Every time I want to give up this stupid moronblog (for real), I read a story like this. It gives me just enough hope to keep soldiering on:

An Internet blogger who ran a political Web site devoted to getting Sen. John Thune elected will begin working for the South Dakota Republican.

Jon Lauck, a South Dakota State University history professor, said he'll start his new job of senior adviser sometime this summer.

The 33-year-old Madison native said he was looking forward to helping Thune shape national policy on key issues.

"This is a very historic time for our country," Lauck said Tuesday. "Why would I want to be digging through the archives and writing history when I could be living history?"

Lauck received $27,000 as a research consultant from Thune's campaign when the Republican was looking to oust Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle in the November election.

$27,000 for research?

But did he ever interview Ice-T?

This stupid scam I've got going has got to pay off at some point.

Via my top-secret source Mr. X.

Posted by: Ace at 06:16 AM | Comments (3)
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The Retirement Medley has been retired. See-Dubya, still guest blogging at Patterico, has cleaned up the recording, shortened it, recorded it in a less bandwidth-heavy format, and added a couple of soundbites that really say "welcome back." And/or "Die, Ogre!"

The Not-So-Long Comeback Medley. About 5MB.

I Swear, This Had Nothin' To Do With Me Update: Honestly, I was too busy stabbing a Mexican busboy:

A woman who was stabbed and critically wounded with a hunting knife staggered out of the woods near the Massapequa train station yesterday afternoon — followed by her ranting boyfriend, police sources said.

Obviously, I hope the woman recovers fully, and they lock her maniac boyfriend up for a good long time.

Still, strange that I plucked "Massapequa" out of the air as a safe, surburban neighborhood, and then this happens.

Maybe it's best that I remain a shut-in.

Thanks to Spongeworthy.

Posted by: Ace at 06:10 AM | Comments (10)
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Well, I couldn't find it, but Bob did. It's pretty lame, but I did try to do something with the much-despised Smitty "character" ("Worst. Character. Ever."). My weak efforts are still sadly viewable on blogspot.

Not. Worth. A Second. Of your precious time. But go ahead and click on it if you don't believe me.

And if the site looks different, that's because the lovely and talented Web-Diva is attempting to make the font-size on this blog scalable. For all of you slobbering retards, that means you can make the text bigger or smaller, via your browser's "view" menu. A lot of people have complained about the text being too small.

It's not really fixed yet, but hopefully we'll have it all worked out by tonight or tomorrow.

Posted by: Ace at 10:41 AM | Comments (40)
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Noah from DefenseTech just blitzed me with updates. So many of them are good. Here's a few.

It's a scrapped program, but from 1992-1998 the Pentagon was developing a man-portable (i.e., backpack) flying saucer -- I mean, Unmanned Aerial Reconaissance vehicle -- for the troops. We'll see it one day, I'm sure. I'm told they also gave up on Tang their first six tries.

Whoops. They may have already succeeded. The tiniest little recon drone you ever did see. Awwww... so cute!

Fans of Aliens will be happy to see this grenade-launching robot drone. They even made it look mean:

As the Kill-O-Zap blaster's designers said (quoting from memory here; please excuse loose shit): "Make it look mean. Make it ugly. Make it very clear that there is a right side of this gun and a wrong side of this gun, and if you're on the wrong side, things are going badly for you."

If things are looking better in Iraq, it's not just due to the elections or an improved political climate. It's also due to changed tactics.

Star Trek fans will be happy to know that someone out there is working on computerized language translators.

And finally, the "Laser Hummer" makes its debut in Iraq. "ZEUS" is a 10kw solid-state laser (nope, no idea on what any of that means myself) used previously in Afghanistan for exploding ordinance and mines at a distance. Hope our Iraqi boys get some good use out of it, too.

BTW, I was offered a "Laser Hummer" in Tijuana one time, but I don't think the girl who offered was in the armed forces. Seemed kind of young.

Also, I think the Army has a prerequisite involving a minimum number of teeth.

Oliver Twist Asks For WarPorn, Please! Update: TKS links to Japanese attempts at "scout walker" technology, also known as AT-ST's.

You know-- the chicken walkers from Return of the Jedi.

He also links to a previous post of mine. Shockingly enough, I think I'll relink it myself. What if the Nazis got their hands on an Imperial Walker?

It's one of those nagging questions of history that only geektards like myself bother asking.

Posted by: Hoke at 10:17 AM | Comments (13)
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Taking a page (or at least eight column-inches) from Art Buchwald, The Waterglass attempts to understand the liberal mindset by inventing a straw-man and then putting all sorts of ludicrous claims in his mouth.

Why isn't The Waterglass on the WaPo opinion page, too?

PS, a "liberal friend" I just made up -- Whiney McBleedingheart, his name is -- just told me that the two things most important to him in the upcoming Hillary! administration were 1) developing and marketing "a car that runs on love" and 2) drive-through abortions.

So that's what liberals are really all about. And my sources on this are impeccable. And by "sources," I mean the frightening voices in my head telling me to do all sorts of terrible things to people and property, horrors involving "gasoline and rags" and "fishing tackle."

Posted by: Hoke at 09:34 AM | Comments (4)
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Shockingly, it's covered by the WaPo; but I doubt we'll hear any more about it:

The coming revolution against the United States government was announced on the Internet via a manifesto by a self-described "proud and insolent youth," a college sophomore who sought to be our leader. This was to be the spark:

At 1:27 a.m. on Nov. 19, 2002, Officer David Mobilio of the Red Bluff Police Department was working the graveyard shift when he pulled his cruiser into a gas station in his quiet little farm town. As he stood beside the car, the 31-year-old husband and father of a toddler was shot three times, twice in the back and once in the head, at very close range.

Beside Mobilio's dead body, someone left a handmade flag with a picture of a snake's head and the words "Don't Tread on Us."

A well-chosen spot for an ambush. That is what investigators later concluded, especially when they learned the suspected assailant had Army Ranger training. A lonely crossroads. Poorly lit. No station attendant on duty. No witnesses. It was a killing that might have never been solved.

That is, until a confession appeared on the Internet. Six days after the shooting, a manifesto appeared on more than a dozen Web sites operated by the left-leaning Independent Media Center.

It began: "Hello Everyone, my name's Andy. I killed a Police Officer in Red Bluff, California in a motion to bring attention to, and halt, the police-state tactics that have come to be used throughout our country. Now I'm coming forward, to explain that this killing was also an action against corporate irresponsibility."

The tract -- which managed to mingle an almost chirpy tone with leftist cant -- was signed by "Andrew McCrae," later found to be an alias for Andrew Mickel, a student at a liberal arts college who before enrolling had served three years stateside with the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division.

...

Mickel wrote that he was incorporating to shield himself from prosecution. He urged everyone to join his board of directors. His stock would be free. He called for insurrection. A national strike. Mass resistance. "But don't do anything you're uncomfortable with," Mickel added, "and don't pressure anyone else into anything they're uncomfortable with."

So polite. But aren't they always?

This is why I am so insistent on not having any murder-talk on this site, even in jest. Some people are born killers. Some people, however, are only potential killers, and will kill only when they feel they have the support and encouragement of a group of people whose opinions they respect.

These are the killers who imagine themselves as heroes.

And I just never want it said that some lunatic got the idea to kill someone because he saw some people talking about it-- in jest, or as gallows humor, or whatever -- on Ace of Spades HQ.

It makes my physically angry to see lefties talking up murder and assassination on their little lunatic forums. I don't like it when they provide not-so-subtle encouragement to deranged folks looking to become folk heroes, and I don't like it when anyone on the right does that either.

Thanks to NickS for the chilling story.

Posted by: Hoke at 09:18 AM | Comments (16)
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Wow, it's good to be back. I'm off the pipe, I've had my first shower in three days, and I'm rarin' to get back to blogging. Life is good... even if that idiot Hoke is still around.

Let me just apologize for/explain this Prank That Was Never Intended to Be. more...

Posted by: Hoke at 08:16 AM | Comments (56)
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ACE: Hoke.

HOKE: (icily) What?

ACE: I need a little help here, brother. I'm kind of in a jam.

HOKE: Arrested for crack? For male prostitution?

ACE: Oh, no. Nothing like that. Just a bit of, uhhh, second-degree murder. (scoffing) Whatever that means. more...

Posted by: Hoke at 08:00 AM | Comments (10)
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Just doing minor little inconsequential things like meeting with the leaders of the student opposition and helping them get their message out and maybe advising them on the pathway to democracy:

Jim Hake and I met for the first time one of the key student leaders, Nabil Abou-Charaf, for coffee in Mejnah Square across the street from Lebanon's parliament.

...

"We have a few key demands," he said. "First, all Syrian soldiers and intelligence agents must leave Lebanon now and forever. We need an international inquiry into the assasination of Rafik Hariri. And we demand free and fair elections - on time, without delay - in May."

...

"The movement is totally led by young people," Nabil said. "Both Christians and Muslims. We are living together in the same tents. We stay up all night strategizing and getting to know each other. It's amazing, but it's also sad. We Christians and Muslims never really knew each other until now. Hariri's assasination broke down that wall. We are talking together - really talking and getting to know each other - for the first time.

"It is so important," he said, "that we heal the old wounds. We cannot go back to the past, to the civil war. We want to rebuild our country." He tapped the side of his head. "And that includes rebuilding our minds. Lebanon has been so divided. We stand not only for freedom and independence, but also national unity and a new, modern, common, tolerant Lebanese identity."

Nabil is 24 years old, but he belongs to the old cadre of activists.

"When I got started," he said, "there were only 200 of us. We held demonstrations and were arrested, beaten, and tortured. But we kept going anyway. Now we number one million. The Syrians, their Lebanese puppets, and Hezbollah can't stop us now. We are too strong and too many."

...

"We are not free, but we are no longer afraid to express ourselves," he said. "The climate of fear still exists, but it is breaking. Next time you visit Lebanon, it will be a free country."

He also talks about his round-the-clock surveillance by the secret police.

The student leader, I mean. The only one stalking Michael Totten is Ace. Ace is so insanely jealous he's leaving dead rabbits on Totten's doorstep.

Yeah, he's not around, he's in Beirut, but when he comes back home... man, all those dead rabbits are going to be fragrant.

And... More bad news for Ace. GOPBloggers interview Ken Mehlman.

It's almost as if people don't respect a guy who spends all of his free time making up American Idol parodies and inventing "crazy Morning-Zoo-style characters" like horny talking ducks (scan down to "Never Waste a Good Premise Update").

Posted by: Hoke at 07:05 AM | Comments (8)
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It's a largely cermonial post, not the real top postion (the Prime Ministership), but the Kurds seem pretty happy about it anyway:

Kahwla Aziz Mohammed can remember receiving many things from her government in far-off Baghdad, including the bullets that Iraqi security forces used to execute her husband.

In 1988, Saddam Hussein's government killed thousands of Kurds with poison gas. In 1991, the year of her husband's execution, soldiers with more bullets made refugees out of an estimated 1.5 million Kurds in the aftermath of the Persian Gulf War.

But on Wednesday, Mohammed and Kurds across northern Iraq celebrated something new emanating from the south: a share of power.

"I couldn't believe at first that a Kurdish leader will be a president for the country," Mohammed said, taking her sons and grandsons out into the Kirkuk neighborhoods to press candies and fruit drinks on strangers, traditional means of celebration in this tremendously traditional land.

In Kirkuk, Mosul and lush, green Sulaymaniyah, Kurds poured into the streets by the thousands, pounding drums and roaring cheers at the Iraqi National Assembly's election of a Kurdish faction leader, Jalal Talabani, to the presidency.

Men and women stood shoulder to shoulder, swirling white handkerchiefs and swaying. People paraded down roads, slapping stickers of Kurdish flags on government buildings and passing cars. "Today is the happiest day on Earth," said Haman Najm Abdullah, 55, a trader at a Kirkuk market.

No reports of "flowers and sweets," but it seems they are, in fact, rather happy to be, yes, liberated.

The MSM is probably in a pretty bad funk that that consumation-devoutly-to-be-wished -- the much-predicted Iraqi civil war -- seems a bit less likely today:

Talabani and others in the incoming government will have to work out agreements on distributing revenue from the rich oil fields in the Kurdish region and control of the tens of thousands of militia fighters known as pesh merga.

...

The pesh merga would be part of the Iraqi armed forces, he said. Once redesigned, the national flag would fly over Kurdistan as well as the rest of the country, he said. And Iraq would keep just the one capital.

"There's no presidency in Kurdistan," he said. "The president remains in Baghdad."

Via Alarming News, who also discusses the self-appointed border patrollers in the southwest, and likens them to the Guardian Angels-- citizens doing a necessary job that the government either cannot or will not do.

Posted by: Hoke at 06:40 AM | Add Comment
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