...as relayed by a Marine Dad.

Informative and interesting. Read it all.

The M2 .50 cal heavy machine gun: Thumbs way, way up. Ma deuce is still worth her considerable weight in gold. The ultimate fight stopper, puts their dicks in the dirt every time. The most coveted weapon in-theater.

UPDATE: Check out Spade's comments on this thread for a dose of healthy skepticism. Anybody else?

Posted by: LauraW. at 10:52 AM | Comments (47)
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Nothing says "I'm a racially sensitive liberal progressive" more than pinning violence in France on black Americans.

CNN immediately apologized for the gaffe. Henceforth, all rioting Muslim youths will be described by the racially-sensitive term "rambunctious darkies."

Posted by: Ace at 10:48 AM | Comments (18)
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French Intellectuals Break Silence, Revert To Incessant Jackassery

Know why those Youths of Undetermined Ethnic Extraction rioted in France? Not as a sign of a separation from French culture, but as a declaration they had embraced it:

French intellectuals have maintained their silence, despite more than 6,000 burnt-out cars, wrecked schools and vandalized creches and the one death resulting from the riots that have raged since October 27.

Now at last the philosopher Andre Glucksmann has spoken out with a provocative thesis: The disturbances are not the result of alienation but a sign that the young rioters are becoming integrated.

'They are integrating themselves by the very act of setting cars alight, even by the fact that they are setting people alight,' he told the German newspaper, the Franfurter Rundschau.

According to Glucksmann, negation is a typical form of French integration.

'All parties in France, business, the workers and so on, believe that something can be achieved by violence,' he told the leftist daily.

By this view, young people are integrating through their behaviour. Glucksmann believes that a 'nihilistic atmosphere' predominates currently in France and extends well beyond the banlieus.

Ah. I see. Rioting as a love letter.

This just in: Osama bin Ladin confesses he blew up the World Trade Center "just to get Jodie Foster's attention." "I found her so captivating and natural in Nell," the alleged terrorist mastermind explained. "I was just going to send flowers and candy, but she strikes me as the sort of woman who appreciates grand gestures."

Mr. bin Ladin says that his attempts to attract Ms. Foster have thusfar failed, and he's now very keen on Catherine Zeta-Jones. "She strikes me as a very sensual, very strong woman," he explained. "I think I'll saw off the heads of a dozen Christian schoolgirls and send them to her. I imagine she would appreciate the 'classy approach.'"

Saddam Had Enough Enriched Uranium To Produce Enough Weapons-Grade Fuel For One Atomic Bomb

Just one, though. Not like you can do any serious damage with that.

Iran's Former President Lashes Out At "Extremists"

Iran's moderate former president Mohammad Khatami has hit out at Iranian extremists he says give "enemies the best excuse to attack Islam and Iran", the student ISNA news agency reported on Monday.

Khatami, replaced by hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, criticised those who "think that belief in democracy, freedom and progress tarnishes the revolutionary image of our country in the Islamic world and try to compete with the Taliban by advocating violence and committing extremist acts, which are at odds with the religion".

"These groups should not forget they will never be able to replace Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, but will only be at the end of the line," Khatami was quoted as saying.

Chirac, Reeling From Riots, Seeks To Emulate Steady, Confident Approach of Jimmy Carter

President Jacques Chirac said Monday in his first televised address to the nation since rioting erupted more than two weeks ago that the violence reflected a "profound malaise" in France.

He also said he'll implement racial quotas to help reduce racial disparities.

Seriously-- Europe is always pretty much exactly thirty years behind us.

Global Warming Will Also Cause Plagues

Famine, pestillence, death-- pretty soon they're going to link global warming to war (Study Shows War Most Common During "Sticky Heat" Season) and the left will finally have its own safely-secular One Horseman of the Apocalypse.

In related news, Al Gore just had his first orgasm in 27 years. His last was during an episode of Little House On the Prarie in which Mary and Nell got into a hair-pulling fight.

Ecstacy May Cause Brain Damage

The drug ecstasy reduces the brainÂ’s defences, reveals a new study of rats, leaving it vulnerable to invasion by viruses and other pathogens.

The researchers behind the study warn of "clinical considerations which may apply to the treatment of people who abuse MDMA". For example, anaesthetics could find it easier to penetrate the brain, "greatly increasing the risk of unwanted sedation". And they say infections could cause permanent damage to brain cells or alter the ability of the brain to function normally.

The brain is protected by a fence of tightly packed cells, called the blood-brain barrier. This prevents all but the smallest molecules from passing through. But the new experiments show that MDMA – the chemical name for ecstasy, or “e” – somehow forces open that barrier, allowing larger molecules access to the brain.

Andrew Sullivan was unavailable for comment, as he was out in his garden planting murdered hobos. "I'll have a lovely blooming by spring," he said, and then used a hoe to smash in the skull of one hobo clinging to life.

Zarqawi Erred By Killing Muslims Rather Than Americans: Jordanians Take a "Nuanced View" of Mass Murder

Like many ordinary Jordanians, Hassan Eid prays for God's vengeance against his one time hero militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi when he watches television images of bloodied victims from the country's first suicide bombings.

"He is no longer a true warrior against U.S. occupation. Zarqawi has gone too far. This cannot be justified in any way," said Eid at his grocer's shop near downtown Amman, adding only Islam's enemies were benefiting from random killings.

"He is not killing Americans, he is killing Muslims."

Wonderful.

Forget democratizing the Middle East. How about humanizing them first?

Alito Papers Reveal Him To Be... An Actual Conservative

Also breaking: Bears Continue To Prefer Forests For Waste Elimination

Supreme Court nominee Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. is a lifelong Republican committed to federalism and other key conservative ideals, according to documents released yesterday by the White House.

In one memo, Judge Alito urged President Reagan to veto a federal bill to require used-car dealers to keep track of the mileage of cars, saying that such a law would infringe upon states' rights.

...

And, unlike many nominees to the federal courts who have hidden their personal views behind those of their clients, Judge Alito embraced conservatism.

"I believe very strongly in limited government, federalism, free enterprise, the supremacy of the elected branches of government, the need for a strong defense and effective law enforcement, and the legitimacy of a government role in protecting traditional values," he wrote in a 1985 essay accompanying his application to be deputy assistant attorney general.

In that same essay, Judge Alito said the courts have overtaken much of the role reserved for elected officials.

"In the field of law, I disagree strenuously with the usurpation by the judiciary of decision-making authority that should be exercised by the branches of government responsible to the electorate," he wrote.

Once again: you're welcome.

Believe It Or Not, MSM Got Another Katrina Scare-Story Wrong

It may have been the most disturbing story of death that emerged after Hurricane Katrina pummeled New Orleans and its suburbs.
A week after Katrina hit, Knight Ridder and other media outlets reported on Sept. 5 that 22 bodies had been found tied to a single rope near Violet, La., in devastated St. Bernard Parish. The parish, or county, is east of New Orleans.

The story was sent around the world. Knight Ridder moved two stories on Sept. 5 that quoted Sheriff Jack Stephens saying rescuers had found the bodies tied with rope and wrapped around a pole.

The next day, residents of Sydney, Australia, read the newspaper headline, "Ring of 22 bodies found lashed around a pole."

The reports contained no details about how these victims ended up tied to the rope.

Last week, St. Bernard Parish Fire Chief Tom Stone said the reports were not true.

"It's a hurricane urban myth. It's fictitious. It never happened. Thank God," he said.

Mary Mapes immediately lashed out at Chief Stone for "bowing to political pressure from internet partisans" and claimed she had "experts" confirming the death-rope "may have" existed.

Nuke Plant May Have Been Target of "Australian" Terrorists

Relax. It's a fictitious threat:

Police stopped and questioned three recently arrested terror suspects near Australia's only nuclear reactor last December, according to a police document released Monday.

Eighteen terror suspects were arrested in Sydney and Melbourne last week and charged with planning an attack. Police have not identified the likely target.

A police fact sheet, provided during a court hearing last week and released publicly on Monday, alleges that three of the eight Sydney suspects were stopped in their car by New South Wales police near the nuclear facility in southern Sydney in December 2004.

The men also had an off-road bicycle and claimed they were there to ride, the document said, noting that all three gave different versions of the day's events to police.

Police inquiries revealed the lock of a gate to a reservoir of the reactor had recently been cut, the document said.

The three - Mazen Touma, Mohammed Elomar and Abdul Rakib Hasan - along with five other Sydney men, have been charged with conspiring to manufacture explosives in preparation for a terrorist act.

Rabid Dog Bites Man: Iranians Blame Jordan Bombings On... Well, You Know Who

Goddamn, no wonder Jews control the world. Who can keep up with them?

If the Zionist conspiracy to control the destiny of the earth takes this much fuss and bother, I say let the Jews run things. 'Cause, personally?, I needs me my me-time.

Posted by: Ace at 09:27 PM | Comments (39)
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I would have loved to have seen this; where's Political Teen with the video?

Conservatives' favorite trick -- quoting someone saying something about WMD's in Iraq, getting them to slam the statement as a lie, and then revealing it had been made by Bill Clinton or Al Gore -- was played on Ted Kennedy on this Sunday's Russert show.

Russert put up a "statement that was talked about during the war":

[RUSSERT, reading quote:] We know [Iraq is] developing unmanned vehicles, capable of delivering chemical and biological warfare agents ... all U.S. intelligence experts agree that they are seeking nuclear weapons. There is little question that Saddam Hussein wants to develop them. ...In the wake of September 11th, who among us can say with any certainty, to anybody, that those weapons might not be used against our troops or against allies in the region? Who can say that this master of miscalculation will not develop a weapon of mass destruction even greater -- a nuclear weapon. ...

RUSSERT: Are those the statements you're concerned about?

Kennedy: Well, I am concerned about it, and that's why I believe that the actions that were taken by Harry Ried in the Senate last week, when effectively he said that we are going to get to the bottom of this investigation....

We've got to get to the bottom of it. And that is what the Democrats stood for on the floor of the United States Senate last week. That was a bold stroke, one that has the overwhelming support of the American people. It is about time that they got the facts on it, they haven't got them to date, they deserve them and they'll get them.

RUSSERT: But Senator, what the Democrats stood for on the floor of the Senate in 2002, let me show you who said what I just read: John Kerry, your candidate for president. He was talking about a nuclear threat from Saddam Hussein. Hillary Clinton voted for the war. John Edwards, Joe Lieberman, John Kerry. Democrats said the same things about Saddam Hussein. You yourself said quote "Saddam is dangerous, he's got dangerous weapons." It wasn't just the Bush White House.

TigerHawk reported Senator Kennedy had a "stricken look." Yeah, I'll bet.

Let's cut through all this bullshit and talk about the truth.

Democrats didn't really want to go to war with Iraq. We all know that. We knew that then, we know that now. But not because they doubted Saddam had WMD-- because they just don't like war, under almost any circumstances, and were happy enough to follow the Clinton Kick-the-Can-Down-the-Road-Into-Someone-Else's-Presidency policy for a while.

But they were cowards. They didn't have the courage of their lack of convictions, and most voted in favor of authorizing war, despite feeling it would result in doom.

Now, the war has turned out worse than most expected (except, ironically enough, the very same Democrats who didn't want to vote for it but did; they suspected the war would be far bloodier and costly than we conservatives did).

They can't just say, "We were cowards; we knew this was the wrong thing to do, but Bush bullied us, and the American people had war-fever, so we did what we usually do, that is, vote whichever way is most likely to keep us in our present office or elevate us to a higher one."

They need a different explanation. That crafty Bush -- you know, the grinning retarded Chimpresident who's always tripping because he's tied his mismatched sneaker's shoelaces together again -- duped them all.

What they want to actually say is: "We were actually right, though we didn't say so at the time, because we knew it would be politically unpopular. But we were right, in our hearts."

Sorry, lads. "Right in your hearts" only counts in liberal-land. Out here in the real world, we judge by actions and deeds and results, not intentions and withheld reservations.

Let's examine the two sides.

Conservatives actually believed the war, as well as the postwar, would be fairly short and fairly light as regards casualties. I expected 1000 or more casualties myself, but I expected most of them during the actual war. I didn't expect that we'd have 2000+ KIA and counting and that most of those would come during a seemingly endless guerilla war.

That's partly why we supported it. Naive or not (okay-- let's admit: naive), we thought Iraq would be much like the first Gulf War, and much like the War in Afghanistan. Not easy -- no war ever really is -- but certainly not Vietnam on the Euphrates.

Liberals believed the war would be bloody and costly and well-nigh unwinnable. In their hearts, they fully expected it to be another Vietnam.

And yet-- many liberal Democrats voted for it anyway. For pure politics. They expected this amount of carnage (if not more!) and yet they voted for the war anyhow, just because an election was coming and they didn't want to appear "weak."

They voted for war not because they thought it was in America's interests -- but a because they knew that vote was in their own personal interests.

And now these people have the gall to start questioning our motives and our good faith?

Are you kidding me?

Posted by: Ace at 09:19 PM | Comments (36)
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Maybe it's because its being taught to them in school.

And the groups that teach it sure don't like any competition.

In the midst of a national Abstinence Education Evaluation Conference being sponsored by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services this week, abstinence educators are calling for an investigation of the questionable content and ethical concerns with comprehensive sex education programs being supported with government money. Rather than allowing abstinence educators to follow the conference agenda, an organization called Housing Works sabotaged this morning's session with a 10-minute demonstration attacking abstinence education and Claude Allen, the deputy secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, to the point that security needed to be called to restore order.

OK, they're anti-abstinence education for some reason. But how bad could their agenda be if they're just about educating kids about sex?

SIECUS and the CDC have a record of recommending curricula with extremely graphic content such as the use of grocery items like grape jelly being used as lubricants (Becoming a Responsible Teen), condom relay races, condom practice and fantasizing during classroom time, a homework assignment to go shopping for condoms, and how-to instructions for oral sex (Becoming a Responsible Teen, Be Proud! Be Responsible!, Get Real About AIDS). Focus on Kids, a curriculum for 9-15-year-olds, assigns teens to create a list of ways to be close to a person without having intercourse, including, "body massage, bathing together, masturbation, sensuous feeding, fantasizing, watching erotic movies, reading erotic books and magazines."

"The content of these programs and exposing children as young as age nine to studies on sexual practices calls into question who authorized and recommended these programs in the first place," stated Libby Gray Macke, director of Project Reality.

Why on Earth would anybody think that teaching kids as young as nine years old about lubricants, body massage, and sources of erotica is a good thing?
Can't we let them have a childhood first?

Posted by: LauraW. at 06:43 PM | Comments (25)
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From Iran, of all places.

They are figuring out how to save Beluga Sturgeon from a non-native threat.

(Belugas of course are the source of the caviar that I eat every day. Some people have a smear of them on toast points, but like a good Republican, I pile up a big 'ol caviar Sloppy Joe on a kaiser roll. But why am I telling you? You know. We all get the newsletter.)

The threat is the mnemiopsis jellyfish, which depletes the plankton that the sturgeon feed upon:

A recent study found an average of 37 mnemiopses in every square metre of water in the southern Caspian, he said. The plague has affected millions of people in fishing communities in the five countries that surround the sea -- Azerbaijan, Iran, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and Russia.

But now Iran has come up with a secret weapon to wage biological war on the invader. Iranian scientists have proposed introducing another kind of American jellyfish, Beroe ovata, which feeds on only one thing -- the mnemiopsis. They have been breeding the gelatinous assassins in special tanks to adapt it to Caspian waters, which are less salty than its normal habitat. Since the beroe feeds only on the mnemiopsis, they say, it will simply die out once it has consumed them.

Thank God. Thank God.

Posted by: LauraW. at 05:56 PM | Comments (20)
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...to live the Ace Of Spades Lifestyle.

Somebody should tell those zookeepers about Valu-Rite Vodka and Klonopin jello-shots.
But hold the Gila Monster venom. I don't think it has the same effect on giraffes.

Posted by: LauraW. at 02:39 PM | Comments (35)
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For a geek asshole, he's a pretty decent questioner.

Posted by: Ace at 02:35 PM | Comments (4)
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Peter Schweizer, author of Do As I Say, Not As I Do: Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy.

I've read half the book and it's pretty fun. Little example: after detailing Noam Chomsky's innumberable attacks on US captialism and trust funds in particular, he notes that Chomsky himself has... a trust fund.

"No reason being a radical socialist should interfere with sound estate planning," Schweizer deadpans.

Lots of stuff like that. Including the fact that the Pentagon-bashing Chomsky, who's previously criticized academics for working for the military on various research projects, draws his check, more or less, straight from the Pentagon.

Should be fun.

Posted by: Ace at 02:04 PM | Comments (7)
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Episode buy cut back to 13 episodes, half of which have already aired.

I can't say I'm surprised -- or saddened. Yes, I pimped this show, but it jumped the shark badly this season. (Actually, it began approaching the ramp last season.)

I called it a conservative show before, based on an episode about a liberal schoolteacher who actually loved Saddam Hussein.

But the producers of the show, seeing the end near, have decided to unload politically against the Iraq War, President Bush, and Donald Rumsfeld. They're going out, but they'll get their "message" out there first. Too bad no one's watching.

And the politics of it aren't the reason it jumped the shark. I could excuse the occasional liberal propaganda if it continued delivering the funny. But it didn't. The show's format allows only quick one-liners and very one-dimensional characterizations-- which works for a while, but eventually the one-liners seem similar to previous one-liners, and the one-dimensional characters, although funny at first, seem to have showed us all of the tricks they're capable of. Pretty much the characters are now simply Drunk Older Woman, Distant and Cruel Philandering Father, Dude Who Is Probably Gay, Sleazy Guy Who Wants Dad's Approval, Chick Who's Horny, and Basically Nice Guy Who Is Nevertheless Arrogant and Manipulative.

Season one: multiple good chuckles per episode. Season two: hit and miss, but still with the occasional genuinely funny line. Season three: barely any laughs, overly convoluted and ridiculous storylines which simply do not pay off into laughs, and a bitter liberal political agenda.

Posted by: Ace at 01:20 PM | Comments (42)
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