Which, in case you're counting, is better than Clinton managed in his last year.

Thanks to Greg.

And thanks to...

Economics is simple, really. Do your checks bounce? Do you get full value for your services?

Well, employers want full value for their money.

Posted by: Ace at 09:40 AM | Comments (2)
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Michele finds an article (ostensibly) from 1961 telling you what life will be like in 2000 AD.

The family car will be soundless, vibrationless and self-propelled thermostatically. The engine will be smaller than a typewriter. Cars will travel overland on an 18 inch air cushion.

[Michele snarks:] See, this is where they always got me. 18 inches, 18 miles, whatever. A flying car is a flying car and these fearless predictions of autos that hovered above the ground have amounted to a thirty year foreplay session with no orgasm in sight.

Yeah, this is what bugs the stuffings out of me, too. I never cared about domed cities, or about lunar colonies, or even about robots so much. Yeah, as a kid, it's always cool to imagine your parents getting you robot who becomes your best friend and beats the shit out of your enemies, but realistically, some of your your enemies are probably richer than you and will have better robots.

So, practically speaking, your best-friend robot would probably be a K-Mart special that the other kids laugh at, with his unfashionably crude bubble-plastic sensor dome and clumsy three-fingered manipulation claws. Meanwhile, Johnny Parkerson has the new state-of-the-art Toshiba Ultrabot which can mix margaritas in his chest-cavity and do all of his history-project diaoramas for him.

I was always about the flyin' cars. Always, always, always.

I think it's time to give up the dream. We will not have flyin' cars in our lifetimes. We'll just have to content ourselves with almost unlimited access to free, dirtier porn.

Now, I don't mind the free, dirtier on-demand porn. But honestly, I would give it all up for a flyin' car.

At least for a month.

Posted by: Ace at 09:35 AM | Comments (15)
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Gob-smackingly vile:

Bordeaux wine exports sink in 2004

BORDEAUX, France, Jan 6 (AFP) - Bordeaux wine producers announced more depressing export figures Thursday, with sales to the United States down by more than a third in a year.

Overall exports from the historic wine region of southwest France were down 10 percent in volume and 24 percent in value for the first three quarters of 2004 compared to the same period in 2003, according to the Interprofessional Council of Bordeaux Wine (CIVB).

Exports to the United States were down by a massive 35 percent in volume and 59 percent in value, and sales to Britain down by 21 percent in volume and 33 percent in value, it reported.

...

French wine-makers are going through their worst crisis in decades thanks to competition from new producer countries and falling domestic consumption.

Ahem.

No mention of a boycott due to the backlash against Gallic anti-Americanism and cynicical corruption, eh?

Just "competition" and "falling domestic consumption."

On the latter point, I think Bluto said it best: "I suggest you start drinking heavily."

And he was pre-med. Or pre-law. Eh, what's the difference.

Thanks to GregS. No link, alas. But it comes from Expedia, and was published by the AFP.

Posted by: Ace at 08:35 AM | Comments (11)
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Wardrobe Door collects up the juiciest quotes from yesterday's election protest.

Michael Moore is cited as an inspiration by many of them -- including the babbling, boo-hooing Barbara Boxer.

Let's give Michael Moore his props-- he has managed to make himself the spiritual leader of one of the two major political parties in America.

He can take some pride in that fact.

The Democratic Party, however, should be utterly embarassed by it.

The Republican Party has its embarassments, too, of course. But our top elected officials don't praise them and don't cite them as inspirations.

Jerry Falwell is a well-meaning guy, and absolute political poison to half the country. Do prominent Republicans praise him as an "inspiration"? Or do they keep a respectable distance?

The latter, of course.

It's sad, but the once-vigorous Democratic Party has now officially been co-opted by the America-hating left. MoveOn.org says they bought the party, and now they own it-- and they're right. They own a big piece of it.

George Soros has a substantial ownership stake, too, and Michael Moore has become a majority shareholder through sweat-equity.

And the man's got a lot of sweat.

Posted by: Ace at 08:25 AM | Comments (10)
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A lot of commenters and emailers object to the use of torture -- or non-torture coercion -- because, they claim, it produces nothing but lies.

I think this is a rather silly statement. It produces nothing but lies? Always? It never is useful in extracting truthful information? How do we know this?

Isn't it the case that our own military expects our soldiers to break eventually under torture, but tries to get them to at least hold off on spilling anything important for 48 hours or so, after which point, hopefully, their information will now be stale and operationally useless (or at least less useful)?

Furthermore, the fact that coercion may produce a lot of lies is hardly a reason to say it's useless. All interrogations, including non-coercive police interrogations of common criminals, produce 90% lies.

Are people saying we should abandon station-house questioning of common criminals just because they lie so much?

Lies are useful. Criminals get caught in lies, and then must change their stories; sometimes they eventually tell the truth. And sometimes detectives can figure out what the truth is, simply by the sorts of lies of they're telling, and the subjects they're trying to avoid.

You can glean the truth from a liar -- but you have to have him actually talking to do so.

And if coercion is sometimes necessary to get important terrorists talking -- just so trained interrogators can attempt to sift the lies from the half-truths from the actual truths -- so be it.

But again, I think that those who are committed to the anti-torture/anti-coercion position are engaging in a rather transparent rhetorical dodge. It makes the question so much easier if you just posit that "torture doesn't work, ever, so why bother with it at all?" I don't think that's the case at all.

It's not the be-all and end-all; it's not a panacea, it's not a silver bullet. But in a situation where you have, say, a known terrorist who of course knows other terrorists in his cell, and you'd like to arrest those other terrorists, and your suspect refuses to talk at all-- well, what harm can there be in some arm-twisting?

Not to be flip, but as the Terminator said in Judgment Day: "They'll live."

The "harm," I suppose, is that we diminish ourselves by sanctioning such brutal methods.

But this is really not a "fact" that can be proven; this is a gut-level judgment call that each of us have to make. I personally don't feel diminished or barbaric for supporting a bit of, let us say, non-permanent inflicting of pain upon known terrorists who know the names and meeting places of other terrorists. If "waterboarding" can save a few lives, then, as a practical matter, it is all for the utilitarian good.

As for absolute morality-- I don't know if I buy that, especially in wartime, and especially against such monstrous animals as we're fighting.

Our soldiers are losing their lives and limbs -- permanently-- trying to put Al Qaeda down. If our soldiers give up so much in this fight, I really can't say I'm bothered that Joe Terrorist had his wrist bent painfully in an effort to loosen his tongue.

I'm sorry if that sounds callous or immoral to some. But that's the way I feel about it.

To employ my own easy rhetorical dodge: I don't support torturing human beings, but I believe that known terrorists have removed themselves from the family of humanity and have, by their own actions, forfeited the consideration we would normally show towards actual human beings. They are monsters by their own choice and of their own creation, and my moral standards for dealing with monsters are a bit... latitudinarian. Vague. Permissive.

Liberal, if you will.

Update: The indispensible Michelle Malkin comments with some good linkage.

The lady gives good link.

Thanks to an unknown commenter.

Update: Rightwing Nuthouse has a good essay on torture, which, unlike mine, includes quotes from people who actually know something about tough interrogation practices.

Posted by: Ace at 07:46 AM | Comments (20)
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LauraW sends this series of before and after satellite shots of the areas hit by the tsunami.

The destruction is unbelievable. Even seen from space.

Posted by: Ace at 07:23 AM | Add Comment
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Fair is fair.

If they can cancel quality shows like Manimal and Airwolf, it's high time they canned dreck like this.

And as for Tucker? Lose the bow-tie, man. It's just not happening.

If you want to try a distinctive look, maybe you can dress up like Ducky/"The Duckman" from Pretty in Pink. I think you can make that work for you.

Posted by: Ace at 06:40 AM | Comments (8)
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It's Official: Bush Creates Positivie Net Jobs in First Term

157,000 new jobs, a bit short of the 178,000 consensus estimate, but enough to reassure Wall Street that the expansion continues without setting off inflationary pressures.

More interesting, at least from a political-brickbat point of view, is the fact that George Bush just created net jobs in his first term. No longer is he the "only president to have lost jobs since Herbert Hoover." This BLS release, sent to me by Secret Super-Source "Deep Stoat," notes that Bush has created a net of 114,000 jobs since January 2001 (when you include the BLS revision to 2003's figures).

I don't think these figures are good enough to warrant cowbell. But they do seem like good political news; at least we can now say, "Awww, stuff it" when the Herbert Hoover quote is tossed out.

So, based on a commenter's suggestion, this gets not a cowbell, but a Vinny Falcone.

George Bush got a conductor like Vinny Falcone to ride this economy's ass.

Do you like your jobs? Do you want to keep your jobs?

Well do you?

Posted by: Ace at 06:23 AM | Comments (7)
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But maybe even that would be forbidden by today's angry liberals, Private Frost.*

Liberals keep deliberately conflating tough, psychologically-oriented methods of breaking terrorists down with actual torture; when they can't call something torture, they say "tantamount to torture," as if we're not supposed to notice that "tantamount to" sort of modifies "torture" there.

Rantwraith is all over Andrew "Gob-Smackingly Vile" Sullivan for his, let us say, delicateness when it comes to interrogating terrorists.

Wrapping a terrorist in the Israeli flag is now "torture," apparently.

Give. Me. An F'n' Break.

Wrapping a terrorist in the Israeli flag is using his own psychosis against him. There's some intended mental pain there, certainly, but this isn't exactly cutting off fingers, now is it?

*More Loose Shit! I'm told Hudson didn't say this, but rather the younger black guy (Private Frost) who gets killed pretty quickly.

Loose shit, I know. But then, it's Anything-Goes Hawaiian Shirt Gonzo Friday.

Posted by: Ace at 06:19 AM | Comments (24)
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Kerry at his vascillating, flip-flopping, have-it-both-ways worst here, as he essentially challenges the results of the election and calls Bush illegitimate, without having the huevos to do so in a forthright manner.

Posted by: Ace at 05:42 AM | Comments (6)
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