This chickie is "the first-ever woman to participate in the World Cyber Games competition..."
She says she came for the video games, but is obviously really there for the hot cyber-geek action.

Imagine being the only female in a huge convention center full of slobbering pencil-neck dweebs who have never actually touched a boobie.

You know, right after I wrote that sentence I threw up a little bit, in my mouth.

Posted by: LauraW. at 04:08 PM | Comments (51)
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From Iowahawk, including a business-plan diagram that explains it all.

Thanks to the Blogometer.

By the way, this isn't an OSM link, this is a humor link. I'm linking it because it's funny. I guarantee you will learn absolutely nothing at all about OSM from it.

Posted by: Ace at 11:47 AM | Comments (9)
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Full quote:

"If we stop trying to figure out the other side, we've given up. The person on the other side is not evil -- they just have a different perspective."

Some of those minor differences of perspective that we blindly call "evil:"

"...A gruesome videotape posted on an Islamic militant Web site Tuesday showed the beheading of an American contractor who had been looking for work in Iraq...Berg then was pushed to the floor and screamed as one of the executioners wielded a large knife. The man sawed off Berg's head while the other captors shouted: "Allahu Akbar!" Arabic for "God is great."

-- From USAToday

"...Fifteen people were killed when a car bomb exploded in a busy Baghdad market...The latest attack, which targeted a local market in the Jesir Diyala district of southern Baghdad, was followed 90 minutes later by another car bomb attack in the centre of the capital...The market bomb, hidden in a parked car, wounded some 20 people, all of them civilians...The second blast, which targeted a police patrol, left three policemen and two civilians wounded...A week ago, another car bomb killed four women and wounded some 40 people at another Baghdad market in the southeast of the capital..."

-- From Sify

And it all started with this rather innocent misunderstanding:

I think we've heard just about all we need to hear from Chris Matthews.

Buh-bye.

Thanks to RCL.

Was Chris Just Talking About Understanding That Domestic Political Opponents Have a Different Perspective? Some suggested this interpretation, but that does not appear to be what he was talking about.

Let me quote more from the article. You be the judge:

Four years after 9/11 and the "crazy zeitgeist" that permeated the United States, most Americans have still not learned to know their enemies instead of just hating them, U.S. political journalist Chris Matthews says.

...

He said Bush squandered an opportunity to unite the world against terrorism and instead made decisions that have built up worldwide animosity against his administration.

He seems to be talking about "enemies" and "worldwide animosity." So I take his talk of understanding the guys "on the other side" as being about Muslim radicals. Not Democrats or Republicans arguing about strategy.

That said, I'd like to see the full transcript when available to confirm this.

Confirmed: Matthews said something very similar almost a year ago:

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 diagree with you; they are in fact the insurgents figthing us in their country -- if we saw one of them do what we saw our guy did to that guy [the playing-dead terrorist], would that be worthy of a war-crime charge?

Thanks to Tony B. for reminding me of that. I had expected lots of links at the time for catching him saying that, but no one really seemed to care.

Posted by: Ace at 11:19 AM | Comments (41)
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Great round-up of Bush's trip to Mongolia -- the first ever by a sitting American President -- and his praise of this fledgling democracy's anti-terrorism efforts.

President Bush, what is best in life?

-- To crush your enemies, to see dem driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of de Andrew Sullivan. Well, okay, not that last one so much.

Update From Ulan Bator: The PM of Mongolia writes an Op-Ed For the WaPo. Here's the beginning:

-- Mr. President, welcome to Mongolia. Welcome to freedom.

Those are the words with which I will greet President Bush when he arrives in Mongolia today. They represent an extraordinary odyssey for my country, one that has taken us from totalitarianism to free-market democracy in just 15 years.

Pretty nice start.

Posted by: Ace at 10:52 AM | Comments (23)
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Missed my chance to make millions:

On a busy night at the New York Players Club in upper Manhattan, vice squad officers wearing bulletproof vests and raid jackets dealt the underground poker scene a losing hand.

The team entered unannounced at 11 p.m., detaining dealers, snatching up piles of cash and sending dozens of card players home with empty pockets. Downtown, another popular card club, Playstation, also was shuttered. In all, police arrested 39 employees and confiscated $100,000.

The raids on May 26 — dubbed "Black Thursday" by one poker Web site — and two more last month have sent a chill through the city's clandestine poker scene.

Several members-only card clubs closed their doors after 13 arrests on Oct. 16 at the Broadway Club in the Flatiron District, where the Yankees' $25-million-a-year third baseman, Alex Rodriguez, reportedly had played. On Oct. 28, a second-floor parlor on the Upper East Side, the EV Club, became the site of more vice squad arrests.

This makes it sound kinda lame:

The clubs typically ban alcohol but provide other perks: Playstation served Oreo cookies...

I always thought Rounders was financed by casino owners. Or, if it wasn't, then it should have been; it's basically a two-hour commercial for gambling.

It is a world reminiscent of the 1998 movie "Rounders," which was set largely in underground New York poker clubs and is credited with jump-starting the poker craze.

Thanks to Dave From It's Old.

Posted by: Ace at 10:44 AM | Comments (16)
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Lileks rips into idiotarian Kurt Vonnegut for saying all kinds of nice things about terrorists and suicide bombers. Curious how this takes place in the context of a book tour pushing a collection of Bush Derangement Syndrome essays. (Note to Wonkette: This ain't banned here.)

For example: It is "sweet and honorable" to die for what you believe in, they are "very brave people" and "it must be an amazing high" to die as a suicide terrorist.

However, the great Lileks puts it all into perspective:

Mr. Vonnegut – again, a patriot whose dissent is being cruelly ground into the nurturing earth before your eyes – seems to think that suicide bombings literally happen in a vacuum, an unpopulated space where the bombers just pop like soap bubbles. It may be painless for them – alas – but it is not painless for the victims. You’d think such an obvious observation would go without saying, but we are dealing with an intellectual. What Vonnegut calls brave – blowing yourself up so you can fly up to the great Bunny Ranch in the sky and rut with fragrant houris blessed with self-regenerating hymens – does not exactly compare to the bravery required of the survivors.

...

here is nothing to be gained from pointing out that Vonnegut is an addled old fool whose brain has rusted in the antiestablishment default position for so long he cannot distinguish between suicide bombers and people who stage a sit-in at a WoolworthÂ’s counter.

...

Vonnegut is described in the article as a “peace activist.”

As a wise giant said in “The Princess Bride” – “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

Update: Clearly, a horde of people responded to fact-check Lileks on a matter of earth shaking importance. He notes:

And yes, I attributed the “Princess Bride” quote to the wrong hero. At least the number of people pointing that out exceeded the number of people who thought Vonnegut made some brave points. There’s hope. See you tomorrow.

Posted by: Harry Callahan at 07:25 AM | Comments (21)
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RiehlWorldView catches them printing claims that Sheehan's publisher, Annie Kotler, thought of contacting her for a book because she saw her in the news and liked her blog entries.

The true story is that Sheehan and Kotler were put in touch by a mutual anti-war lefty friend, Jodie Evans, co-founder of CodePink.

So, why spin for Sheehan as if she were a Hollywood star?

Oh, right. In AP's eyes, she is.

Posted by: Ace at 07:13 AM | Comments (10)
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Damn.

The US ambassador to Iraq said that Al-Qaeda frontman Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's days were numbered as US forces kept up the hunt for Iraq's most wanted man following rumors he had been killed.

"His days are numbered. He is going to be ultimately found," Zalmay Khalilzad said in an interview with CNN.

"Either he will be brought to justice or he will die in the battle to capture him but we are getting closer to that goal every day. A lot of coalition forces and experts are working hard on this," he said.

"It is not a question of whether but when."

Iraqi and US troops were continuing to hunt for the Jordanian-born Zarqawi, who has a 25 million dollar US bounty on his head, after commanders dismissed reports that he had been killed in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.

"We have no indication that Zarqawi was killed and we will continue operations to search for him," a US military spokesman told AFP in Baghdad.

Posted by: Ace at 06:56 AM | Comments (10)
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Yet another "Eeeek, a mouse!" moment from America's preeminent hyperemotional hyperventilator.

First, as Allah tips, he calls CIA felons breaking the espionage laws "dissidents."

But then he quotes an article noting the approved "torture" techniques. These include, I shit you not, grabbing at someone's collar in a rough manner, the "belly slap" (open hand only, because punching could cause internal damage), making people stand for long hours, and subjecting them to cold, damp conditions.

It also includes waterboarding, which is a fucking revelation to ONLY Andrew Fucking Sullivan. Who on the face of the planet fucking earth did not know we were waterboarding? For God's sakes, it was reported we'd done just that on Khalid Sheik Mohammed like three years ago.

And what is waterboarding? It's actually less horrific than I'd imagined:

6. Water Boarding: The prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner's face and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt.

According to the sources, CIA officers who subjected themselves to the water boarding technique lasted an average of 14 seconds before caving in. They said al Qaeda's toughest prisoner, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, won the admiration of interrogators when he was able to last between two and two-and-a-half minutes before begging to confess.

"The person believes they are being killed, and as such, it really amounts to a mock execution, which is illegal under international law," said John Sifton of Human Rights Watch.

St. Andrew of the Sacred Heart-Ache thinks that's torture. Well, it's certainly putting someone in great psychological distress -- which is precisely what the anti-"torture" brigade claims to be in favor of. Waterboarding relies on a physiological trick to convince someone, wrongly, that he is in danger of drowning. He is not. He's not even taking in any water. It's tricking the body's gag reflex to respond to something which is not gagging.

Shut the fuck up already, Andrew. Men are trying to win this war for you, so you can continue to take ecstacy at Madonna concerts without being blown up.

Posted by: Ace at 09:37 PM | Comments (64)
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Just plain weird and disturbing story in the Washington Post.

Let me explain. No, there is not enough time. Let me sum up:

A magazine writer wrote a very uncharitable article about the father of a guy named Kenneth Feld, a CEO at Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. In anger, he hired a former CIA spymaster (somehow involved with Iran-Contra) to set up full surveillance on the writer, as well as run covert ops on her, including inserting a mole into her life-- a "false friend" who posed as a business partner, torpedoed her career, and attempted to steer her away from writing anything further about Feld's father. Including presenting her with book deals about other topics, to keep her busy with non-circus matters.

The expert spook hired a onetime journalist named Robert Eringer, whom he described as a "very close friend," to help carry out the Pottker operation. George paid him $1,500 a week.

According to Pottker's suit, Eringer's mission was to worm his way into her life, becoming her confidant, editor and book "packager." He steered her toward researching other famous and fractious families, including the Rockefellers, the Mars candy clan and the Hafts of Washington.

A Rockefeller book, Eringer predicted in an early memo, "will side-track Pottker for many months to come -- probably a couple of years -- and this will mean she must relegate any possible Ringling book project to a back burner."

Eventually Pottker published two books that Feld had a secret hand in: "Crisis in Candyland," an unauthorized look at the Mars chocolate family, in 1995; and "Celebrity Washington," a small guidebook to the homes of media and political figures, in 1996. A Feld company even paid for the $25,000 advance on "Crisis in Candyland." Both books had small publishers and limited print runs.

Well, that part doesn't sound so bad. I should let Mr. Feld know I'm at this moment researching his father's alleged homosexuality for an article I plan to call You Know What They Say About Guys With Big Floppy Red Feet, but that if he wants to toss some other projects my way, I can put it on the back-burner.

But they also collected all sorts of information on her and wrote it up in little, um, "intelligence memos" I guess:

"Pottker is driving to New York City this weekend with her husband and two daughters," one says. "She has an appointment with a top NYC hairdresser to highlight her hair (she had to book this appointment six weeks in advance -- and she is very excited.)"

Harry Reid just announced in a press conference that they'd "twisted the intelligence" about her hairstyling.

The writer and her husband are seeking $60 million, claiming invasion of privacy, fraud, and infliction of emotional distress.

Long but strange. Great reading if you're a member of the Tinfoil Hat Brigade and need some reassurance that hey, this crap really does happen.

Posted by: Ace at 08:40 PM | Comments (24)
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