Right Wing News sums up my thinking on this pretty well.

Posted by: Ace at 06:34 AM | Comments (4)
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Just strange:

Another chimp has been having trouble kicking the habit.

As reported in Out There last summer, a female chimpanzee at the zoo in Zhengzhou, China, took up smoking out of frustration at her mate's lack of prowess in the, um, tree.

Maybe she could find sympathy at the zoo in Bloemfontein, South Africa, where Charlie, a very macho male member of her species, has become a positive nicotine fiend after learning how to bum smokes off zoo visitors.

"Baby chimps pick up habits by mimicking adults," Daryl Barnes of the Bloemfontein Zoo (search) told the South African Press Association on April 14. "We think he started mimicking smokers at his enclosure, which probably led to smokers throwing him cigarettes."

Video of Charlie shows him strutting around, cig clamped in mouth, then squatting down to grasp the butt between thumb and forefinger before letting out a hefty puff of smoke.

"He even acts like a naughty schoolboy by hiding the cigarette when staff approach the area," Barnes said.

Animal behavioral psychologists suggested the chimps might have taken up smoking to "look older and cooler," which, of course, they do.

Posted by: Ace at 06:26 AM | Comments (5)
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One of my correspondents keeps wondering why there's so much fighting in the dextrosphere lately.

No idea, but now Right Wing News is up JeffG's and Bill's noses, too.

I'm staying away from all that.

The Ace of Spades Blog

Civil. Mature. Above the fray. A blogger who would never, ever lie to you, unless, of course, there's some advantage to doing so. But I think that's obvious.

PS, I'm retiring again. I just can't take it anymore.*

* Not really. Just being "ironical," as HWWNBN might say.

Although I am in one of those periodic blog-funks.

Posted by: Ace at 06:00 AM | Comments (350)
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I kinda think this was released deliberately.

If so, it worked. I'm seeing the stupid movie now. Probably the first or at least the second week.

Thanks to Brian.

Dave... Don't. Just don't. It's enough already.

Posted by: Ace at 12:16 PM | Comments (34)
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Slublog makes the case.

Expect Tom Ridge to raise the Freak-Out Advisory to "Nauseated" shortly.

Please: Go about your lives as your normally would. For example, if you planned on doing nothing today but chugging Red Bull and Everclear and downloading porn, don't let this increased alert spoil your plans.

Or else the terrorists will have won.

Posted by: Ace at 11:19 AM | Comments (8)
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Sliced and diced over at Powerline. Quoting D.J. Tice:

Friedman is the oracle of the half-hearted left because he is the Hans Blix of commentators. He keeps himself safe by delivering something for everyone in his assessments. In the end this aids only those who are served by public uncertainty -- the cowards and the ruthless. But it also flatters the vanity of those who mistake their ambivalence for sophistication.

Friedman's final pre-war piece today is a classic of smug gutlessness. He wants to see Saddam ousted. But he's disgusted with Bush. He's also ashamed of the French. So where does he stand? Everywhere and nowhere. He's adamant only that everybody's a beast or a fool except Tom. Whatever happens, he'll have been proven right.

He's a boob. It's about time someone said so. Someone besides me, I mean. And without using the f-word.

Thanks to KCTrio.

Worth Reading: A singularly-vicious rip-review of Friedman's latest "most boring kind of middlebrow horseshit," as the review puts it. Read it, even if you don't know who Friedman is. Top-shelf invective.

Posted by: Ace at 10:43 AM | Comments (29)
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No big deal... the BBC just hired hecklers to disrupt a Tory rally:

The BBC was last night plunged into a damaging general election row after it admitted equipping three hecklers with microphones and sending them into a campaign meeting addressed by Michael Howard, the Conservative leader.

The Tories have made an official protest after the hecklers, who were given the microphones by producers, were caught at a party event in the North West last week. Guy Black, the party's head of communications, wrote in a letter to Helen Boaden, the BBC's director of news, that the hecklers began shouting slogans that were "distracting and clearly hostile to the Conservative Party".

These included "Michael Howard is a liar", "You can't trust the Tories" and "You can only trust Tony Blair".

Mr Black's strongly-worded letter accused the BBC of staging the event "to generate a false news story and dramatise coverage. . . intended to embarrass or ridicule the leader of the Conservative Party". The letter said that BBC staff were guilty of "serious misconduct". At least one of the hecklers was seen again at a Tory event in the North East, Mr Black added.

Last night, the BBC claimed that the exercise was part of a "completely legitimate programme about the history and art of political heckling"

Uh-huh.

... and said that other parties' meetings were being "observed".

Oh, well, if the others were being "observed," I can certainly understand paying hecklers to disrupt the Tories.

However, The Telegraph has established that none of Tony Blair's meetings was infiltrated or disrupted in similar fashion.

Shockingly enough.

The Conservatives have called for an apology and an assurance that no such incident will occur again. It has also demanded that the BBC promises never to broadcast the footage. The corporation said it would investigate "very fully".

Very fully. They've already tapped Paul Volcker and Richard Thornburg to head up a blue-ribbon ad hoc fact-finding panel.

Posted by: Ace at 10:30 AM | Comments (10)
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NYT shock: Bureaucratic pussyboys whine about being yelled at by Bolton.

Are we not men?:

Mr. Westermann wrote to Mr. Fingar to say that "personal attacks, harassment and impugning of my integrity" by Mr. Bolton and Mr. Fleitz were "now affecting my work, my health and dedication to public service."

He impugned my integrity, he beat me in the face with a ballpeen hammer, and then my shoes fell off.

Thanks to Wizbang!, who quotes Eagleberger on the continuing pussification of America. (Umm, not Eagleberger's words. He uses more tactful language, such as "unchecked queerbaitery.")

Fear not America, Canada. We're well on our way to becoming as feminized as you are.

Posted by: Ace at 10:19 AM | Comments (6)
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Call me cynical, but I can't help but about half of this story is over-juiced in order to show that John Kerry really is a "fighter" and possesses something akin to human emotion:

April 23, 2005 -- WASHINGTON — A fuming John Kerry had "daggers in his eyes" after a fellow Democrat promoted Hillary Rodham Clinton for president — suggesting the 2004 loser is green with envy at a potential rival.

The flap was touched off two weeks ago when Clinton spoke at a Minneapolis Democratic dinner and Sen. Mark Dayton (D-Minn.) told the cheering crowd that he was introducing "the next great president of the United States."

Two days later, Kerry came over to Dayton on the Senate floor "with daggers in his eyes and said, 'What are you doing endorsing my 2008 presidential opponent?' . . . He was very serious," Dayton told the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

...

Kerry spokesman David Wade tried to make light of the story, claiming "some lines must have gotten crossed in his retelling of this particular conversation" — and insisted they were mostly "joshing" about hockey.

But Dayton's office says the "daggers in his eyes" report was accurate and Dayton has no quarrel with it.

In related news, Mark Dayton was so terrified by the deadly knives in Kerry's eyes that he immediately closed down his Washington office again "in order to protect his staff and visiting constituents from the danger of potential optical stabbings."

Kerry, all-around-genius and master political strategist, has chosen to emulate one of the undisputed champions of political maneuverings, Al Gore:

Meanwhile, Kerry — and his outspoken wife Teresa Heinz Kerry — are increasingly claiming he was robbed last November and should have won.

Hope that works out for you, feller.

Look at the fire and passion in those eyes. I'm getting chills
just gazing into those deadly orbs of hatred.

John F'n' Kerry

Yeah, so I'm a bit of an android. But Yul Brenner was an android in Westworld, and he kicked ass!

Posted by: Ace at 07:24 AM | Comments (12)
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Riehl World has what is either a transcript of the Matthews show during the election of the new Pope, or a vicious parody of it.

HOST: Good evening. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger has been elected the new pope, taking the name Pope Benedict XVI. MSNBC‘s David Shuster is standing by above St. Peter‘s Square in the Vatican—David.

SHUSTER: Regardless of what people say they may think about Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, just about everybody we talk with here tonight, Chris, said that this is an evening for hope and possibility—Chris.

MATTHEWS: David, is that hope over experience, because we know that he's a former nazi, ergo Jew-hater extraoridnaire who hopes to see third world women die in the back alley's of non-state sanctioned abortionists.

SHUSTER: No, he's just a short-term bone thrown to the fascist right to help fill the collection plate. This loser will be gone in a few years.

MATTHEWS: OK, great report, David Shuster. George Weigel is a NBC analyst. George, what can we expect from the new pope, Benedict XVI?

GEORGE WEIGEL, NBC NEWS ANALYST: Chris, Joseph Ratzinger had a long devotion to St. Benedict, one of the saviors of western civilization at the beginning of what we conventionally call the dark ages. So I think the program is the revitalization of a goose-stepping Christian culture throughout the world, most especially in Europe leaving the third world to die on the vine, as always.

As usual, it's hard to say for sure whether it's real or a parody. I suspect it's a parody, because Matthews only mentions having worked for Tip O'Neill about eight or nine times, and anyone who's watched Hardball knows damn well the number ought to be twenty to twenty-five mentions.

Posted by: Ace at 07:06 AM | Comments (12)
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