As a lot of you geeks know -- let's be honest: you're mainly a bunch of D&D playin', Magic-card tradin', honeymead-brewin' right-wing uberdorks -- I long ago did a bit about the Dungeons and Dragons characters of the nine Democratic presidential candidates.

That bit included a reference to Wesley Clarke's rip-off of Knights in White Satin, called Knights of Dune Sandworms:

[The fight within your eighth-grade band] all comes to a head when [Wesley Clarke] writes a pair of songs he claims are "totally killer." One's the pretentiously-titled Triumph of the Mind: Warsong of the Fremen, which is a forty-minute minor-key free-form jazz-improv piece which only contains a single lyric -- "The Spice," heavily filtered and modulated through his cousin Stevie's Casio synthesizer, repeated over and over at odd points of the song. The other one is Knights of Dune Sandworms, and it's even worse, because it's just a shameless ripoff of the Moody Blues' Nights in White Satin, except the poetry is even more vile now that it's larded up with obscure references to Arrakis and stillsuits and embarrassingly-forced rhymes for "Atreides."

Well, George from Snapshot has actually found the old lyric-sheet for Clarke's Fremen opus and is kind enough to post it.

Wow. This site is sort of turning into an H.P. Lovecrat sort of deal, with other writers joining in to create an Ace of Spades "Dorkwad Mythos." Cool beans.

Posted by: Ace at 09:55 AM | Comments (12)
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John from Wuzzadem just wrote to say he swears he didn't screw up my site.

But "Someone" pointed out that the post about his Google piece appeared "busted." And when I saved it as a draft, suddenly the site was back up.

John from Wuzzadem -- are you a DNC mole?

Update! But you can still read his funny argument with Google at his site.

Unless that link breaks this site again.

Posted by: Ace at 09:45 AM | Comments (4)
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My male readers should be pleased.

Only a two week buy this time 'round... but we'll take what we can get.

Hey...! That's Not Dusty Update: Okay, they seem to have a different model this time. Cute, and I like the miniskirt, but... where is the real Dusty?

Update! Well the readers have spoken, and I have sent an email. I've asked the advertiser to please bring back "Classic Dusty."

I don't know if he wants to, but I asked.

Posted by: Ace at 07:19 AM | Comments (23)
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No chance of a retraction this time, as they've got the tapes and Michelle Malkin is providing the transcripts:

Question from audience: You mentioned a little bit ago, ‘Why did it take a bunch of Arabs to do what you all should have done a long time ago,’ that’s my question.

And as a white man standing here in your midst from a fairly liberal/conservative/middle of the road background—and I tell people I’m so far left I’m coming up on the rigt—and I’d like you to respond to, why shouldn’t we do something and how could we move so they don’t see us coming?

Churchill: IÂ’m gonna repeat that, tell me if I got that right: Why shouldnÂ’t we do something and how do you you move so they donÂ’t see you coming.

As to the first part, not a reason in the world that I could see. I can’t find a single reason that you shouldn’t in a principled way—there may be some practical considerations, such as do you know how (laughter from audience)—you know, often these things are processes.

"Laughter from audience." Hee, hee. It's fun to discuss committing acts of terrorism against the US.

ItÂ’s not just an impulse. And certainly itÂ’s not just an event. And the simple answer, although it probably should be more complicated, but IÂ’m not being flip and giving the simple answer, is: You carry the weapon. ThatÂ’s how they donÂ’t see it coming.

You’re the one…They talk about ‘color blind or blind to your color.’ You said it yourself.

You donÂ’t send the Black Liberation Army into Wall Street to conduct an action.
You donÂ’t send the American Indian Movement into downtown Seattle to conduct an action. Who do you send? You. Your beard shaved, your hair cut close, and wearing a bankerÂ’s suit.

ThereÂ’s probably a whole lot more to it, you know that. But thereÂ’s where you start.

He continues with this line of suggestion in Part II:

If you are Arab, for example, you are automatically profiled as a potential terrorist. Period. And you can be asked to leave a plane because some Nordic-looking woman two rows down tells the stewardess she’s not comfortable with you being there—her presence makes her uncomfortable—why? Because it was Arabs who flew planes into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. See.

And that fact—she’s on an airplane and there’s an Arab and somehow psychologically it makes her uncomfortable so it’s very understandable that she not be asked to leave since she’s made it clear that she’s not going to be a very big risk to the flight, but rather the individuals sitting there doing nothing have to leave.

And why by the way did it take Arabs to do what people here should have done a long time ago?

Nice, huh? I seem to remember Al Qaeda terrorism handbooks making the exact same points about how to blend in and strike without notice.

Good to see Churchill has at least one fan out there.

See Michelle Malkin for the audio for all four tapes and further transcripts.

H/t to the indispensible Little Green Footballs.

Posted by: Ace at 07:07 AM | Comments (6)
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You may have already seen this -- heck, it's been linked at least 17 times -- but IowaHawk seems to have outed himself as taskmaster for the other side; he's offering them encouragement as they track down the truth about Gannon and Rove:

Those CBS conveniently forged, yet entirely accurate documents? Obviously the handiwork of Karl's West Wing elves. But if you think "Gannon" was the conduit to Mapes you are barking up the wrong homo, my friend. Karl has more than a few panicked moles inside Black Rock hoping to throw you off the scent. Let's just say you may want to start "connecting the Dotties," because the plot is about to thicken like a TANG-y sweet salad dressing. Remember: the truth is out there. Buried below a modern 64,000 square foot plant in Duncan, Nebraska.

Seeing a pattern? Rule #1 in the Rove Matrix is careful who you trust. That website with the impeccable progressive credentials could easily be a Rove / GOPig front operation -- draining millions of dollars from credulous liberal dupes and throwing it away on doomed campaigns. If your instincts tell you someone to trust somebody, then run. He's probably a plant, and the voices could be from Rove's mind control drones.

Strong words. Strong, well-nigh incomprehesible words.

Update! Fox Mulder Gets His Evidence! Slublog has the smoking-gun proof of the conspiracy.

Posted by: Ace at 06:57 AM | Comments (2)
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As noted in the original article on this below, the HSB is backing away from its original reportage that Ward Churchill clearly admitted he wasn't a native American Indian. They now say he was misquoted, and that the tape proves this.

Actually, he seems to have re-asserted his dubious claim of American Indian heritage:

Churchill went on to say that he is an associate member of the Keetoowah tribe and that associates are enrolled in the band after their genealogy has been vetted by the enrollment office. He said that he is less than one-quarter Indian, so he does not qualify to be a full member.

Umm, how the reporter on the HSB got this one wrong is beyond me. Perhaps there's some problem with the credentialling process at University of Hawaii functions.

Look, he's not an American Indian; at least no one has ever offered a shred of evidence that he is. But it does appear that the HSB's report of his admission of this was simply wrong.

So he didn't admit it, and that part of my posting on this matter has to be corrected.

Thanks to Chickpea. Also thanks to American Barbarian/Curbside Prophet, who tipped by both email and in the comments to the original piece.

Thanks for keeping the blogosphere honest, guys!

Posted by: Ace at 06:49 AM | Comments (6)
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Lorie Byrd of Polipundit thought it might be a good idea to compare Jeff Gannon's softballs (which, okay, they were) to the numerous softballs of the Clinton era.

Tim Graham of NRO has beaten her to the punch:

Liberal media elitists say they want only "real" journalists, not "partisan operatives," to be allowed in the White House briefing room. But what they really might wind up accomplishing with their "Gannongate" pounding was the silencing of rare right-leaning voice in the White House press corps. To them, you can only be "authentic" by pounding the president from the left.

At the Columbia Journalism Review blog, Brian Montopoli claims "this isn't a media bias issue, no matter how hard you spin it...Real journalists, the ones who belong in press conferences, know that access to a president is a rare gift, and they know enough not to squander it. Gannon threw away his opportunity in favor of self-aggrandizing partisan spectacle. He put himself and his agenda ahead of the public good, and he did it in a manner so egregious that he left little doubt of his intentions. If both sides of the debate, blinded by partisan zeal, don't realize that's the real reason he had to go, they've missed the point."

Montopoli cannot be serious. If anyone who asked softball questions at the White House "had to go," the White House briefing room would have almost emptied out in the Clinton years. The problem for Montopoli and other liberals is they seem to think that the need for an adversarial press emerged in 2001, when President Bush was first inaugurated. If we travel back to the Clinton era, it's not hard to discover a whole chorus of White House reporters who, to use Montopoli's words, squandered their access to Clinton with helpful softball questions, who put his agenda ahead of the public good and made a partisan spectacle of themselves in front of a large number of Americans who wanted the press to act as a watchdog of President Clinton.

And he's got one set of "tough" media questions for Clinton -- post-impeachment, post Juanita Broadderick's strangely unexamined charges -- to prove his point.

Thanks to PoliPundit for the head's up.

Posted by: Ace at 06:41 AM | Comments (1)
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UPDATE/CORRECTION: It appears that the HSB is backing away from its original reportage that Ward Churchill clearly admitted he wasn't a native American Indian. They now say he was misquoted, and that the tape proves this.

Look, he's not an American Indian; at least no one has ever offered a shred of evidence that he is. But it does appear that the HSB's report of his admission of this was simply wrong.

Ergo, the rest of this piece has to be retracted.

Thanks to Chickpea.

Found on Lucianne.com, reported by the Honolulu Star Bulletin:

Churchill did address the issue of his ethnicity, admitting that he is not Native American.

"Is he an Indian? Do we really care?" he said, quoting those he called his "white Republican" critics.

"Let's cut to the chase; I am not," he said.

His pedigree is "not important," Churchill said: "The issue is the substance of what is said."

Without that admission-- that (ahem) scalp -- we'd still be arguing about this. We've gotten our first bit of scalp from Ward Churchill; we'll see about collecting up the rest of it.

He whines about his persecution:

"I was targeted because they thought I would be an easy target," Churchill told the crowd of about 800. "That was a mistake.

"It's not just an attempt to purge me," he said. "It's a purge of the academy."

But you are an easy target, Pale Face. And you'll soon be finding out how easy when we Blogging Braves are counting coup over your carcass. (Ummm, not a death-threat, dope. It's a refernce to the American Indian practice of counting coup over a defeated adversary, something I probably know more about than you. I've seen Dances with Wolves three times; I'd say that gives me a better claim to Native American heritage than you.)

Meanwhile, another Hawaiian paper is all up Ward Churchill's nose as well. What the heck is going on with Hawaiian reporters, anyway?

Whatever it is, keep it up.

Check out this quote from Churchill:

"The only thing I can do is to pursue a different slogan: U.S. out of America, U.S. off the planet, U.S. out of our lives, U.S. into the dustbin of history." -- Ward Churchill

Okay. The webpage contains an audio file of his whining self-defense.

H/t to LGF for the last item.

PS: Anyone starting to notice that the charges leveled by the right-leaning blogosphere have this odd habit of turning out to be... oh, what's the word...? ...100% f'n' correct, every time?

What's the Daily Kos' batting average, I wonder?

Update: Go here to find Ward Churchill -- admitted Pale-Face WASP -- whining that universities won't give out more tenured positions to "indigenous peoples."

"Indigenous peoples" -- you know, like Dick Cavett, Stone Philips, Anderson Cooper, etc. People indigenous to the Hamptons and Aspen, I guess.

Posted by: Ace at 11:41 AM | Comments (32)
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It's an "invisible galaxy":

Astronomers have discovered an invisible galaxy that could be the first of many that will help unravel one of the universe's greatest mysteries.

The object appears to be made mostly of "dark matter," material of an unknown nature that can't be seen.

Theorists have long said most of the universe is made of dark matter. Its presence is required to explain the extra gravitational force that is observed to hold regular galaxies together and that also binds large clusters of galaxies.

...

"From the speed [the "invisible galaxy"] is spinning, we realized that VIRGOHI21 was a thousand times more massive than could be accounted for by the observed hydrogen atoms alone," Minchin said. "If it were an ordinary galaxy, then it should be quite bright and would be visible with a good amateur telescope."

...

Dark matter makes up about 23 percent of the universe's mass-energy budget. Normal matter, the stuff of stars, planets and people, contributes just 4 percent. The rest of the universe is driven by an even more mysterious thing called dark energy.

Great. Just what I needed. Invisible f'n' galaxies and "dark energy."

You know who I blame?

Jeff Gannon. That's who.

I'll have to ask him about this. And if there's any Rovian hijinks going on with these supermassive invisible cosmic objects.

Posted by: Ace at 11:29 AM | Comments (17)
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There's been a lot of navel-gazing among some bloggers -- responsible-sounding, adult-sounding navel-gazing to be sure -- that we bloggers ought not to be in the business of looking for scalps to hang on our doors.

Or coonskins to nail on the wall, as LBJ would have it.

I posted something similar, chiefly because it sounded like the "right" thing to say.

But I don't know. Let's think about this.

Most stories alleging malfeasance ultimately go nowhere. Either there's not enough evidence collected by reporters (or bloggers) to prove the case, or else there is an awful lot of evidence, but the public is never sufficiently aroused about it to demand action. (Think Kofi Annan.)

A "scalp" -- the filing of criminal charges, the resignation under a cloud of suspicion, the tearful confession a la Robert "the Torch" Toricelli or Jim McGreevey -- is generally the only way a news-provider knows that his story has actually come to fruition. That he, and his fellow news-providers, have actually proved the case. Have actually moved the story far enough along to force a genuine conclusion, in both meanings of the word. An ending, and a more-or-less definitive resolution on the story's merits.

So for all of those counselling against going hunting for scalps, I would ask: in what other manner do you imagine you can actually successfully conclude a story and vindicate the charges you've brought forward?

I would also ask if bloggers are any different in this sense than reporters. When a reporter smells corruption, what is his ultimate goal? Sure-- to expose the truth. Of course. But what does that mean, actually? How does a reporter know when he's actually exposed the truth?

I think he generally knows he's exposed the truth, and nailed the story, when the accused malefactor admits guilt in an interview with Diane Sawyer.

Or resigns. Or is asked to resign.

Is anyone claiming that the reportage of Woodward and Bernstein would have been fully vindicated had Richard Nixon not resigned from office? If he hadn't resigned, their claims would have been essentially unproved, and the case against Richard Nixon would still be considered an open question to be debated among partisans even today.

Dotty Lynch of CBSNews sure seems to be on a scalp-hunt in this piece on the "Rove-Gannon" connection:

The architect of the Bush victories in 2000 and 2004 came through the ranks of college Republicans with the late Lee Atwater, and their admitted and alleged dirty tricks are the legends many young political operatives dream of pulling off. So when Jeff Gannon, White House "reporter" for Talon "News," was unmasked last week, the leap to a possible Rove connection was unavoidable. Gannon says that he met Rove only once, at a White House Christmas party, and Gannon is kind of small potatoes for Rove at this point in his career.

But Rove's dominance of White House and Republican politics, Gannon's aggressively partisan work and the ease with which he got day passes for the White House press room the past two years make it hard to believe that he wasn't at least implicitly sanctioned by the "boy genius." Rove, who rarely gave on-the-record interviews to the MSM (mainstream media), had time to talk to GOPUSA, which owns Talon.

GOPUSA and Talon are both owned by Bobby Eberle, a Texas Republican and business associate of conservative direct-mail guru Bruce Eberle who says that Bobby is from the "Texas branch of the Eberle clan." Bobby Eberle told The New York Times that he created Talon to build a news service with a conservative slant and "if someone were to see 'GOPUSA,' there's an instant built-in bias there." No kidding.

...

Daschle aides told Roll Call, "This guy (Gannon) became the dumping ground for opposition research." The connections are so strong that there is an FEC challenge which could be a test case on the limits of the use of the Internet in federal campaigns.

There's a lot of blather in her piece -- a lot of defensiveness for her fellow MSM reporters -- but I find this last claim laughable.

I think it's fairly well-known that the majority of stories "written" by the Washington press corps aren't so much written by them as merely typed by them. They're fed to them-- sure, reporters make phone calls and do some digging, but an awful lot of their stories are simply handed to them by political operatives (and, let's face it, generally from the left side of the aisle). Reporters commonly publish dirt fed to them by opposition researchers for the parties; they frequently re-type press releases from liberal think-tanks and advocacy groups and call it "reporting."

So: how is Jeff Gannon's receipt of disparaging info from the RNC any different than any other reporter (including, of course, Dotty Lynch herself, unless she's the only reporter in DC who's never been fed a story by an interested party)?

It seems to me that the MSM is pretty interested in scalps-- but only so long as those scalps belong to Republican politicians or, in a pinch, to obscure right-leaning reporters for virtually-unknown online news outlets.

There's a terrific irony in this reporette's piece, by the way.

This woman works for CBSNews. An organization fed proveably, and transparetly forged documents intended to swing a Presidential campaign by a long-time partisan Democratic activist named Bill Burkett.

CBSNews seems to want to ferret out the Gannon-Rove "connection"... but it's not so interested in investigating, say, the Burkett-DNC connection.

I would think that the latter story should be just as interesting to Ms. Dotty Lynch as the former. Unless she has some particular bias preventing her from having interest in the former-- a liberal political bias, say, or maybe just a bias to protect her fellow media-types from the same sort of harsh-light scrutiny they cast upon everyone else.

We're all looking for scalps, ultimately. And as long as the MSM is hunting the rest of us, I don't see any dishonor in hunting them back. The rest of America -- the non-legacy-media America -- are not merely sheep for their poaching. And the legacy media cannot be the only institution in America to be off-limits from the hunt.

Posted by: Ace at 11:02 AM | Comments (9)
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