have sparked bloody retaliation.

From Al Jazeera's famous Republican Guards? No, of course from Al Jazeera's direct-action wing, Al Qaeda.

...

"He made clear he wanted to bomb al-Jazeera in Qatar and elsewhere. Blair replied that would cause a big problem.

"There's no doubt what Bush wanted to do - and no doubt Blair didn't want him to do it."

A Government official suggested that the Bush threat had been "humorous, not serious".

But another source declared: "Bush was deadly serious, as was Blair. That much is absolutely clear from the language used by both men."

At first blush, I'm inclined to believe this happened, more or less. Although I'd guess it was more ranting by Bush in frustration than a serious plan.

The strike would have been pretty ill-advised, even if one could make a fair case that Al Jazeera is part of the communications effort of Al Qaeda.

One thing that makes me think this is less-than-serious is my assumption that there are less dramatic ways to take a station off the air. Couldn't a ship sitting off the coast of Qatar have jammed Al Jazeera's signal as it beamed it up to a satellite? Or beamed its own gibberish signal to the satellite on the same frequency as Al Jazeera, overwhelming the AJ signal? Or perhaps we could have parked a nice big blocking satellite right in the path from Al Jazeera to its satellite.

In all likelihood, there are treaties forbidding this, and there would have been repercussions for taking such actions... but then, there are treaties forbidding attacking the sovereign territory of an ally (and Qatar, despite the odious presence of Al Jazeera, is as close to a good ally in the region as we have). So I'm sort of torn between respecting the source and thinking this is crap.

This was inevitable:

The No 10 memo now raises fresh doubts over US claims that previous attacks against al-Jazeera staff were military errors.

In 2001 the station's Kabul office was knocked out by two "smart" bombs. In 2003, al-Jazeera reporter Tareq Ayyoub was killed in a US missile strike on the station's Baghdad centre.

It pains me to admit this, but I have to say I have fresh doubts about these being accidents myself.

Not that I'll cry myself to sleep over the strikes tonight.

Posted by: Ace at 07:49 AM | Comments (21)
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Don't you even dare suggest that a child's public behavior should meet any sort of standard, oh dear me, no. You see, if you quietly suggest that perhaps children should not run around like Speedy Gonzales whilst screaming at the top of their lungs and bouncing off display cases, then some parents take that as a personal attack and start returning fire.

The amusing part of this story is that this little culture war takes place in a liberal enclave in Chicago, described as "once an outpost of edgy artists and hip gay couples but now a hot real estate market for young professional families shunning the suburbs." The owner fits in with the area, as he has made it his personal goal to only hire people who can walk to work.

However, the owner moved his shop not too long ago, and the owner says that his new clientele is "whiter, wealthier and louder." He posted the sign about manners because "Part of parenting skills is teaching kids they behave differently in a restaurant than they do on the playground" and "If you send out positive energy, positive energy returns to you. If you send out energy that says I'm the only one that matters, it's going to be a pretty chaotic world."

The absolute best part is his description of his antagonists as "former cheerleaders and beauty queens" who "have a very strong sense of entitlement". The article also notes that "In an open letter to the community, he warned of an "epidemic" of anti-social behavior."

Thus we see what happens when self-esteem triumphs over good manners. Don't you dare criticize behavior, you'll injure Little Johnny's self-image! Lord knows, we need more untethered self-esteem in children and less genuine reason to feel good about themselves, right?

As Lileks says today, the owner "seems to be peeving the right people."

(Also note that he corrects himself on a critical matter that I posted about yesterday.)

Posted by: Harry Callahan at 02:07 AM | Comments (75)
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In a Dana Milbank "Outlook" piece on the "cottage industry" of media criticism....

The most priceless sentence is this: "Regardless of the merits, the pervasive accusations of bias are making it increasingly difficult for the traditional media to play their role of gathering and reporting facts." Media critics are wrong to criticize, regardless of the merits of their criticism? Well yes, you see, because Milbank believes their nefarious goal is to "steer readers and viewers toward ideologically driven outlets that will confirm their own views and protect them from disagreeable facts."

Unlike, say, Dana Milbank, who's as fair-and-balanced a down-the-line straight shooter as you could imagine. Why, I could never even hope to guess at the man's politics from his writing.

But, you know, gun to my head? I'd guess... John Bircher? No? Maybe a member of the Right to Life Party? Getting colder? Okay, just as a final stab in the dark, I'll guess Stereotypical Eastern Urban McGovernite Left-Liberal.

But honestly, that's just giving it the old college try. Because I swear, the man's political agenda is as much a mystery to me as female genitalia.

Seriously. I'm asking for the last time, ladies: What the hell is going on down there? It's like a foam-latex version of the old Operation game, and I'm always fumbling around and getting the red buzzer.

Quote from Brent Bozell, linked at the Purple Avenger.

Posted by: Ace at 09:03 PM | Comments (29)
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One of the most biased pieces I've read in my life.

First of all, the headline:

Opening the Door to Debate, and Then Shutting It

He goes on to snarkily suggest that Dick Cheney was lying when he said that debate was to be respected. Wow! Partisan snark! I appreciate that... in a blogger.

I think a lot of the MSM partisans are pretty envious of the gig we bloggers have going -- at least as far as a more honest expression of opinion, rather than relying on dishonest tactics like only quoting one side, giving one side the last (and most) words, etc.

But I'm confounded if I can tell the difference between our neutral and objective press corps and "internet political partisans" anymore.

Vice President Cheney protested yesterday that he had been misunderstood when he said last week that critics of the White House over Iraq were "dishonest and reprehensible."

What he meant to say, he explained to his former colleagues at the American Enterprise Institute, was that those who question the White House's use of prewar intelligence were not only "dishonest and reprehensible" but also "corrupt and shameless."

It was about as close as the vice president gets to a retraction.

I admit, it's a good, cheap line, and I'd have been proud to write it myself, about a liberal. But again-- what makes this particular nasty, somewhat childish form of writing different than (as of yet) unpaid bloggers?

Cheney tried to follow his boss's edict. "I do not believe it is wrong to criticize the war on terror or any aspect thereof," he said.

But exactly three minutes later, the vice president added this caveat: "What is not legitimate, and what I will again say is dishonest and reprehensible, is the suggestion by some U.S. senators that the president . . . misled the American people on prewar intelligence." This, he said, "is revisionism of the most corrupt and shameless variety."

He floated the notion that "one might also argue that untruthful charges against the commander in chief have an insidious effect on the war effort itself" -- before adding: "I'm unwilling to say that."

It was a delicate act: Celebrating debate and criticism while declaring that a key element of that debate -- whether the administration exaggerated prewar intelligence about Iraq -- is off-limits.

Let me suggest to you that what is off limits in debate is largely in the eye of the partisan beholder, Hack. You think it's quite reasonable to claim that Bush knowingly lied about the presence of WMD's in Iraq, despite the fact that he knew he'd win the war within months at most and his lie would be exposed to the world. This strikes you and your unhinged partisan leftist buddies as quite reasonable; conservatives, after all, are not only evil, they're also mind-bogglingly stupid, and do things like claim that a dictator has WMD's as a pretext for war knowing that within 90 days at most their lies will be shown as such and they'll be facing (as you guys are all trying to drive us towards) impeachment.

What, we're that evil, Dana, and we didn't think of smuggling a few gallons of VX into Iraq? Oh, right: that's where the mind-bogglingly stupid part comes in.

Here's a part of the debate that YOU might consider off-limits, but I consider quite reasonable myself:

RESOLVED: Partisan leftists like Dana Milbank hate Republicans so much that they'd rather see America lose a war than Republcians win a midterm election.

See how what you consider reasonable might not be so reasonable to me? Or to Dick Cheney, whom you and your lefty friends are accusing, essentially, of full capital-punishment-eligible treason? It's amazing, isn't it Dana, that when one accuses a man of essentially MURDERING 2000 people on the basis of a deliberate lie, that man might tend to get snippy about it, huh?

At least my little theory-- that about lefties wanting us to lose this war because they fear the political consequences of an American victory -- has some good support for it. Such as Gary Kamiya, a writer for Salon, stating after we'd captured Baghdad that he'd been praying we'd taken more casualties:

I have a confession: I have at times, as the war has unfolded, secretly wished for things to go wrong. Wished for the Iraqis to be more nationalistic, to resist longer. Wished for the Arab world to rise up in rage. Wished for all the things we feared would happen. I'm not alone: A number of serious, intelligent, morally sensitive people who oppose the war have told me they have had identical feelings.

Some of this is merely the result of pettiness--ignoble resentment, partisan hackdom, the desire to be proved right and to prove the likes of Rumsfeld wrong, irritation with the sanitizing, myth-making American media. That part of it I feel guilty about, and disavow. But some of it is something trickier: It's a kind of moral bet-hedging, based on a pessimism not easy to discount, in which one's head and one's heart are at odds.

Many antiwar commentators have argued that once the war started, even those who oppose it must now wish for the quickest, least-bloody victory followed by the maximum possible liberation of the Iraqi people. But there is one argument against this: What if you are convinced that an easy victory will ultimately result in a larger moral negative--four more years of Bush, for example, with attendant disastrous policies, or the betrayal of the Palestinians to eternal occupation, or more imperialist meddling in the Middle East or elsewhere?

Wishing for things to go wrong is the logical corollary of the postulate that the better things go for Bush, the worse they will go for America and the rest of the world.

If we're going to have a full and open debate, do we get to level the most vicious sort of charges at your side as part of the debate? Or does only your side get to have the fun of accusing people of mass-murder and treason?

Oddly enough, I think you'll welcome a debate on the subject of Gary Kamiya's -- and your, and other lefties' -- actual level of patriotism about as warmly as Dick Cheney welcomes a debate on whether or not he's an actual traitor to the country.

But there's more. Because Milbank then trots out the old leftist chestnut that Cheney claimed Saddam had "reconstituted nuclear weapons." Does that phrase make no sense? Well, it shouldn't. It's a nonsense phrase, an error in speaking, and yet the left has seized on this to "prove" Cheney claimed Saddam had nukes. Not was seeking them. HAD them already.

As vice president, Cheney has always played the hard-line Cardinal Ratzinger to Bush's sunny John Paul II. Before the war, Cheney asserted that Iraq had "reconstituted nuclear weapons."

Sorry, dear. The entire interview (on Meet the Press) was about Saddam's DESIRE for nuclear weapons, his PURSUIT of them, his eagerness to reconstitute his nuclear weapons program. What Cheney had said, dozens of times before, was that Saddam had "reconstituted his nuclear weapons program," not the actual nuclear weapons, whiich he could not "REconstitute," as he had never constituted them before. No one ever believed or claimed that Saddam Hussein had a nuclear weapon; yet based on one errant slip of the tongue on Meet the Press Milbank would have you believe that Dick Cheney actually informed the country that Saddam Hussein already was a member of the nuclear club.

Eugene Volokh dispensed with this preposterous lie in an old issue of National Review. But for a neutral and objective "media professional," any nonsense they see on a left-wing blog (or, of course, a DNC talking points memo) is a "fact."

Hmmm... childish snark, vicious partisanship, using dubious factoids culled from The Daily Kos...

...apart from the salary, what separates Dana Milbank from me, again?

Oh right: The man's prodigious talent.

Because Lord knows it's hard to do sarcasm. I mean, writing up a sarcastic and partisan rejoinder to someone's remarks, using a tiny bit of Internet research takes (checks watch) about twenty minutes, it seems to me.

Well played, Mr. Milbank. Very well played. Blogging from a cushy office at the Washington Post.

One must applaud Dana Milbank. Rarely has any man shown such ingenuity at reaching such lofty heights on the basis of such meager talent.

Posted by: Ace at 08:09 PM | Comments (36)
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More Than Loans remembered this post I did way back last November. It pretty much settles the question of what Chris Matthews meant in his latest outburst.

I was pretty much the only guy, as far as I know, to catch Chris Matthews making this statement a year ago; I transcribed his words directly from his show. It's a perfect translation; I remember going back and forth on the DVR to catch every word.

MATTHEWS: Well let me ask you about this. If this were on the other side, and we were watching an enemy soldier-- a rival, I mean, they're not bad guys especially, they're just people who disagree with you; they are in fact the insurgents fighting us in their country -- if we saw one of them do what we saw our guy did to that guy [i.e., shooting the playing-dead terrorist], would that be worthy of a war-crime charge?

Emphasis added, but then, Hissy-Fit Chris kinda talks in bold-face italics, doesn't he?

More Than Loans has more links on Matthews, too.

Posted by: Ace at 06:14 PM | Comments (61)
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