No disagreement on that one, Mr. Anka:

That was recorded 15 years ago by a real snake that we fired. We had a nice big moment on Howard Stern, where he played the tape and he absolutely agreed with it. He said "I've done that. I do that." And everybody does. I think any guy running a company gets the whole point of that tape. I'm a real stickler for detail, and I have a real strong responsibility to my audience. When I'm up on that stage, anything I do has to be as perfect as possible for the consumer and for whomever. I don't just go to work and take the check and run. What happened there was there were a lot of mistakes in the band, in the sense that we'd rehearsed it one way, and we'd have a cutoff, where everybody has to end together. The other thing was that we'd spent a lot of money getting guys dressed so there was uniformity. And the guys just dropped the ball.

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. #1, The Guys Get Shirts. #2, Where the fuck were you on the cut-off to My Way?

Thanks to Karol.

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But a funny one.

Posted by: Ace at 12:13 PM | Comments (2)
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Lots of Cindy Sheehan stuff, although I could give a rat's ass. It's Terror Widow Syndrome all over again. These people have an emotional investment in and reaction to 9/11 and the War on Terror, but emotion doesn't, or rather shouldn't, trump sensible decision-making.

I am deathly tired of the left-wing media's celebration and promotion and exploitation of these ersatz celebrities and newly-minted experts on geopolitics.

They're celebrities of grief. To hell with the bitterati.

So I'm not linking her post for that.

Rather, I'm linking it because some idiot decided to write her a profanity-laced email from work, even using the c-word. In fact, a lot of her hatemail contains the c-word. Seems to be the go-to put-down against women on the angry left.

I don't know; I keep away from that one, especially as regards women. (Nothing more satisfying than calling a guy that, though. Just make sure you're bigger than him.)

So, anyway, this douche got shitcanned from work for sending out such nasty missives from the company's servers.

I'm a little torn. On one hand, it does limit freedoms to have our places of business firing us for expressing opinions from a place where we spend the better part of our lives.

On the other hand, it's kinda nice to say "Hope you've got your resume together, c**t."

It still perplexes me... why the f don't I get hate-mail? I'm certainly asking for it. The best I get along those lines is VonKreedon sending me polite disagreements.

I wonder if I can get him fired. Just for shits and giggles.

Actually... I'm not all that torn. There are certain things you can't do from a place of business, on their dime, and sending out hate-mail containing the Red Queen of Profanity is one of them.

"Hope your whole family dies" is another choice one that's probably best sent from home.

Thanks to OgreGunner, by the way.

Hate For Me: SobekPundit thinks he can bully me.

Posted by: Ace at 11:47 AM | Comments (29)
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Smart and literate, which means it's lost on you morons.

On the other hand, it does have a "Yee ha" in it, so maybe you'll at least dig that.

Posted by: Ace at 10:50 AM | Comments (8)
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Love getting emails from DefenseTech.

Army Chooses New T-3 Hunter-Killer Unmanned Armed Drone:

Defense News notes that "unlike Predator, the ERMP will be able to take off and land automatically" -- handing off the trickiest parts of piloting a drone to a computer. Which means that the ERMP can be flown by young enlisted men, instead of by the ex-fighter pilots, who now operate the Predator fleet.

And it can stay airborn for 72 hours. The Predator can't manage even a day.

"Open Source Insurgency:" The internet means that terrorcraft no longer need be disseminated in training classes in small cells. Now terrorcraft is open to all, just a mouseclick away.

LAPD's New Super Sonic Stunner:

Since the early part of last year, U.S. soldiers and marines have been experimenting with a series of sonic blasters in Iraq. The Long Range Acoustic Devices, or "LRADs," can broadcast messages hundreds of yards away -- or be ear-splittingly loud at close range. The New York Police Department also had the devices at the ready during the Republican National Convention, although it's unclear whether the LRADs were actually used or not.

Last week, the L.A. Sheriff's Department tested out an acoustic transmitter that makes earlier models look like "childrens' toys" in comparison, LASD Commander Sid Heal, a world-renowned expert in non-lethal weaponry, tells Defense Tech.

On Thursday, August 4th, we put the magnetic acoustic device (I'm not sure it has a name yet, so this one will have to do for now) to the test on one of our ranges... Using a variety of sounds from human voice to music to sound effects (screams, shouts, gunfire, sirens, and the like), we succeeded in listening to the sounds from the transmitter located one statue mile in the distance!

Gee, I just can't wait until they come down in price and people can put them in the back of their Escalades.

Finally, I don't like this guy's snarky take, but I'm glad that more athletes are getting involved in politics.

Former 49'ers linebacker is now a "cheerleader" for anti-ballistic missile systems.

Posted by: Ace at 10:43 AM | Comments (8)
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Thanks to Slublog for reminding me.

Slu links this bit by Dr. James Dobson, on How To De-Homoize Your Son:

Meanwhile, the boy's father has to do his part. He needs to mirror and affirm his son's maleness. He can play rough-and-tumble games with his son, in ways that are decidedly different from the games he would play with a little girl. He can help his son learn to throw and catch a ball. He can teach him to pound a square wooden peg into a square hole in a pegboard. He can even take his son with him into the shower, where the boy cannot help but notice that Dad has a penis, just like his, only bigger.

Uhhhmmm...

If you're trying to defaggify a son you think is a little bit too, what's the word?, Sal Mineo, is the best course of action to shower with him and show off your Big Daddy Penis?

More advice:

Aversion therapy can also be effective. Just as fathers will frequently force a boy caught smoking to chain-smoke an entire pack of cigarettes, a boy who seems to have sexual interest in other boys can be turned away from this impulse by selling him into brutalizing Bangkok boywhoredom and forcing him to "service" sixty Japanese businessmen on "golfing vacations" in a single day.

Okay, I'm making that up.

Posted by: Ace at 10:13 AM | Comments (30)
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That he's been operating in Britain openly tells you just how far behind the curve the Brits have been on this.

Thanks to the Powerline guys' new attempt at even more crazy blog-money, the Powerlineblog News Service, which is sorta like Drudge, but topped off by a map of the world that does not show a hurricane track.

Posted by: Ace at 10:03 AM | Comments (1)
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It's a surprise to Michael Totten, but not to me.

It's a long, long, long tradition for spies to keep a phone line open, even when it's not in use, to hear everything that's going on in the room. Usually you need a multi-line phone to do this -- one line is kept open, while actual calls are allowed to go through to the other lines -- or else the target of surveillance will begin to wonder why his phone always gives a busy signal to callers, even when he's not on it.

Posted by: Ace at 09:41 AM | Comments (4)
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I've wanted to write this for a while. It's not timely anymore. So this is a big waste of time.

But if Democratic politicians really believe that the Social Security system is a better "investment" than, you know, actual investments, why don't they put all their savings into the Social Security system? If the law does not permit overpayments into the system, we can change that to allow people to contribute as much as they want to the system, drawing out additional funds pro rata based on their higher contributions.

Sound good to any of them? I doubt it.

I was finally prompted to mention this by The New Editor's post that Howard Dean, dedicated foe of personal accounts, has a cool $2.5 mil invested in stocks and bonds.

Either he's lying about the risks of the stock market or else he's crazy.

Not sure which. Honestly, I'm not. I could go either way on this one.

Posted by: Ace at 09:07 AM | Comments (12)
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All right, even I'll say it: the Right Must Boycott.

George Clooney, Oliver Stone, the Siblings Gyllenhaalenahallyllenahall, Mat Damon... all the gang's here and set to sap America's morale.

I still can't figure out why Steven Spielberg is making a movie about the Munich massacre that actually "humanizes" the Palestinian terrorists and dwells on the horrors perpetrated by... the Mossad agents who tracked those terrorists down and killed them. He's a big donor to the Holocaust Museum, he sounded moderate notes (which is extreme right wing for Hollywood) on Saddam Hussein and the War in Iraq... and now he'll be making a movie which, if not quite justifying the Olympic slaughter, will at least go a long way towards suggesting "They were both equally wrong, in their own ways."

I guess I know why prestige movies take the terrorists' side and as far as rah-rah stuff we get dreck like Stealth. It's always considered more mature and deeper to critically examine one's self, or one's country, and to reach out and try to understand one's enemies.

But I would say there are some cases where that general rule fails. Would anyone in Hollywood greenlight a sympathetic portrait of the Nazis? Or of James Byrd's killers?

How much barbarity does an enemy have to engage in before the reflexive masocistic impulse of liberals to "look at our own behavior" gets toggled off? Apparently 2800 deaths (and counting!) just isn't enough.

Meanwhile, of course, no such critical self-examination is going on in the Muslim world. Okay, yes, actually, there is some; one reads editorials from time to time suggesting a wholesale re-examination of principles. But Muslim pop culture isn't telling world Muslims that terrorism is bad; it continues to justify it.

And Hollywood's right there with them.

Thanks to JMSanchez.

Update: Hubris says he'll wait to judge the movie once it's actually made.

Kid, we're bloggers. Off-the-cuff opinions based on sketchy information are our stock in trade.

But This Ain't It Cool News link he provides, quoting a long NY piece on the film, does seem to demonstrate my opinion isn't that off-the-cuff, or the current information all that sketchy:

Mr. Spielberg's interest in the question of a civilized nation's proper response to terrorism deepened, aides said, after the 9/11 attacks, as Americans were grappling for the first time with similar issues - for instance, in each new lethal strike on a suspected terrorist leader by a C.I.A. Predator drone aircraft. In Mr. Kushner's script, people who have read it say, the Israeli assassins find themselves struggling to understand how their targets were chosen, whether they belonged on the hit list and, eventually, what, if anything, their killing would accomplish.

"What comes through here is the human dimension," said Mr. Ross, formerly the Middle East envoy for Mr. Clinton, who has advised the filmmakers on the screenplay and helped Mr. Spielberg reach out to officials in the region. "You're contending with an enormously difficult set of challenges when you have to respond to a horrific act of terror. Not to respond sends a signal that actions are rewarded and the perpetrators can get away with it. But you have to take into account that your response may not achieve what you wish to achieve, and that it may have consequences for people in the mission."

Mr. Spielberg's statement indicated that, despite the implications for other conflicts, his movie - to be shot in Malta, Budapest and New York - was aimed squarely at the Israeli-Palestinian divide.

"Viewing Israel's response to Munich through the eyes of the men who were sent to avenge that tragedy adds a human dimension to a horrific episode that we usually think about only in political or military terms," he said. "By experiencing how the implacable resolve of these men to succeed in their mission slowly gave way to troubling doubts about what they were doing, I think we can learn something important about the tragic standoff we find ourselves in today."

Tragic... standoff? A Mexican standoff is where you all have guns but no one fires first.

This must be a different sort of standoff. One in which a group of people keep blowing up pizzerias and weddings and the other group occasionally kills those who are doing the killing.

I will admit that there wouldn't be much real internal human drama (and thus it wouldn't be a prestige picture at all) if the Mossad agents did not doubt and wrestle with their mission. It's that sort of thing that wins Oscars. Well, to be honest, it's that sort of internal conflict that separates a real movie from a popcorn bang-bang movie.

But... is it appropriate here? That is the standard template for this sort of movie, a serious movie about violence. But if the template doesn't really fit, you've got to get another template, or you've got to abandon the project as unworkable.

Let's review the facts. The Palestinian terrorists slaughtered 19 innocent Israeli athletes. The German government who captured them arrangned with the Palestinians to have a German plane "hijacked," so that they would have an excuse to release the terrorists without looking like, well, Germans. Denied any sort of judicial justice, the Isrealis sought justice of the extra-judicial sort.

And this is a cause for hand-wringing crybaby self-doubt?

Maybe this picture will tell us a lot about the Palestinian-Israeli "standoff" -- they kill innocents, the Israelis kill the killers of innocents, and then even feel guilty about doing so -- but perhaps not quite what Mr. Spielberg intends to tell us.

Posted by: Ace at 08:56 AM | Comments (32)
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