How is this jackass still on the air?

Oh right, he's on MSNBC.

(beat; looks to sidebar)

MSNBC, The Greatest Newschannel in the World!!!

xoxoxo

Posted by: Ace at 06:13 PM | Comments (17)
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More of this, and we can begin taking off the quotes from "Religion of Peace:"

Volunteers from Indonesia's largest Islamic organisation will guard churches across the world's most populous Muslim nation on Christmas amid fears of terrorist attacks on those places, the group said on Friday.

Jakarta police have said they would boost security in the capital ahead of Christmas to avoid a repeat of 2000 Christmas Eve bombings on churches in several Indonesian cities, including in the country's capital.

A youth wing affiliated with Indonesia's largest Muslim group Nahdlatul Ulama, some 40 million strong, said that members would guard churches for the coming Christmas festivities and it had persuaded youths from other religions to join the project.

Posted by: Ace at 05:43 PM | Comments (31)
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With all due apologies to Al Jolson,

Republican,

The most popular entertainer in American, Al Jolson, stumped the nation for Harding, singing songs that compared the candidate to popular Republican President Abraham Lincoln.

and USO Entertainer.

During World War II, Jolson performed at the USOs at home and abroad. During the Korean War, he gave 42 shows in 16 days. Proud of the soldiers, he said, after returning home, "I am going to look over my income tax return to make sure that I paid enough. These guys are wonderful."

Yesterday I heard a lover sigh,
Good-bye, oh me oh my.
Seven times he got aboard his train
And seven times he hurried back
To kiss his love again and tell her
Took-took Tookie, goodbye.
Oh no, Tookie, don't cry.
That choo-choo train that takes me
Away from you, no words can
Tell how sad it makes me.
Kiss me tookie and then
Do it over again.
Watch for the mail
I'll never fail.
If you don't get a letter
Then you'll know I'm in jail.
Took-took Tookie, good-bye.
Took-took Tookie, good-bye!

Please feel free to submit your own lyrics in the comments section!

Posted by: Tanker at 03:51 PM | Comments (31)
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And you von't be back.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger refused to spare the life of Stanley Tookie Williams, the founder of the murderous Crips gang who awaited execution early Tuesday.... Williams, 51, is set to die by injection at San Quentin State Prison after midnight for murdering four people in two 1979 holdups.

...

Prosecutors and victims' advocates contended Williams was undeserving of clemency from the governor because he did not own up to his crimes and refused to inform on fellow gang members. They also argued that the Crips gang that Williams co-founded in Los Angeles in 1971 is responsible for hundreds of deaths, many of them in battles with the rival Bloods for turf and control of the drug trade.

But, but, but, but... He wrote a children's book!

We don't punish famous, charismatic people in this country according to their crimes! What, did I wake up this morning in Nazi Germany!

The next thing you know, they'll be saying Robert Downey Jr. has to give up smack.

I don't know what's happened to my country.

Celebrities don't get punished. They're better than us. That's why they're celebrities.

Posted by: Ace at 01:06 PM | Comments (47)
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We are, it seems, supposed to forgive Tookie Williams of vicious murders -- in case anyone forgets what that word means, it means killing another human being without cause or justification -- because he supposedly wrote a children's book. And a book renouncing gangs.

Not even because he's expressed remorse about the four murders he was charged with. He maintains he was innocent of those.

It's a strange compulsion of the radical left to excuse the worst of all crimes -- murder -- simply because someone may have a bit of creative talent or literary potential. Murder is not some penny-ante offense that is outlawed only due to blue laws forced on the country by religious freaks. It is the ultimate crime, the alpha and omega of violations.

Tookie Williams murdered at least four people.

But he wrote a children's book.

This absolves his sins?

None of this is of course new. Norman Mailer championed the cause of convicted murder Jack Henry Abbott, based on the alleged literary power of the letters (probably largely ass-kissing, ego-stroking fan-mail) Abbott wrote to him. more...

Posted by: Ace at 12:07 PM | Comments (55)
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Thanks to Ilbis for the tip:

Now there are reports that the attackers are from the largely Muslim suburb of Lakemba. Unconfirmed reports say the 'youths' are attacking cars and individuals at random. More unconfirmed reports that a mosque has been attacked.

And from Tim Blair. Although many Muslims gathered to protect a mosque upon the rumor that it might be attacked, their organizing was not purely defensive in nature:

Twenty carloads of men arrived at Cronulla by about 10.30pm, smashing shops, and cars in Elouera Road, and threatening people who got in their way. They reportedly stabbed a woman at Carringbah, but her condition was unknown.

Gunshots were heard near Northies Hotel at Cronulla and there was an unconfirmed report of a man being shot.

About 11.30pm a group of about 100 Cronulla locals surrounded a car carrying men of Middle Eastern appearance, but police cleared the crowd and let the car escape.

Hours earlier, about 200 men had assembled outside Lakemba Mosque - some armed with Glock pistols - and dozens more gathered at Campsie. They were preparing to travel to Maroubra Beach, where up to 300 locals, many armed with crowbars, waited for an arranged fight, according to “Bra Boys” at the beach.

Posted by: Ace at 10:43 AM | Comments (8)
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Via Traffic Non-Santa, some dopey revolutionary sabre-rattling from Salon's Cary Tennis:

At a certain point in the near future, if the current oligarchy cannot be removed via the ballot, direct political action may become an urgent and compelling mission. It may then be necessary for many people in many walks of life to put their bodies on the line. For the moment, however, although pressing and profound questions have arisen about whether the current government is even legitimate, i.e., properly elected, there still remains a chance to remove this government peacefully in the 2008 election. (Or am I living in a dream world?)

I do think this regime's removal is the most urgent matter before the country today. . . . This is all terrible and rather fantastic to contemplate. But what assurances have we that it is not all quite plausible? Having discarded the principles that Jefferson & Co. espoused, the current regime seems capable of anything. I know that my imagination is a feverish instrument. But are we not living in feverish times, in times of the unthinkable?

Let me underscore Instapundit's jab: when disaffected, no-account fantasy-race-warriors joined militia movements in the nineties, the media was all a-twitter at this dangerous threat to our nation's stability. Nevermind that the movement was decidedly fringe and small, and that a lot of the people involved weren't particularly hard-core politically. They just liked running around the woods with guns (which, I have to admit, sounds kind of fun).

But when mainstream left-liberals write of violent revolution in not-at-all-fringe left-liberal magazines, no one in the media seems particularly bothered.

Suggesting they're not bothered by the idea of violent revolution, so long as the right people wind up with their backs up against the wall.

The "extremists" of the 90's were a constant source of fretting and column-inches for our nation's media during the Clinton Administration. Just as the media decided that homelessness wasn't such a big deal when Clinton came into office, they seem to have taken a blase attitude towards fantasies of violent revolution now that Bush is in office.

Posted by: Ace at 09:32 AM | Comments (57)
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No, I'm not a McCain fan, but I would support him were he to become (against my preference) the Republican nominee in 2008. Apparently a lot of Republicans are beginning to feel likewise:

“The national environment has gone to s—t and Republicans are going to take a beating in 2006,” one prominent Republican consultant – who is a movement conservative -- told me recently. “McCain is the only guy out there with the credibility to maintain Republican control in Washington.”

“He’s not as liberal as some make him out to be,” one leader of a major conservative activist group told me. “On the three issues most conservatives are energized about right now, the war, spending and the court, McCain is hardcore.”

Someone had an interesting take: McCain is actually more conservative than Guiliani on several key issues, but McCain's style and persona is that of a liberal. Whereas Guiliani is more liberal on a few issues, but his style and persona is that of a conservative.

And it's not just a style versus substance thing. One's political sympathies and positions can change, but one's fundamental style and character are less mutable. Furthermore, someone comfortable with the conservative base, as Guiliani is, will rely on that base and therefore try to keep them satisfied, whereas someone who is borderline hostile to the base will seek to form a coaltion with moderates and liberals.

Guiliani is the man. Whatever strengths McCain has, Guiliani has as well. And Guiliani brings something to the table that endears him to all Republicans -- he's fought the establishment media, and frequently dismissed or ignored their airheaded chatter and constant criticism, whereas McCain remains in a torrid love affair with the liberal media.

But again-- on the most of the most important issues, McCain has been stalwart, particularly on the war. That makes him at least acceptable (though with strong reservations).

Posted by: Ace at 09:07 AM | Comments (113)
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Instapundit, I think, has a book or law review article about how often-nonsenical rules forbidding an appearance of improriety frequently (perhaps deliberately) permit or mask actual impropriety. By creating a set of clear-but-jackass rules about the former, true impropriety is permitted, by someone who just jumps through the right ethical-cannon hoops. Common sense is removed from the equation in favor of clarity, but a clarity largely divorced from reality.

Senate rules permit folks like Barbara Boxer to write (or should I say "write," as in "based on a dopey idea by Barbara Boxer, actually written by a romance-novel hack") and be paid by large media corporations -- players who obviously have a legislative interest in currying favor with Senators.

And yet only 51 Senators were willing to vote in favor of a sense-of-the-Senate resolution which stated that Tom Coburn's one-day-a-week obstetrician practice would not warrant an Ethics Committee investigation.

Several Republicans voted against this, claiming that if you're in the Senate, this is your job. Your only job. Citizen-legislators are, I guess, passe.

John Fund wants to know if it's more likely that Barbara Boxer will be influenced by a megamedia corporation publishing her daffy little political potboiler (a book, I feel confindent in saying, would not be published were she not a Senator) or if Tom Coburn will be corrupted by the relationship he has with a family whose child he's just delivered.

What favors, precisely, would they ask of him? Government subsidies on pacifiers and diapers? A Senate resolution declaring their kid "#1 Superbaby" or "World's Greatest Infant"?

And furthermore-- where is the risk of corruption in providing a service at proveable market rates?

There aren't any royalty payments for baby-deliveries, nor big marketing budgets to promote them. The very fact that a bad book, which would otherwise not be published, is published at all means that someone out there is getting payments they wouldn't otherwise have. And, while a big advance is often suspect, there are other, more subltle ways to corrupt a Senator/thriller-writer -- a big part of any publishing deal is the marketing budget. The more money in that budget, the more copies you'll sell, the more money you'll get.

It's a hidden form of payment to the "writer." It's not a direct payment, but it indirectly increases profits to the "writer."

If Barbara Boxer's marketing budget was anything north of two-buck fitty cent, they threw more money at her than her, ahem, literary talents would warrant. And that is a form of genuine corruption.

And yet the Senate frets that somehow Tom Coburn is going to be improperly influenced by delivering a baby. Despite the fact that the amount of money he makes for this endeavor only just covers his malpractice insurance.

Thanks to Deep Stoat, my super-secret government source, who sends me all sorts of obscure information that you can read yourself in the Wall Street Journal.

Update: Bad Sex From Barbara Boxer: Fund can't help but quote her hhhhhot sex scene:

"Greg's naked body was long and elegant, his embrace enveloped her utterly, and they meshed with ease and grace. He smelled good too, faintly and astringently of aftershave. He was clinging to her as if he'd never let her go, it was all so easy and right."

"He was clinging to her as if he'd never let her go, it was all so easy and right." Very original. I think this line has only been used in like seven hundred thousand boy-band love ballads.

Bonus sexiful points for using the turn-on word "astringently." Everyone gets a little charged up by erotic allusions to Blackbeard's Delight or Sex Panther.

Posted by: Ace at 08:44 AM | Comments (18)
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Not just better than how Americans view Iraq, but how Americans view America:

Surprising levels of optimism prevail in Iraq with living conditions improved, security more a national worry than a local one, and expectations for the future high....

Despite the daily violence there, most living conditions are rated positively, seven in 10 Iraqis say their own lives are going well, and nearly two-thirds expect things to improve in the year ahead.
Surprisingly, given the insurgents' attacks on Iraqi civilians, more than six in 10 Iraqis feel very safe in their own neighborhoods, up sharply from just 40 percent in a poll in June 2004. And 61 percent say local security is good — up from 49 percent in the first ABC News poll in Iraq in February 2004.

Nonetheless, nationally, security is seen as the most pressing problem by far; 57 percent identify it as the country's top priority. Economic improvements are helping the public mood.

Average household incomes have soared by 60 percent in the last 20 months (to $263 a month), 70 percent of Iraqis rate their own economic situation positively....

Posted by: Ace at 08:27 AM | Comments (4)
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