A donation for $5000 from Anheuser-Busch, intended for the South Carolina Republican Party, was accidentally sent to the Democrats.

Who promptly deposited it.

And, like Air America, they're promising to give it back... but the check is still apparently in the mail.

Thanks to NickS.

I know this is a longshot, but seriously, if anyone out there has a Budweiser check intended for Ace of Spades that accidentally got delivered to you...

Posted by: Ace at 01:07 PM | Comments (10)
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Apparently Forgets That Heroes Need To Be Mentioned In Large, Influential Newspapers For Anyone To Read About Them

Nice for the NYT to even bother to write an essay about looking for heroes. They're not actually looking for them; but they are writing about looking for them, which is a start.

RCL, on f'n' fire today, notes:

Numerous blogs are properly incredulous that the left wing NYT's would dare ask this question. To understand how galling this truly is, I used the NYTs "site search", entering first "hero" and then "heroic". I received only one hit refering to the current war in Iraq, namely the above article. The NYT, which prints "All the News That is Fit to Print" has not seen fit to publicize a single person or action from the Iraq war which they described as a "hero" or characterized as "heroic". Death, Gitmo, Halliburton, they all go page one, above the fold. Yet, a single "hero"? A "heroic" act? Not in Bush's War.

On the plus side, they did manage to criticize the White House.

Fancy that!

John Burns is one NYT reporter who isn't overcome with left-wing bias and anti-war zealotry. But he's just one voice among hundreds.

It's not precisely difficult to find heroes in Iraq. They're not hiding. Every man and woman over there is serving heroically, exposing themselves to death and maiming in order to bring democracy and stability to a nation long-accursed by vicious despotism.

And then of course there are the superheroes that make the heroes look like slackers. Guys like Timothy Haag, for example.

The NYT can't find any heroes in Iraq because it has decided, as editorial policy, that Iraq is an unheroic war. Talk about killing your parents and then whining to the judge that you're an orphan.

More Heroes So Secretive About Their Heroism They Only Write Books About It and Appear on FoxNews: No wonder the news-sleuths at the New York Times can't find these stealth heroes!

Via Megan:

Wow. Fox just had a brief spot with the author of this book [Facing Terror, by Cathie McDonnall].

Carrie took 20 bullets and lost her husband while trying to help the Iraqis. Asked what she thought of the Iraqi people now, who had cost her what most people would consider pretty much fucking everything, and if she'd ever go back, she said (paraphrasing from memory):

"The Iraqis were very welcoming people, very friendly to us, and they were eager to receive the help they needed, the help we were there to give them. I'm going to stay faithful to God's plans for me. If He wants me to go back and help the Iraqis again, I will."

It's hard to find heroes in Iraq. Why, you'd have to go to the bother of looking up a publisher on Amazon and then you'd actually have to call the publisher to get the author's number, or the number of her press agent.

What sort of newspaper has time or resources for that kind of tedious detective-work?

Posted by: Ace at 12:53 PM | Comments (14)
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No, not like that, perverts.

In a dopey Larry King style News & Views bit of automatic writing, Rather lays upon us homespun gems of moronwisdom.

First, the typical Texas dustball/cornball shit:

You trust your mother. But you cut the cards anyway.

Always marry a woman from Texas. No matter how tough things get, she's seen tougher.

A guy I used to work with named Shorty Atkins was filled with these little pearls of wisdom. One was "Never lie down with a woman who has more troubles than you have." Which is not bad advice at all.

Uhhh, at least two of those are so old they actually pre-date Dan Rather. The first and last seem to come from the cliche bit of folksy wisdom, "Never play cards with a guy name Doc, never eat at a place called Mom's, and never lie down with a woman who has more troubles than you."

The idiot's going to start quoting Garfield next. "If there's one thing my 40 years as a hard-news journalist has taught me, it's that lasagna is good, Mondays are bad, and never work with children or a big-eyed puppy named Odie."

Then he gets to his Hard News Dan/Super-Patriotic Dan schtick:

There's always been pressure to sit down, shut up, don't ask the tough questions. Go along to get along. Every administration has done it. But each succeeding administration has gotten better at it. If we aren't careful, the tradition in American journalism of "Be skeptical. Don't be intimidated. Don't be afraid to put tough questions to power" will be shaken. It'll be serious, something much bigger than journalism. The issue speaks to what kind of country we are and what kind of country we're going to become.

Nobody has more respect for the office of the presidency than I do.

Well, at least one person has more respect for the presidency: Lucy Ramirez, who had the guts to deliver those memos to Bill Burkett at a cattle show (through a shady intermediary, of course).

Another Psuedoratherism... But needs a content warning. more...

Posted by: Ace at 12:28 PM | Comments (9)
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Including, or should I say especially, their fellow Europeans, who actually have to deal with them:

Resentment of France is growing in Eastern Europe where French policies are perceived to be anti-American and undermining the European Union's cohesion.

Diplomats describe the mood as "Francophobia" and attribute it to various statements by French President Jacques Chirac and to the rejection by French voters of the proposed European constitution.

According to one assessment, "The vast majority of people in Eastern and Central Europe is highly critical of French diplomacy. They consider the United States to be the big winner of the Cold War and the most influential power in the world."

"We tend to blame the French for everything -- or almost everything," said Jan Eichler of the Institute of International Relations in the Czech Republic.

According to Polish sources, suggestions have been posited in the former communist countries for a more balanced policy by the EU that would see the United States as a partner, not as a competitor. Some diplomats say French prestige and France's role as one of the union's dominant powers have suffered.

And Europe is beginning to reject France's musty claims about French being the "language of diplomacy." English is fast becoming the official language of diplomacy, leaving Frenchmen to sputter.

Michel Herbillon, author of a recent report on the EU's linguistic status, pointed out that the union's recruitment announcements are only in English and that candidates applying for jobs must submit their requests in English.

"What will happen next?" he lamented.

Next up, French will stop even being the "language of impressing a girl in a French restaurant by ordering a la carte with a passable accent," to be supplanted by Italian or, perhaps, even Roman-Romansch, the language of Gypsies.

Thanks to GregS.

Posted by: Ace at 12:13 PM | Comments (8)
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You can only hit the snooze button for so long before you must wake up. Some of Blair's proposals or accomplished changes in the law, according to his address:

The Home Secretary today publishes new grounds for deportation and exclusion. Deportation is a decision taken by the Home Secretary under statute. The new grounds will include fostering hatred, advocating violence to further a person's beliefs or justifying or validating such violence. These grounds will be subject to a short consultation period which will finish this month. Even under existing grounds, however, we are today signalling a new approach to deportation orders. Let no-one be in any doubt. The rules of the game are changing.

...

One other point on deportations. Once the new grounds take effect, there will be a list drawn up of specific extremist websites, bookshops, centres, networks and particular organisations of concern. Active engagement with any of these will be a trigger for the Home Secretary to consider the deportation of any foreign national.

As has been stated already, there will be new anti-terrorism legislation in the Autumn. This will include an offence of condoning or glorifying terrorism. The sort of remarks made in recent days should be covered by such laws. But this will also be applied to justifying or glorifying terrorism anywhere, not just in the UK.

Anyone who has participated in terrorism or has anything to do with it anywhere will automatically be refused asylum.

We have already powers to strip citizenship from those individuals with British or dual nationality who act in a way that is contrary to the interests of this country. We will now consult on extending these powers, applying them to naturalised citizens engaged in extremism and making the procedures simpler and more effective.

Cases such as Rashid Ramda wanted for the Paris metro bombing ten years ago and who is still in the UK whilst France seeks extradition, are completely unacceptable. We will begin consultation, on setting a maximum time limit for all future extradition cases involving terrorism.

Lots of good stuff from Blair, though a lot of it falls into the "You're just getting around to doing this now?!" file.

Posted by: Ace at 12:08 PM | Comments (6)
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I expect it's an evolutionary thing, crucial to the survival of the species, because if we actually heard all the ridiculous things you gals say we'd have throttled every single one of you by the Neolithic era.

And then we would have sat around, scratching our balls with primative ball-scratching devices made from mastodon tusks, thinking, "Damn, I sure do miss the boobies."

Men who are accused of never listening by women now
have an excuse - women's voices are more difficult for men to listen to than other men's...Reports say researchers at Sheffield University in northern England have discovered startling differences in the way the brain responds to male and female sounds...The research shows men decipher female voices using the auditory part of the brain that processes music, while male voices engage a simpler mechanism.

...The Daily Mail quotes researcher Michael Hunter as saying, "the female voice is actually more complex than the male voice, due to differences in the size and shape of the vocal cords and larynx between men and women, and also due to women having greater natural 'melody' in their voices"..."This causes a more complex range of sound frequencies than in a male voice," Mr Hunter said...The report says the findings may help explain why people suffering hallucinations usually hear male voices - the brain may find it much harder to conjure up a false female voice accurately than a false male voice...The research is published in the specialist magazine NeuroImage.

"Sorry, baby, I misheard your request to put on America's Next Top Model. I thought you said, 'Hey, let's watch Die Hard With a Vengeance for the sixtieth time, because I know you like it.' Your voice is just too 'melodic' and 'complex' to register in my sadly deficient male moronbrain."

Tipster RCL adds:

For so long, when confronted with our inability to actually hear what woman are demanding from us, the best man could hope do was mount the Jake Blue Tunnel Defense:

JAKE: Oh, please, don't kill us. Please, please don't kill us. You know I love you baby. I wouldn't leave ya. It wasn't my fault.

MYSTERY WOMAN: You miserable slug! You think you can talk your way out of this? You betrayed me.

JAKE: No I didn't. Honest... I ran out of gas. I, I had a flat tire. I didn't have enough money for cab fare. My tux didn't come back from the cleaners. An old friend came in from out of town. Someone stole my car. There was an earthquake. A terrible flood. Locusts. IT WASN'T MY FAULT, I SWEAR TO GOD.

Finally, irrefutable scientific proof that we just can't hear what the distaff half is yammering about. Not because we are watching "The Game.".

Not because we are faking post-coital sleep.

Not because we just don't care. "It's science baby. Now get me a beer."

You owe it to man-kind to publish this important alibi...er, scientific data.

Done and done. And I mean done.

Posted by: Ace at 11:07 AM | Comments (15)
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He'll take 16 top prospects and subject them to his, uhhh, unothodox methods of inspiration. The winner gets a spot on his Texas Tech team.

His elimination catchphrase? Not "You're fired." Just "Duck, because I just threw a chair at you, you cocksucking pussy-faggit twat."

He's already looking to get it trademarked.

Thanks to RCL, who frets:

Bobby Knight will have a reality show in which he will
"whittle" contestants. "Whittle"? Mr. Knight has shot a hunting companion, choked players, attacked fans and committed too numerous attempt ADW's (assault with a deadly weapon) with chair to count. And these are merely the documented attacks. Now he is being charged with "whittling" victims/contestents. There is something horribly irresponsible about this. Kind of like that Fox gem, " When Animals Attack", but no one is going to go after Knight with a tranquilizer gun for some payback.

Sorry to disagree. I think he'll go out of his way to seem like a nice reasonable guy, which will mean ratings disaster.

Dance with the girl that brung ya. Throw that chair, Bobby. Throw it like the wind.

Posted by: Ace at 10:48 AM | Comments (7)
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I certainly don't endorse the construction of lethal weapons from common office supplies like paper clips, rubber bands, and pencils, but, as Clarence Whorley said in True Romance, "I'd rather have an improvised paper-clip crossbow and not need it than need a paper-clip crossbow and not have it."

You know what makes this rock? The laser-pointer laser-site. Because we all know, from action movies, that just putting that little red dot on someone is enough to send them diving behind the coffee cabinet.

That little red dot is more effective at saying "I must insist you stop it right now or something very bad is going to happen" than the throaty kuh-chuck of a pump-action shotgun advancing its shells into the breach.

Thanks to the Fat Kid.

Posted by: Ace at 10:38 AM | Comments (9)
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Some guy named Mithras got some blog-play for posting a nasty "Conservative Blogger Taxonomy," attacking a lot of the bigger conservative bloggers in personal terms.

I can't really cry foul, because, um, I've done that on occasion myself.

Pretty pissed off not to be included, though.

Bill from INDC has a roundup of those who bothered reacting, including from Dean Esmay.

He also wonders why the tolerant left can't seem to be capable of criticizing Michelle Malkin without resorting to attacks on her sex and, uhhh, her race.

Doesn't seem very tolerant.

He also notes that there is no female non-white blogger on the left of nearly the influence of Ms. Malkin. Perhaps that's what's driving them so batty about her.

They preach colorblindness, we actually practice it.

I've razzed Oliver Willis seven bazillion times on this blog, and never once did I allude to the fact that he's black. How on earth would such an attack advance any cause?

I don't really get it... I guess it's along the lines of why gay-friendly comedians are allowed to make gay jokes without any fallout. When someone knows you're on their side, you can admit, Okay, Kath Griffin makes a good point; we can be a little silly and bitchy sometimes, and what the hell is our deal with "It's Raining Men" anyhow?

I think many liberals similarly imagine they have carte blance on the race question.

But I'm not sure they have the bona fides of racial tolerance they presume they do. Their starting assumption -- that if you're a person of color any shade darker than pale you are expected to think in a certain way -- seems expressly racist to me.

Consider: What if I began knocking VonKreedon for being a race-traitor? Selling out the white race and such?

"Racial solidarity" morphs easily into "race loyalty," which seems to me to be the very definition of racism.

But to the left, it's only racist if whiteys do it.

If it weren't for double-standards, many on the left would have no standards at all.

Right Wing Nuthouse Returns Fire: I would have done this myself, but I'm too busy being a serious, respectable citizen journalist.

Posted by: Ace at 10:29 AM | Comments (11)
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He died with his boots off:

man killed in an unusual accident in Pittsburgh's Brighton Heights neighborhood has not been identified yet.

Police said the man ran a stop sign and crashed into a pole in the 3700 block of California Avenue at about 9:20 p.m. Thursday.

The driver was not going very fast, but he was found naked and in a compromising position with a female passenger, police said.

The woman survived the crash, only to be arrested. Police said she will face drug charges.

Naked, in a compromising position with a woman, while driving, and on drugs?

What are the odds of a fatal driving mishap? No greater than one in three, I'm thinking.

He Didn't Read His P.J. O'Rourke, Alas: P.J.'s essential advice: "How to DRIVE FAST on DRUGS while getting your WING-WANG SQUEEZED and not SPILL YOUR DRINK."

Thanks to the BumperStickerist.

Belated Hat-Tip: Sometimes I open an article and don't get around to posting it for days on end, then I can't figure out who sent it to me. That happened here. I've had this in an open window for days.

The Warden of Cliffs of Insanity says he sent it to me, and I believe him.

Posted by: Ace at 10:09 AM | Comments (12)
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