With video.

Please, don't post something like "It's about time." I don't need to see that on my site, thank you very much.

"Root Causes" of Violence Update: Village Idiot notes--

A YOUNG woman this week told a TV camera crew of the intimidation she has experienced on Cronulla beach.

"They'll stand over you while you're sunbaking, block your sun so they get your attention, then say, 'She's not worth doing 55 years for'," she told them.

(By the way 55 year is a reference to the sentence given for gang rape)

In other news this same mulim gang stabbed a man in the back outside a golf club:

The police spokesman said: “The 23-year-old man was with friends outside a golf club when a group of males of Mediterranean or Middle Eastern appearance approached him.

“Following a short conversation the 23-year-old sustained stab wounds. Police are appealing for help from anyone who witnessed the incident."

I had little doubt that the gang-rapes and generally savage behavior of some anarcho-jihadist Islamists sparked the violence. Still, the race-rioters were going after anyone who looked Muslim or Middle-Eastern.

I wouldn't be terribly upset about vigilantism against actual gang-rapists, but here they're just descending to the level of the savages, and they're hurting the perfectly innocent along with the guilty. At about a 1000 innocents to 1 guilty party ratio, I'm guessing.

Inevitability Update: Law enforcement and criminal justice exist to satisfy society's thirst for retribution against the criminal and the murderous. But in a rational, fair manner.

But when those systems break down so that society cannot trust officialdom to provide for their safety, people rever to their pre-law, pre-civilization instincts. Which are often bloodthirsty and indiscriminate. As well as being tribal/racial in nature.

I don't think this relieves a violent mob of culpability -- if I don't credit black rioters for expressing their own frustrations through random violence, I can't give white Aussie rioters a pass either -- but it does serve a rebuke to criminal justice in Australia.

People usually don't want to "take the law into their own hands." They're generally passive as far as that goes, and even in the soaring-crime pit that NYC became in the 70's, acts of vigilantism and rioting against groups suspected of harboring criminals were rare.

Arrest the rioters and prosecute them, protect the Muslims who are, after all, overwhelmingly innocent of any crimes, but do, for God's sakes, get more aggressive about arresting or even just plain harassing anarcho-jihadists who feel they have a right to rape and stab the "unclean."

Before this happens again.

More Links About "Root Causes" Sparking the "Cycle of Violence:" Mike offers:

An article about beating of two lifeguards which caused general outrage.

Female beach-goers complaining about threats of Muslim gang-rape.

Muslim gangs stabbing a man in the back, and vandalizing hundreds
of cars. Although this took place after the beating of gang members on beach.

And of course there's the vile backdrop of Pakistani men believing they had a "right to rape" children who engaged in "promiscuous" behavior, like not wearing a head-scarf or daring to walk the streets without a male escort.

Still: indiscriminate racially-based mob violence is always a bad thing. All good conservatives know that, as regards crime, an explanation is not the same thing as a justification.

Posted by: Ace at 11:56 AM | Comments (50)
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BlogAds warned me in advance that the ad would be changing, and gave me a similar ad to let me know that MSNBC was planning some blatantly-sexual advertising.

I wasn't really thrilled with the come-on nature of the ads, and the screaming slammer "PORN," but I figured it wasn't something likely to offend most readers here. In case you didn't click on the ad or read it closely, it's just an ad for an MSNBC report on online porn. (As if, you know, frequent internet users have something to learn on this score.)

I'm not sure why MSNBC did this, though. You don't really need to go too over-the-top to interest people in tittilating material... and it sort of reduces, I think, MSNBC's credibility. This is the biggest ad-buy in BlogAds history, and they've kind of sold their network with one of the more aggressively-prurient ads to run on political sites.

It's also odd that they didn't offer two alternate ad schemes -- one more restrained than the actual ad -- because I have to figure a lot of more socially-conservative sites rejected this add.

It's edgy, of course... Buzz Bunny edgy.

Posted by: Ace at 11:26 AM | Comments (16)
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Who knew?

That's why you should never discuss religion with your friends. Unless, of course, they're your on-line pretend internet fake friends. Then have a party.

Thanks to The Corner.

Posted by: Ace at 11:15 AM | Comments (9)
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Buzz Machien seems happy that they "get it."

I'm not so sanguine. If they "get it," that means the amazing variety of completely free media we now enjoy goes away.

It never bothered me that the New York Times was charging to read Paul Krugman. Who cares about Paul Krugman? It's the actual reportage I'm mostly interested in. If they deny me my Krugman-fix, but keep the actual news free, seems like a fair deal to me.

I suppose it could be a boon to bloggers, as we would pay the subscription rates for ten or twenty news syndicates and then present (fair-use) excerpts to a public who largely hasn't subscribed. But I also think their lawyers will become more aggressive about the fair use safe haven once they change their business model to getting the lion's share of revenue from online subscriptions.

Posted by: Ace at 10:58 AM | Comments (9)
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Instapundit secretly plots the destruction of the entire human race:

Those stain-resistant khakis you just picked up at the mall, the tennis ball that holds its bounce longer and sunscreen that's clear instead of white have something in common — nanotechnology.

Scientists manipulating matter at the molecular level have improved on hundreds of everyday products in recent years and are promising dramatic breakthroughs in medicine and other industries as billions of dollars a year are pumped into the nascent sector.

But relatively little is known about the potential health and environmental effects of the tiny particles — just atoms wide and small enough to easily penetrate cells in lungs, brains and other organs.

While governments and businesses have begun pumping millions of dollars into researching such effects, scientists and others say nowhere near enough is being spent to determine whether nanomaterials pose a danger to human health.

Michael Crichton's bestselling book "Prey" paints a doomsday scenario in which a swarm of tiny nanomachines escapes the lab and threatens to overwhelm humanity. Scientists believe the potential threat from nanomaterials is more everyday than a sci-fi thriller, but no less serious.

Studies have shown that some of the most promising carbon nanoparticles — including long, hollow nanotubes and sphere-shaped buckyballs — can be toxic to animal cells. There are fears that exposure can cause breathing problems, as occurs with some other ultrafine particles, that nanoparticles could be inhaled through the nose, wreaking unknown havoc on brain cells, or that nanotubes placed on the skin could damage DNA.

This is one of those few bits of fear-the-future alarmism I'm actually worried about. Self-replicating molecular machines could reduce the entire world to grey goo one day, of course, and these feisty, industrious little cyborgs could interact in all sorts of bad ways with cells.

Thanks to Jake.

If I could do it all over again, I'd like to be named "Jake." More specifically, Jake "The Snake" Drake. That would be a really cool name. No one effs with someone named Jake "The Snake" Drake.

Posted by: Ace at 10:49 AM | Comments (16)
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The Simpsons brilliantly pre-parodized this when they introduced that stupid "extreme" dog character to Itchy and Scratchy.

But kneejerk corporate marketing hacks imitate art, I guess.

The Looney Tunes characters will now all be "extreme" to really connect with today's youth.

Bugs Bunny and his pals are being updated for the future — way in the future.

The WB network will take the famed Looney Tunes characters as models for a new children’s series, “Loonatics,” that will air on Saturday mornings starting this fall. The characters’ descendants — Buzz Bunny and the like — will be superhero action figures for the cartoon set in the year 2772.

The networkÂ’s animators have re-imagined Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Wile E. Coyote as sleek new figures for a modern age.

Oh yeah! Extreme, baby!

A floridly-profane parody imagines the new "extreme" Bugs descendant, "Buzz Bunny," meeting some baffled middle-schoolers.

Cleanish version (cusses bleeped out, though you can still tell what "Buzz" is saying.

Uncensored version.

A sequel. This one featuring "Aced Bunny," who seems to be a pedophile.

Great.

Thanks to John.

Correction: I wrote originally that an "extreme" dog character had been added to "Ren & Stimpy." Duh. Of course I meant Itchy & Scratchy. Thanks to Jack for correcting my loose shit.

Now Steven den Beste Says "It's Old:" The MSNBC article (which I just googled for background) is from last year; the new "extreme" cartoon began running this past Semptember.

I'm not sure how old the actual parody is though. I just heard about a few days ago.

Posted by: Ace at 10:32 AM | Comments (13)
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AllahPundit did, and now someone took over his address and turned it into a porn/mail-order bride site.

Boston Irish did too, and they did the same. An porn link is stuck inside an old story about Christopher Hitchens, without warning that it's porn (except if you know that "Rita Faltoyano" is a porn actress), and the links in the sidebar just lead to porn, too.

Hey, if you've built up some amount of web-presence, there's no real reason to delete your blog or give up your address. If there's stuff on your blog you've decided you no longer want public, just go through the thing and put all those posts into draft so they're not part of the blog anymore. (They'll still be somewhere out there in cached form, of course, but deleting your blog won't get rid of cached pages, either).

Even if you've decided your blog might hurt you professionally or personally... well, your old blog now being a mail-order bride site isn't going to help you at your Judiciary Committee hearings, either. Sure, Ted Kennedy will vote for you, but others might not be so understanding.

Just saying. Who knows, in two years you might want to start blogging again. Or maybe you could just actually sell your domain to a porn site-- maybe that's the only real way to get crazy blog-money.

Boston Irish is now at finally posting at a "Like a viking" address, by the way. And he's still not a fan of John Kerry's.

PS, don't click on any of the links on the porn version of Boston Irish, unless you want your computer hijacked for twenty minutes by never ending porn pop-ups that are somehow invulnerable to pop-up blockers. They just seem to take over open windows on your computer.

Posted by: Ace at 09:53 AM | Comments (17)
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Mike sends this under the heading "Astounding news from Iraq." It does seem pretty big:

Saddam Hussein loyalists who violently opposed January elections have made an about-face as Thursday's polls near, urging fellow Sunni Arabs to vote and warning al Qaeda militants not to attack.

In a move unthinkable in the bloody run-up to the last election, guerrillas in the western insurgent heartland of Anbar province say they are even prepared to protect voting stations from fighters loyal to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of al Qaeda in Iraq.

Graffiti calling for holy war is now hard to find.

Instead, election campaign posters dominate buildings in the rebel strongholds of Ramadi and nearby Falluja, where Sunnis staged a boycott or were too scared to vote last time around.

"We want to see a nationalist government that will have a balance of interests. So our Sunni brothers will be safe when they vote," said Falluja resident Ali Mahmoud, a former army officer and rocket specialist under Saddam's Baath party.

"Sunnis should vote to make political gains. We have sent leaflets telling al Qaeda that they will face us if they attack voters."

Sometimes Arab Conspiracy Theories Go Our Way Update: Village Idiot notes this cool bit from the second page:

But Saddam loyalists have turned against Zarqawi, a Jordanian militant whose fighters travel to Iraq from across the Arab world to blow themselves up in a bid to spark sectarian civil war.

"Zarqawi is an American, Israeli and Iranian agent who is trying to keep our country unstable so that the Sunnis will keep facing occupation," said a Baathist insurgent leader who would give his name only as Abu Abdullah.

You got us! Indeed, he is a Mossad/CIA agent!

The funny thing is, though, is that they're quite right about the net effect of Zarqawi's continuing butchery. It's only the terrorism that's keeping us there at all. Were there no (or low levels) of terrorism, we'd be out in a month.

This has always been the bizarre thing about the "insurgency."

Well, one of the two bizarre things about the insurgency. The other is that, oddly enough, we're protecting the Sunni population by being there. Because if this terrorism kept up with us not playing Daddy With The Big Pants in the country, the Kurds and Shi'as would just massacre and ethnically cleanse the Sunnis.

Posted by: Ace at 09:42 AM | Comments (10)
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I wish I could close these bold tags I keep hearing about. But I don't see them. The site looks fine in my browser.

Are they appearing from the very top the site, or after a certain post?

Nevermind, I Got It: I added Boston Irish's new address into the links last night. Instead of starting his entry with a "br" for a line-break, I started it with a "b," bolding the sidebar and everything that followed it.

Should be fixed now, or at least it will be after the site rebuilds.

Posted by: Ace at 09:31 AM | Comments (3)
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In case you want to discuss it.

Maybe Proud Liberal Vet can regale us about his days working with Pryor at strip clubs.

In Antarctica.

Posted by: Ace at 09:25 AM | Comments (7)
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