Kidnapped, beaten, drugged, and generally coerced to be a suicide bomber. He says he wanted none of it, and our military believes him.

Not to be overly optimistic (I save that for the Giants), but when the Nazis began drafting 14-year-olds, that was pretty much the end of them, wasn't it?

Posted by: Ace at 09:41 AM | Comments (13)
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I apologize to Gregg Easterbrook for swiping the name of his old column. Just thought that maybe I'd start a thread for people to crow, whine, or cry about their teams.

I hate saying this -- because I've been hurt and heartbroken so many times before -- but I am starting to think the NY Giants are for real, at least as a solid playoff contender. The special teams have gone from a dismal liability to a shining asset, the defense actually seems to be okay (for years, the Giants' defense was much-praised, owing more to team history than actual performance), and damnit, the team's most glaring weakness -- its offensive line -- seems to be doing a good if not great job in pass and run blocking.

Eli Manning is actually throwing catchable balls.

Jeremy Shockey is actually holding on to them. That was always his liability. He had great virtues as a receiver, but, sadly, successfully receiving a thrown ball was not among them. (Yeah, I know he's a tight end.)

Every play I scream "put in Brandon Jacobs" because I love watching him smash into people with abandon. But these screams are a little dampened by Tiki Barber scampering 8, 12, or 15 yards every few runs.

And Gibril Wilson is just fun, because he hits like a sonofabitch despite his small size. And his name is close to "Gerbil," which is fun to say.

Meanwhile, there's the Packers, the Lions, the Chargers, the Ravens, etc.

Posted by: Ace at 08:42 AM | Comments (36)
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Wish he'd made the Nixonian announcement that we "won't have Dan Rather to kick around anymore" and just gone away:

Former CBS News anchor Dan Rather said Monday that there is a climate of fear running through newsrooms stronger than he has ever seen in his more than four-decade career.

...

Addressing the Fordham University School of Law in Manhattan, occasionally forcing back tears, he said that in the intervening years, politicians "of every persuasion" had gotten better at applying pressure on the conglomerates that own the broadcast networks. He called it a "new journalism order."

I know the New Man should be unafraid to display his emotions (well, I guess he has to pretend to have emotions, and then display them), but seriously, this guy goes on more crying jags than Sally Field in Soapdish.

Or, for that matter, he cries as much as Aaron Broussard, so upset by the death of his friend's wife he couldn't remember if she'd died five days ago or only two.

Seems about as emotionally-centered, too.

He said this pressure -- along with the "dumbed-down, tarted-up" coverage, the advent of 24-hour cable competition and the chase for ratings and demographics -- has taken its toll on the news business. "All of this creates a bigger atmosphere of fear in newsrooms," Rather said.

The "atmosphere of fear" is caused by people having the desire and technology to talk back to you, Dan.

The media is in crisis. For a long while they enjoyed a not-very-well-earned imprimatur of credibility. They've squandered that, and feel the loss of that power -- and this is about power -- in their very bones.

But rather than attempting to rebuild that credibility, earn it, most prefer to whine about its eroision. "People should listen to us," they feel in their marrow. "We went to good schools and are filled with good intentions and we're brave and conscientious and wise."

Well, eff that noise, Dan.

Rather sort of gives the game away here:

...

Rather praised the coverage of Hurricane Katrina by the new generation of TV journalists and acknowledged that he would have liked to have reported from the Gulf Coast. "Covering hurricanes is something I know something about," he said.

"It's been one of television news' finest moments," Rather said of the Katrina coverage. He likened it to the coverage of President Kennedy's assassination in 1963.

"They were willing to speak truth to power," Rather said of the coverage.

"Speaking truth to power" is of course an obnoxious slogan of left-liberals, reeking of sixties revolutionary funk like an MC5 8-track MacGuyvered into a makeshift bong.

It's a gassy bit of nonsense filled with questionable assumptions (whose truth? And whose power will you speak it to?), but I'm pretty confident that Rather speaks for 80% of the press corps when he says this.

You can either be advocates and agents of change or you can be disinterested reporters of news. You're entitled to do either, but you cannot claim to be doing both simultaneously.

The unexamined lie at the heart of journalism is that these two contradictory missions can be reconciled through the "professionalism" learned at j-school.

They can't be reconciled. Rather's idea that they can be reconciled is based on his assumption that his liberal agenda, being the One True Way, is objective truth, and hence both of his missions -- advancing progressive liberalism, reporting the news without fear or favor -- are basically just different names for the same thing, to wit, "Speaking Truth to Power."

Posted by: Ace at 07:45 AM | Comments (44)
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Top secret government source Deep Stoat sends this PDF file of 6000+ pork/"earmarked" expenditures in the Transportation Bill.

Among the high-priority "infrastructure investements" absolutely requiring the expenditure of federal funds: an $18,800 smoker's lounge for a NJ airport.

Posted by: Ace at 07:31 AM | Comments (12)
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Possible bombshell: one AD officer will reveal the name of the superior who ordered him to destroy 2.5 terabytes of informtion the team had collected.

There may be a good reason for that. The program was shut down because, superiors felt, it was coming close to spying on Americans, if not actually doing so. So there are justifiable reasons to destroy the group's research, apart from CYA.

Still-- could be some fireworks.

Posted by: Ace at 07:24 AM | Comments (4)
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Throwing their hands up in the air, as if to say “I’ve Got Nothin,” NASA, today, announced we’ll return the Moon. Yep. Men on the Moon. By 2018. And to think they said it couldn’t be done.

NyTimes:

Using a new craft similar to a scaled-up Apollo command capsule and new rockets largely made up of components from the space shuttle program, he said, Americans can re-establish themselves on the moon for 55 percent of the inflation-adjusted cost for the first moon-landing program, which put a dozen men on the lunar surface from 1969 to 1972….

NASA said the new crew vehicle would be 10 times safer than the space shuttle, partly because it will have escape rockets that could jettison the capsule away from the booster rocket in the event of an accident. The space agency puts the existing failure rate for space shuttles at 1-in-220, compared with 1-in-2,000 for the new vehicle.

Great, cause nothing fires the imagination like a safer, inflation adjusted, cost efficient retread of something we lost interest in 50 years before. more...

Posted by: Dr. Reo Symes at 05:28 PM | Comments (91)
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Throwing their hands up in the air, as if to say “I’ve Got Nothin,” NASA, today, announced we’ll return the Moon. Yep. Men on the Moon. By 2018. And to think they said it couldn’t be done.

NyTimes:

Using a new craft similar to a scaled-up Apollo command capsule and new rockets largely made up of components from the space shuttle program, he said, Americans can re-establish themselves on the moon for 55 percent of the inflation-adjusted cost for the first moon-landing program, which put a dozen men on the lunar surface from 1969 to 1972Â….

NASA said the new crew vehicle would be 10 times safer than the space shuttle, partly because it will have escape rockets that could jettison the capsule away from the booster rocket in the event of an accident. The space agency puts the existing failure rate for space shuttles at 1-in-220, compared with 1-in-2,000 for the new vehicle.

Great, cause nothing fires the imagination like a safer, inflation adjusted, cost efficient retread of something we lost interest in 50 years before. more...

Posted by: Dr. Reo Symes at 05:28 PM | Comments (91)
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I suspect ganja and Valu-Rite vodka had a lot to do with this auction.

At the time of posting, this unique opportunity was up to $6,100. Whatta bargain! Bid now!

Thanks to a great Hockey Blog, Off Wing Opinion.

Posted by: Harry Callahan at 03:55 PM | Comments (9)
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Let's face it, it's no kind of fun to spend your winter years playing checkers with a bunch of people whose only point of commonality is that they drove their children batty by always complaining about the temperature.

People have suggested the elderly be given pets, as the contact with a warm animal tends to enliven the spirit.

One country has taken that to the next level-- to keep you young at heart, their old-folks homes feature porn on demand and even prostitutes upon request.

It's all happening in Denmark. Or, as I call it, "The Future Home of Ace of Spades HQ."

Posted by: Ace at 11:37 AM | Comments (21)
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A "misunderstanding," you see. I suppose that's the best that could be hoped for.

The correction involves Aaron Broussard's falsely ginned-up account of his phone calls to his friend's stricken mother in New Orleans. Broussard read his "spontaneous emotional outpouring" from a script, so, as John From Wuzzadem cracks, if it was a "misunderstanding," it was one of those carefully-prepared and fact-checked sorts of "misunderstandings" that the media makes.

Multiple Errors: Called him "Andre" and said Russert, rather than Broussard, read from a script. Thanks to John from Wuzzadem for correcting me.

Posted by: Ace at 10:49 AM | Comments (12)
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