Now all 55 Senate Republicans are on-record saying that did not distribute it. And the MSM has not offered any countering evidence to show that any had.

Thanks to The National Journal's "Blogometer" feature (subscription required), which further notes that there is...

widening speculation that a "GOP talking points memo" (which supposedly had GOP leaders claiming the Terri Schiavo case was good politics) is in fact a fraud. The latter is partly fueled by a Washington Times report, an instance of blogs keeping a story alive long enough for the MSM to take a second look.

Emphasis added, of course.

Let's just note this-- maybe the Blogometer would like to note it, too. While the "legitimate" dextrosphere (i.e., anyone you've ever heard of, really) sets their sites on stories that turn out to be right, or at least seem plausible if not yet proven, the sinistrosphere is concocting schizophrenic theories about Jeff Gannon having been a presidential pedophilia sex-cult slave and a brainwashed pawn of Satanic CIA agents.

No, not all in the left half of the blogosphere, of course. There are plenty of people on the left pursuing legitimate lines of inquiry.

But these fever-swamp fantasias seem to only come from one side of the blogosphere -- and not just from the low-level cranks, either.

Posted by: Ace at 09:10 AM | Comments (28)
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In case you didn't know, the National Assembly had been at an impasse for weeks; with the appointments of men to a bunch of key positions (though not the highest position, yet), it appears they're finally ready to agree and get on with governing themselves.

Captain's Quarters has analysis and a bit of speculation:

The new PM will almost surely be Shi'ite Ibrahim Jaafari; the turnout of the electorate demands that the executive be led by a Shi'ite.

That's not such a out-on-a-limb call; he's long been the favorite. But, for various reasons, other groups have been resistant to him.

Oddly enough, the man most despised by antiwar liberals -- the embodiment of evil itself -- the man whom they said would never be accepted by the Iraqis as a leader -- Adnan Chalabi, I mean -- has long been the second choice, preferred by many non-Shi'a over Jaafari because of his secularism.

So much for the prognosticative powers of progressives.

Posted by: Hoke at 08:50 AM | Add Comment
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...but, alas, no more ordering for shirts will be taken. RockNClothing took down the ordering page without informing me Ace; apparently they had to get the order to the printer or something.

Ace has asked them to open it up for one day for those who still might want shirts, but it's tricky. They won't do another run for any fewer than 20 shirts. So, there may be a chance to order again, but those orders won't go through (i.e., you won't be charged, and you also won't get a shirt) unless there are 20 or more shirts ordered. (BTW, if we're even in the ballpark, Ace will suck it up and order the remainder... he gets a chuckle over giving relatives thoughtless gifts.)

Ace is still waiting to hear back from them. For those who were surprised to see the ordering closed-- join the club. Ace had no warning himself, and thought we'd agreed to keep ordering open until today.

Posted by: Hoke at 06:09 AM | Comments (10)
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The Farewell Medley. About 10MB. [The Farewell Medley has been taken down in favor of the "Comeback Medley," above.]

Thanks so much to See-Dubya, currently guest-blogging at Patterico's Pontifications. Ace got full value on his money.

Well, Ace is a skinflint, and tried to pay him in "jokes." But still-- full value.

Posted by: Hoke at 01:34 PM | Comments (38)
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ACE: Hoke. What the fuck?

HOKE: What?

ACE: No boobies. No. Boob. ies.

HOKE: She's not naked. Relax.

ACE: Relax? Do you know who the fuck you're talking to?

HOKE: To whom you're talking.

ACE: What?

HOKE: To whom you're talking. That's what you should have said.

ACE: You fucking ponce. Don't you dare condescend to me.

HOKE: How's your vacation?

ACE: No. Boob. ies. Pull them. Now.

HOKE: (snicker)

ACE: What is so funny?

HOKE: The way you said that.

ACE: What?

HOKE: Pull them. You know. Before boobies. It sounded like you were, um, saying, "Hoke, pull Anna Nicole Smith's boobies."

ACE: Are you retarded?

HOKE: Which I wouldn't. I mean, not solely on your command. I would if she asked, but if we were like at a bar, the three of us, and you just barked, "Hoke, pull Anna Nicole's boobies." I wouldn't do that.

ACE: Um. Okay. Look. I'll talk to you later.

Posted by: Hoke at 01:22 PM | Comments (20)
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This has been the standard message of the Democrats and their liberal media spirit squad since the 50's.

But they've generally been less, how you say?, simplissime than this previously.

But it's all part and parcel of the Democrats' strategy to win the votes of dumb people -- think dumb, talk dumb, act dumb. Dumb people like that. It makes us feel superior, and hence, willing to vote for you, our supposed inferiors, for high elective office.

Here are the quotes from the brilliant Doctor Dean:

Dean: "We have got to start laying the groundwork for a national
party, for a national message. ... [Republicans] are mean. They are not nice people. They want to run nearly every aspect of your life.

The RNC immediately responded with its own focus-group-tested message: "You stink!!! I mean, you really, really stink!!!"

The brilliant doctor, who by the way is really a centrist moderate of fiercely mainstream views, went on to explain why Democrats sound so incoherent:

We know what we believe in but we have trouble articulating it.

Wasn't that sort of the knock on Bush for the past six years (rounding up, including the election season of 2000)?

Is that now the dog-ate-my-homework excuse of the Democratic Party?

Vote Democratic

We're every bit as stupid and inarticulate as Bush is. Now vote for us, you ungrateful retards!

Posted by: Hoke at 01:12 PM | Comments (10)
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Janeal Lee, who suffers from limb-girdle muscular dystrophy, won the Ms. Wheelchair Wisconsin Title.

Then, this picture surfaced.

She was stripped of her title, which went to a woman with no arms or legs.

The limbless runner-up just refused the crown.

“Who is to say who is more disabled and less disabled than another person?” Kearney said. “Had I accepted (the crown), it’s as if I had been saying I’m OK with the decision,” she said. “I thought they educated and advocated about disabilities.”

She said she won’t enter next year’s pageant.

The title now goes to:

(just joking - it went to someone named Kim Jerman).

But this is no joke - the Pageant executive director is so fuckin' hot Pat O’Bryant.

Posted by: Hoke at 01:09 PM | Comments (13)
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Democratic Underground Internet Detectives Link Our Eternal Hero Jeff Gannon To Long-Missing Boy, Rush Limbaugh, Presidential Pedophiliac Sex-Cults, and Satanic CIA Agents

Not a joke, alas.

I wish the MSM would stop treating all "blogs" alike. First of all, DU ain't a blog. Second of all, The New York Times would not be pleased to have the sins of the National Enquirer charged to its account. (Or maybe they would; the National Enquirer is nearly as accurate as the NYT lately.)

I-- uh, I mean Ace -- has said this a dozen times: When the media speaks about blogs peddling insane crazy theories, they're generally talking about left-wing sites. It's the left-wing sites-- including the biggest, "respectable" ones -- that traffic in this sort of insanity.

Have you ever seen this sort of crap in any big right-wing blog? Sure, right-wing blogs traffic in crazy theories, like claiming that Rather used transparently-forged documents to prove his AWOL case against Bush, but damnit, these crazy theories keep turning out to be true.

Start the insanity:

Johnny Gosch may finally have been found, thanks to Rush Limbaugh.

The Iowa paperboy was kidnapped in 1982, with unsubstantiated stories emerging later from his mother that he was abducted into a child pedophilia ring. No trace of him has ever been found, and no suspects have been arrested.

Nearly 23 years later, White House correspondent Jeff Gannon, who wrote for a conservative Web site, was exposed in February as James D. Guckert, a man with no journalism experience and links to several gay escort addresses online.

If you have the time to read a few hundred Web postings, you will see how Johnny Gosch and Jeff Gannon, two completely unrelated individuals, became the same person on the Web. The way the theory developed says much about the anything-goes nature of the blogosphere and self-proclaimed reporters on the Internet, who seem to find accuracy and proof a nuisance in uncovering fantastical conspiracies.

It took the random efforts of scores of Web loggers (bloggers), credulous readers and longtime followers of the case to assign the two men a bizarre, shared backstory involving satanic CIA agents, pedophiles and presidents. And, of course, Limbaugh.

...

The Gannon-Gosch conspiracy theory first appeared on the message board of a liberal political site called The Democratic Underground on Feb. 26. A site regular, using the name TwoSparkles, speculated that Jeff Gannon was victimized by a government-organized child pornography ring.

Then he foreshadowed the future with this note: "I found this picture of Johnny Gosch. I looked at it and almost thought it looked like Gannon! It must be getting late." The image was a school picture of Gosch taken in the 1980s and later enhanced.

The same poster noted that Gannon/Guckert and Gosch had the same initials.

Wow! The same initials! That's... not very persuasive at all.

Before long, other site members were trying to figure out whether the ages matched. (In fact, there would be more than 10 years' age difference between Gannon and Gosch.)

Big deal. We've got that "same initials" thing going.

...

Bloggers [of what political leaning, might I be so bold to ask?] picked up on the theory and soon the yarn was developing on hundreds of sites, many linked to one another. Entire blogs, or Web journals, are now devoted to the subject of whether Gosch grew up to become the disgraced reporter.

The complete concoction goes like this: Gosch was kidnapped into a pedophilia and child pornography ring that serviced the upper echelons of Washington, D.C., society. He was brainwashed by the CIA, trained to be part of a top-secret escort program. Then, he became Jeff Gannon and was given a plum job as a White House correspondent with the online conservative news service to keep him quiet.

Finally, he was "uncovered" by the bloggers.

...

The most fervent bloggers on the Web aren't as interested in linking Gannon to Gosch as they are in presenting their version of a massive conspiracy. The story that excites them is a sordid tale about the CIA operating a pedophilia ring on behalf of dignitaries and politicians and training male prostitutes to serve as spies.

They try to link both Bush presidents to this conspiracy, prove that Hunter S. Thompson's death was not a suicide and investigate a so-called government-sponsored pedophilia operation they claim continues to abduct children.

...

Several bloggers suggest Gosch was brainwashed or has multiple personalities. "He may not have any idea," observed a visitor using the tag "ohmygosch" on http://mparent777.blog -city.com.

Jim Rothstein, a retired New York City police officer and longtime investigator on the Gosch case, said becoming a White House reporter is completely in character for a former victim of the pedophilia ring.

In fact, Gannon/Guckert may have orchestrated the scenario for a greater purpose.

"Is it possible he drew attention to himself during that Jan. 26 press conference to pique the curiosity of citizen investigators?" posited one blogger.

...

But the Internet always has answers. White, for instance, explains why newspapers aren't interested in this story.

"Have you ever heard of Operation Mockingbird?" he asked.

It's another theory. It argues that the press is being controlled by the CIA.

Read. The Whole. Thing. I don't know why I bothered to excerpt at all, except to draw you in.

Insane. Insane. Insane. And yet the media just won't call a spade a spade.

I don't seem to remember them having the same reservations about branding the anti-Clinton crazies -- and some were crazy, let's admit; some of us here might even have had a touch of that lunacy at one time or another -- the addled cranks that they were.

Thanks to DB.

ALSO: thanks to Russ from Winterset. He actually tipped me first, but I didn't get around to reading his tip. I thought it was just a link to DU moonbattery -- i.e., the site itself -- which I gotta tell ya I'm sick of wading through. But it was an eariler tip to this article.

Sorry to not credit you, Winterset. I, Hoke Malokey, am a douche.

Update:

PRESIDENT BUSH: Hello, is this the Democratic Underground? I'm so fuckin' into you. I want to make you crazy. Make. You. Craaaazy.

Posted by: Hoke at 12:26 PM | Comments (35)
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Some people claim he committed suicide in a bunker in 1945.

But do you really want to take chances? If you were called upon to join a worldwide manhunt for Hitler, would you be any good at it?

Keep your Hitler-huntin' skills in good order. They may be important one day.

Posted by: Ace at 11:31 AM | Comments (22)
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Must read. They got it wrong, they know they got it wrong, they lied about it later, and they refuse to issue a correction.

Sunlight is the best disinfectant. For everyone except the media.

Posted by: Ace at 11:26 AM | Comments (4)
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