Unbelievable, even in Honduras.

Posted by: Ace at 01:57 PM | Comments (1)
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Still one of my favorites, and apparently one of the favorites of a lot of readers, too. You just can't go wrong writing downright filthy sex-fantasias about Wonkette, Washingtonienne, and Joshua Micha Marshall.

Carin asked if this would be the Number One Best-Of. I said I was hoping to keep the suspense up, like when a classic rock radio station does a "Top One Hundred Rock Records of All Time" and they try to create some kind of doubt as to whether Stairway to Heaven will be, for the billionth time, chosen as Number One.

Well, since this post is Number Two, not too much doubt about Number One anymore.

As the accoustic guitar jingles softly...

There's a lady who's sure
All that glitters is gold.
And she's climbing the
Stairway to Heaven...

There's a man named Falcone
and he will ride your ass hard
All of your fuckers have three days
to straighten out this loose shit...

Related And Also Dirty! Someone wants this on the list. Seems Andrew Sullivan began pimping ludicrous charges about some dirty stinking terrorist being forcibly raped by women, and he, apparently having no idea how male-female sex works, saw nothing at all incredible in the charges. He really was appalled, once again, by this gob-smackingly vile outrage.

As was I, of course. I, too, had been the victim of such a sickening assault:

While I was away at the beatuiful Mount Airy Lodge, was abducted and chain-raped by a gang of buxom Catholic high-school cheerleaders.

And yes, I know I will be harrangued for continuing to write about my violation.

But I won't let that stop me. I will soldier on bravely, and see if I can't interest Cinemax in filming my sordid story, which I've tentatively titled Man-Handled: The Greatest Fucking Thing That Ever Fucking Happened to Me In My Entire Fucking Life.

Posted by: Ace at 12:01 PM | Comments (12)
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Kind of a cheat here, but there were a couple of fun Kerry posts which, in aggregate, should be in the top ten.

A Vile Attack on John Kerry's Character Which I Cannot Abide, in which I express my Andrew-Sullivan-level outrage at the suggestion that Kerry was drunk giving his post-RNC midnight rally, even though, hey, look at the tape, he clearly was.

The suggestion was gob-smackingly vile. As was my constant re-referencing of that suggestion. As well as my own suggestion that maybe John Kerry was, in fact, a shaved-down mutant bear.

I still feel "sickened" and filled with "heart-ache" over this loathesome post.

Equally appalling and disgusting was my suggestion that John Kerry might just be some sort of Bigfoot. There's a top-ten documenting the Michael-Moore-level evidence and everything.

When John Kerry announced he was "fascinated" by rap and hip-hop, it inspired one of my all-time favorite top tens, the Top Ten Influences Hip Hop Has Had on Senator John F. Kerry of Beacon Hill.

And when John Kerry told his delightful little fabrication about "VC," supposedly a beloved dog on his swiftboat -- whose acrobatic/watersports skills quickly earned him the nickname "VC, the Flyin' Wonderdog" -- I did a little research and discovered John Kerry's Top Ten Other Vietnam Super-Pets.

If You're Really Dying for More Anti-Kerry Material Update: Some nitwit in the MSM essentially fellated John Kerry in writing his bio, and I offer a fisking to this very long article here.

I gotta warn you-- the article is long. Maybe too dated to read at this point. It's a real hum-dinger of a print hummer, and funny in and of itself; but I do add some good sarcasm here and there.

Probably worth skipping at this point, though.

Posted by: Ace at 11:53 AM | Comments (2)
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My own contribution to Rathergate was pretty much limited to linking other people's scoops, apart from the occasional bit of snark or analysis piece. I just didn't really know much about fonts and old typewriters. (Turns out I knew more than Dan Rather, of course, as was true for 90% of America.)

But when Newsweek ran an article naming Bill Burkett as a "principle source" for the Rathergate story -- although it would not or could not name him as the source for the actual forgeries -- I saw an opening to contribute something original, or at least "original" as far as old wine in a new bottle. The name Bill Burkett raised all sorts of red flags and alarms; I recalled him making very similar allegations -- sans documents -- for the past several years.

Compiling quotes gathered by the blogger Fried Man and lengthy interviews by CalPundit, as well as some minor additional me-myself research, I put together a bio on Bill Burkett, and the increasingly-incredible charges he'd been making about Bush for the past five or six years.

It was a big piece, and it even got linked by Laura Ingraham's web-site, among many others. Other bloggers were a bit squirrelly about the piece-- Instapundit, maybe fearing a libel action (for which I can't blame him, I guess), didn't link my piece, but rather linked Just One Minute linking and quoting from the piece-- maybe a bit of link-laundering due to legal worries.

Not funny at all, except perhaps in that rueful, embarassed fashion. But I'm proud of it, as I was, I think, one of the first bloggers to be so forward-leaning on Burkett as a primary suspect, and the first to really attack the story from this angle-- from the angle of exposing Rather's "unimpeachable source," rather than the obviously-sham documents themselves.

Dan Rather of course failed to mention that his "unimpeachable source" was fond of comparing Bush to Napoleon... and, of course, Adolf Hitler:

We must now revert to the history of Europe to discern what to do. We must study the nemesis of France and how Napoleon was felled before understanding the damage a tyrant does to a nation and society. We must examine the ruthless and dictatorial rise of yet another of the three small men - one whose name is not spoken out of fear of reprisal, but his name was Adolf. We must examine history, in order to not repeat it, and to understand the mesmerism of a public to a murderous scheme. Three small men who wanted to conquer . . . and vanquish. Each created a need for a balancing throng; history then recorded the damage from a far better perspective.

If an amatuer pajama-wearing blogger can find this out about Burkett, why couldn't CBSNews' vaunted "multiple layers of fact-checking"? Most likely, they did find out, but chose to omit these clearly-relevant details from their report.

It's hard to maintain a source is "unimpeachable" when he's calling Bush Adolf Hitler. Sort of undermines that unimpeachability.

Just a tad, you understand.

Let's be honest: there are only two possibilities here. Either they were so incompetent and negligent as to have missed this unhinged crankery altogether -- in which case they simply cannot be trusted as a news organization -- or else they discovered it but deliberately and dishonestly chose to withhold crucial contextual information from their audience in the interests of juicing their story.

In which case, again, they simply cannot be trusted as a news organization. Or, frankly, even as moderately-honest human beings.

Posted by: Ace at 10:46 AM | Comments (2)
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Winds of Change on the "Toyota Taliban:"

In a letter from Kabul, British satirical biweekly Private Eye reported on the private life of international community members in the Afghan capital. It claims that only 16% of the $4.5 billion pledged at the Tokyo conference goes to the government; the rest in the hands of NGO; a term used to refer to "the well heeled" international staff of the U.N. and aid organizations who reportedly spend time shopping for wide screen tvs and laptops at a new Sony Centre. "Most other shopkeepers only ever glimpse them as they are driven past in one of the $75,000 Toyota Landcruisers most of them owned by the U.N. -- known here as the Toyota Taliban," the letter says, adding that the cruisers ferried them from office to restaurant to guest house.

Make sure you read beyond the jump, too:

The UN and associated NGOs ran through years of aid funding in a matter of months. Now when money cannot be found for reconstruction, the UN issues reports criticizing the parsimonious Americans. Meanwhile, the UN and NGOs live like pashas. Hundreds of millions of dollars earmarked for Afghans have been transformed into fleets of top-of the-line Toyota Landcruisers, villas and estates to house their workers complete with swimming pools, an endless supply of underpaid servants, luxurious furnishings (accented with looted antiquities,) the latest laptops, video equipment, cases of Johnny Walker Blue and the bling bling ...

Heh, Indeed, and/or Read the Whole Thing.

Update: Ken Wheaton's got your "moral authoirty" right here.

By which I think he means in his pants.

Posted by: Ace at 10:25 AM | Comments (2)
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It's not going to shock any of you, but yes, the fair-and-objective New York Times repeatedly calls Democratic wins "mandates" while denying Republican victories constitute any such thing.

Posted by: Ace at 10:39 PM | Comments (3)
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I like this bit, maybe for the same reason that the Monty Python guys liked Life of Brian: it actually has a beginning, a middle, and an end (which includes the noble self-sacrifice of a brave word processor).

Or maybe I like this piece just because I hate Maureen Dowd so much.

She's really, really awful. And she has been for such a long time. I found it very satisfying when people actually began to notice this fact -- that she isn't, oh, what's the word, good -- about two years ago.

And not just the conservatives, who'd always found her a vapid, self-absorbed twit. But people who had once thought she was funny and insightful. Not that he's some genius or anything, but I really liked it when Don Imus -- long a Maureen Dowd ass-kisser -- finally decided that she had lost whatever relevance she once had.

Lost? Or never had in the first place? Eh, why quibble over such details. The point is that no one reads her anymore, and she has got to know that by this point.

Everytime I post on Maureen Dowd, the guys have to begin debating whether or not she's attractive. Guys-- watch her on Bill Maher. At best she's writer-cute, which is, as I sadly know, one of the most lenient possible standards for attractiveness.

Serendipity Update: I was trying to figure out how to get the Schwarzenegger "Let's be honest" post into the list, even though I didn't think it really was a top ten or anything. But, as luck would have it, I need to post it here, just to explain why that "Let's be honest" is in the title of the Maureen Dowd piece.

Let's be honest: this wasn't the greatest post, but it did provide a week a half's worth of riffing.

Posted by: Ace at 08:39 PM | Comments (11)
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Is it any wonder the Mainstream Media can't get enough of her?

Bill from INDC explains why he doesn't like the Vapid Vamp.

Florida Cracker's also noted the "love me because I hate you" attitude before.

Eh, to each her own. With all the blog-triumphalism in the blogworld, I guess maybe there's a need for a cold splash of reality here and there.

But I also think she's campaigning for a "real media" job, and letting the MSM know that you can take the girl out of the blogosphere, as well as the blogosphere out of the girl.

Which I can hardly blame her for; blogging isn't exactly lucrative, even when you're being paid to do it, as she is.

But still. There's something a little strange about her so frequently trashing the medium that made her a celebrity (if of the grade D variety), as well as her very own readers. The pricking of bloated blog-egos may be a useful and even healthy exercise, but hey! Lighten up, Wonkette. It wouldn't kill you to say something nice about blogging from time to time, too.

Posted by: Ace at 07:14 PM | Comments (4)
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It may be the case that there should be no politics when catastrophe strikes, that we should all just pitch in to help our fellow humans.

But it can't be missed that this particular tragedy struck where young men unashamedly wear Osama bin Ladin t-shirts. Yeahp, look at the guy with the black t-shirt; that's OBL's evil face.

That tends to dampen one's enthusiasm for humanitarian aid.

Update: Although it should be noted, however, that maligned America still sends aid -- counted in the hundreds of millions -- to populations which harbor large numbers of alleged humans who cheered the massacres of 9-11.

If Indonesia sent us money and medicine after September 11, I must have missed it.

Another Update: Meanwhile, the despised American military -- the greatest force for liberation the world has ever known -- is aiding the survivors in Indonesia, a fact even noted by Aljazeera.

And once again, for every one of those grateful for our help...

Reaction was generally positive to the news of an American presence.

"Praise God, they are coming to help us," said Munajar, a Banda Aceh clerk who like many Indonesians uses only one name. "We have been waiting for the international community to assist us and now they have come."

Twenty-one-year old student Marrisa, who registers newly displaced people arriving at a local mosque was hopeful the foreign assistance will stave off a humanitarian disaster.

"So far the Indonesian government has not been able to deliver the aid quickly," she said. "Hopefully now we will receive the food and medicine we need to save these people."

...there were those who just didn't seem to understand that sometimes a simple "Thank You" are the only words needed:

Not everyone was so enthusiastic.

"The Americans have to understand our culture here," said Hilmy Bakar Almascaty, vice-chairman of the Jakarta-based Islamic Defenders Front, which is mobilising relief efforts of its own.

"If they are not sensitive to local issues then there will be problems. If American women come to Aceh, they must wear dilbab for example. There is Sharia law in Aceh and that is what is dictated."

I'm getting a little sick of being instructed that I, and the servicemen and servicewomen we Americans put into the field to fight tyranny and aid the oppressed, must "understand the culture" of those we're trying to help.

For the love of everything holy-- we're shipping in food and medicine and water and evacuating the injured and there are still some fragile-ego'd psychopaths raving about the need for our servicewomen to wear habibs while saving their goddamned asses.

Counterpoint Update: Cedarford offers:

Aceh is a strict conservative Islamic provence of Indonesia. Putting our women soldiers or aid workers in scarfs if the local government requests it is not a big deal. It is a gesture of respect for local customs. At the height of our power, in postwar Japan, US soldiers took off their shoes when invited into a Japanese home and were instructed to give polite half-bows if a member of the Royal Family went by. That was our way back then - friendly humility and respect - and it won us lots of friends.

These days, American travellers try getting into distinguished Eurpean restaurants wearing blue jeans, and whine about having to take their ballcaps off if going into a church....under a meme, it seems, that we are Americans, dammit, and if we want to flout local customs, we will.

Indonesia is a new democratic nation, the most populous Islamic country - trying to make a moderate path for Islam and fighting a radical element there trying to keep the old Islamic ways. The US has a great opportunity to make friends . The last thing we would want to do is get in an arrogant pissing contest over the right of American women to wear whatever they want anywhere in the world, or the right of our men to pop a beer in a Mosque if they feel like it, or the "right" to tell the locals that their homeland is shit compared to ours.

Okay, let's ignore that somewhat off-tangent "ugly Americans" crap in the middle.

There is certainly something to be said for respecting local cultures. And yes, sure, I'd like to make friends... even, I suppose, with people whose "local cultures" include wearing t-shirts glorifying mass-murderers.

But that sort of sums it up right there, doesn't it? A t-shirt glorifying the mass-murderer Osama bin Ladin doesn't insult Islam, but women, trying to distribute food and medicine to the needy, must never take off that damn habib even when sweating from heavy lifting because otherwise we're "humilitating" Muslims again.

Muslims seem to have their "humiliation" indicator on a bit of a hair-trigger, and it's about time they sort of grew up about it. This talk of "humiliation" is really just some culture-wide passive-aggressive attempt to impose their own ways of doing things on others.

I mean, we could scream that it's "humiliating" to demand a working American non-Muslim woman wear a habib simply for the right to distribute medical attention to the stricken. But we don't, do we?

And yes, we should be mindful of Muslims' sensitivities. But such mindfulness really should run both ways, oughtn't it? Shouldn't Muslim politicians refrain from making somewhat-ominous remarks about their being "trouble" should a woman refuse a habib as well?

Let's remember who is helping who here.

If I walk into a man's house to help him put out a fire, and he demands I take off my shoes because that's "his culture," well, you know what? The hell with him. Let him put out fires barefoot by his own self.

Posted by: Ace at 05:54 PM | Comments (65)
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This was a fun post.

A very concerned liberal named Kathleen Anderton wrote to her local paper warning us all of the Republican plot to deliberately kill young, strong men in unending warfare so that we pencil-necked geeks could then take over the world (and all the tastiest women, I must assume) in some sort of worldwide Strangelovian sex-conspiracy.

Of course, she was absolutely right in every detail; my problem has always been that she just bitches about our plan for culling the young male population by 25% or more, without offering any constructive criticism as to how we're going to achieve our goals without deliberately murdering young men in senseless wars:

Let's be sensible here. We all know that if the conservative dream of an omnipotent Father-State is to be realized, we need to break up the natural loyalties of human beings, that is, to their families and sexual partners, so that there is no other object of loyalty but the perpetual WarState.

To do that, we're going to have to end all natural sexual reproduction. All humanoids will be artificially conceived and grown in factory birthvats; sex will be prohibited, and natural, "wildbirth" children will be hunted down and killed as enemies of the State.

We all know this. This isn't exactly controversial.

Notable for a couple of things, too. First, a commenter named Paul provided the best joke in the whole piece, which I of course had to move up into the post itself. Only blogs (with comments) can really provide that sort of instantaneous interactivity. "Real media" would have taken a week to get that comment printed as a letter to the editor, and by then the joke would have been long forgotten.

Also-- check the comments. Ms. Anderton, calling herself "The Author," takes me (and the commenters) to task. But she does thank me for helping to get the word out.

Well, no thanks needed, Ms. Anderton.

Posted by: Ace at 01:47 PM | Comments (4)
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