We're not just stupid, we're crazy.

Meanwhile, those who advise "talking to" Iran are completely sane.

A collective “I told you so” will ripple through the world of Bush-bashers once news of Christopher Lohse’s study gets out.

Lohse, a social work masterÂ’s student at Southern Connecticut State University, says he has proven what many progressives have probably suspected for years: a direct link between mental illness and support for President Bush.

Lohse says his study is no joke. The thesis draws on a survey of 69 psychiatric outpatients in three Connecticut locations during the 2004 presidential election. LohseÂ’s study, backed by SCSU Psychology professor Jaak Rakfeldt and statistician Misty Ginacola, found a correlation between the severity of a personÂ’s psychosis and their preferences for president: The more psychotic the voter, the more likely they were to vote for Bush.

But before you go thinking all your conservative friends are psychotic, listen to LohseÂ’s explanation.

“Our study shows that psychotic patients prefer an authoritative leader,” Lohse says. “If your world is very mixed up, there’s something very comforting about someone telling you, ‘This is how it’s going to be.’”

There actually may be something to that; who knows. But obviously psychotics, representing less than a tenth of a percent of the population, splitting for Bush 60-40 (or whatever) is not a good basis from which to draw larger conclusions.

And at least our crazies are actually locked up in mental health facilities.

Theirs are... not.

Posted by: Ace at 01:25 PM | Comments (70)
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I'll be shocked when the left doesn't strip off it's clothes as a protest against this or that.

PEOPLE in a small town in western Canada are so fed up with the rotten state of their main road that they came up with an unusual form of protest - a calendar that shows them posing nude in the potholes.

One inhabitant of Leader, Saskatchewan, is shown sitting in a canoe that is perched in a pothole.

Another has his dignity preserved by a well-placed camera while a third man covers up with a strategic hubcap.

"The initial impression when people open the calendar for the first time is 'Oh my God!' It's pretty dramatic," said Wayne Elhard, the local MP.

Leader, a town of just 1000 in a largely farming area of southwest Saskatchewan, says it can't afford to fix all its roads.

Thanks to PetiteDov.

Posted by: Ace at 01:18 PM | Comments (6)
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Smells like Rathergate again.

How transparent can they get? Caught in what seems to be a mistake, compounded by dishonest changes in their story as the story "evolved," they take the Dan Rather tactic of refusing to address the substance of the charges, preferring instead to claim -- get this -- bias and agendas in those making the criticisms.

Let's stipulate for the record: We're biased. So's the military. So's AP.

The question is: what are the actual facts? AP seems less surefooted in attempting to deal with that question.

AP instead tries to make some vague connection between this story and the outrage! of a government PR agency planting positive stories in the Iraqi press.

JunkYardBlog has an offer:

Like I said, I'm not really even that offended by this insinuation because the AP's credibility has been wounded and they're just flailing around desperately looking for someone to blame it on besides themselves. But I'll make you a deal, AP. I'll cooperate with you fully in proving to your satisfaction in proving I am an independent blogger and not getting paid by this Lincoln group. As long as you'll protect my anonymity as you would any confidential source, I'll give you all reasonable access to satisfy you that I'm just a poor little desk-jockey typing away here and not a paid-up tentacle of the military-industrial complex. Obviously it's impossible to prove a negative, but I think I will be able to satisfy you that my writing on this case and my interest in it has been independent. I expect many of the bloggers linked in this piece would submit to a similar examination.

In exchange, you guys will present Capt. Jamil Hussein, live, in person, at the Iraqi MOI HQ. As he's a real, bona fide police captain, I'm sure he'll be interested in clearing up his employment status!

I'm serious, AP dudes. Drop me a line. Seedub at hotmail. Let's do this.

I don't think his hotmail account will be ringing.

More... Flopping Aces started this story (AFAIK), and he has CENTCOM's full denial and AP's statement that it "stands by its story."

Kathleen Carroll states:

From Kathleen Carroll, Executive Editor, The Associated Press

We are satisfied with our reporting on this incident. If Iraqi and U.S. military spokesmen choose to disregard APÂ’s on-the-ground reporting, that is certainly their choice to make, but it is a puzzling one given the facts.

AP journalists have repeatedly been to the Hurriyah neighborhood, a small Sunni enclave within a larger Shiia area of Baghdad . Residents there have told us in detail about the attack on the mosque and that six people were burned alive during it. Images taken later that day and again this week show a burned mosque and graffiti that says “blood wanted,” similar to that found on the homes of Iraqis driven out of neighborhoods where they are a minority. We have also spoken repeatedly to a police captain who is known to AP and has been a reliable source of accurate information in the past and he has confirmed the attack.

By contrast, the U.S. military and Iraqi government spokesmen attack our reporting because that captainÂ’s name is not on their list of authorized spokespeople. Their implication that we may have given money to the captain is false. The AP does not pay for information. Period.

Further, the Iraqi spokesman said today that reporting on the such atrocities “shows that the security situation is worse than it really is.” He is speaking from a capital city where dozens of bodies are discovered every day showing signs of terrible torture. Where people are gunned down in their cars, dragged from their homes or blown apart in public places every single day.

At the end of the day, we have AP journalists with reporting and images from the actual neighborhood versus official spokesmen saying the story cannot be true because it is damaging and because one of the sources is not on a list of people approved to talk to the press. Good reporting relies on more than government-approved sources.

We stand behind our reporting.

First of all, this is a blatant misrepresentation of the charge; the charge is not that the "Iraqi policeman" is not an official spokesman, but that he is not a cop at all. AP lies even when it reports on its own lying.

And, just for fun, remember Kathleen Carroll has a never-concede-error mentality. Remember her statement denying any staging whatsoever in the Qana Corpse Carnival?

The AP said information from its photo editors showed the events were not staged, and that the time stamps could be misleading for several reasons, including that web sites can use such stamps to show when pictures are posted, not taken. An AFP executive said he was stunned to be questioned about it. Reuters, in a statement, said it categorically rejects any such suggestion.

"It's hard to imagine how someone sitting in an air-conditioned office or broadcast studio many thousands of miles from the scene can decide what occurred on the ground with any degree of accuracy," said Kathleen Carroll, AP's senior vice president and executive editor.

Carroll said in addition to personally speaking with photo editors, "I also know from 30 years of experience in this business that you can't get competitive journalists to participate in the kind of (staging) experience that is being described."

I grow weary of the media's constant defense that they are "in the shit" and you aren't so you'll just have to listen to them. AP's first reporting on this was done entirely by a local stringer, not by an AP reporter. What little staff they have is not out in the field but back in the relative comfort of the green zone. And of course AP's senior editorial staff is all in the "air-conditioned offices" Kathleen Carroll derieds.

Maybe Ms. Carroll should go over to Iraq, embed in a unit, see things first hand. At least then she'd have some credibility in making the "we're out there in the shit" defense.

Posted by: Ace at 12:47 PM | Comments (14)
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Great National Lampoon spoof, "The Lost Episode of Seinfeld," covering the Richards race riot.

Also at the link: Gibson defends him:

I feel really badly for the guy. He was obviously in a state of stress. You don't need to be inebriated to be bent out of shape." Ain't that the truth!
Regarding Richards' fate in the media, Mel added, "They'll probably torture him for a while and then let him go. I like him." Of course he does.

And another report says that Richards is just plain goofy, and not in good way:

Sam Simon, longtime producer on "The Simpsons" and numerous other shows, told Howard Stern this morning that Richards' racist rant at an L.A. comedy club, brought to you by TMZ, was a public manifestation of what TV insiders have known for years -- namely, that Richards is prone to bizarre, temperamental behaviors that leave everyone shaking their heads.

Richards, says Simon, threatened the life of Spike Feresten, creator of "The Michael Richards Show," the short-lived 2000 NBC sitcom, and did it calmly and chillingly. "I have a gun," said Richards, according to Simon. "I'm going to kill you, and I'll do the time."

And that's not all -- Richards once quit the show in the middle of production, says Simon, with a full studio audience in attendance and wouldn't return until coaxed back by the president of the network. What's more, Richards once stood on his head in the middle of a shot, inexplicably, and was once found in a corner of a soundstage, weeping uncontrollably.

Oh, and the mystery of Richards' religion seems to be solved. Not Jewish by blood, nor formally converted to Judaism, but considers himself Jewish, apparently because he had some Jewish mentors (such as Andrew "Dice" Clay and Don Rickles).

Posted by: Ace at 12:27 PM | Comments (11)
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AP dodges the issue, stating they merely erred by calling him an official police spokesman.

But that's not the charge: The charge isn't that he's not a spokesman. It's that he's not a cop at all.

Based AP's claim to have "verified" the man was a cop, I began to wonder if it's isn't possible he's sort of a cop. Not officially a cop, not employed by the government, but serving in a cop-like role for the Sunnis. Patterico explores this.

Even if that is the case, he's still not a cop, and, furthermore, he would be a "shadow cop" with a specific constituency (the Sunnis) to appease and serve. We have "shadow cops" in this country, too-- on all race-related matters, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson jet in to become shadow district attorneys. And one can see in that case too the agenda-driven lack of objectivity and the need to serve an ethnic consituency above the law or facts.

Allah's got a great run-down, which includes the New York Times' blogger weighing in on the story. (It's beneath the Times proper to question the reportage of AP, it seems.)

n the evening, a resident named Imad al-Hashemi said in a telephone interview on Al Jazeera, the Arab news network, that gunmen had doused some people with gasoline and set them on fire. Other residents contacted by telephone denied this.

[Allah's comment;] Emphasis mine. I hadnÂ’t heard that before.

HeÂ’s also suspicious about how/why an e-mail sent by Centcom to the AP made it so quickly onto conservative blogs. Er, because Centcom shared it with Flopping Aces after he inquired about Jamil Hussein? Surely AmericaÂ’s one-stop shopping center for leaks isnÂ’t tut-tutting at us over this, is it?

It's interesting that our press corps, the Priesthood of Truth, gets so suspicious about non-credentialed reporters doing any reportage of their own. He seems flabbergasted that Curt from Flopping Aces could actually call up CENTCOM, same as any reporter, get a comment, and then publish it.

This strikes him as very nefarious.

Possibly because he's a little bothered at how easy his job really is most of the time.

Rejecting that his job just might be easier than he'd like to pretend, he instead hints darkly at other forces at work. It's just not possible a blogger with a phone could call up CENTCOM; no, there's good reason to be suspicious here. It must be that CENTCOM called up the blogger to put the story out there.

(Which is half of "reporting" anyway; but suddenly the NYT is very worried about the possibility that sources are calling reporters rather than the other way around.)

So what have we learned? Unless a story comes from an Official, Credentialed, Reverend of the Holy Truth (i.e., a paid straight reporter), it is almost certainly planted and almost certainly untrue.

Posted by: Ace at 12:16 PM | Comments (7)
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Well, no one's ever called her firecerebellum, now have they?

moved to great eloquence and passion by the death of the eminent film director Robert Altman. And then there is Lindsay Lohan.

The 20-year-old actress, who scored a part in Altman's last movie, A Prairie Home Companion, made the interesting decision to go public with a condolence letter she wrote to the Altman family in the wake of his death from cancer last week. The passion was certainly there - she, like many dozens of actors before her, clearly adored the experience of working in Altman's characteristic freeform style - but the letter was also spectacular in its incoherence and disregard of basic grammar and spelling.

"I am lucky enough to of been able to work with Robert Altman amongst the other greats on a film that I can genuinely say created a turning point in my career," she began, less than certainly. "He was the closest thing to my father and grandfather that I really do believe I've had in several years... He left us with a legend that all of us have the ability to do." A little lower down, she fell into improv philosophy, apparently riffing on the notion that life is too short to waste: "Make a searching and fearless moral inventory of yourselves' (12st book) - everytime there's a triumph in the world a million souls hafta be trampled on. - altman Its true. But treasure each triumph as they come." And she signed off, "Be adequite. Lindsay Lohan."

The letter has become the talk of Hollywood since its release over the weekend. Was the actress on a misguided - and utterly botched - quest for publicity, exploiting the death of a revered director for her own purposes? Had she been on one of her legendary party benders? Or was this Exhibit A for the indictment of America's education system?

...

Patt Morrison, a columnist with the Los Angeles Times, begged to differ, calling the letter "alarmingly incoherent" and questioning what it was Lohan had learnt at the Long Island schools that gave her straight As.

Even had she managed to spell "adequate" correctly (which, to be fair, really gets tricky after the "q"), what the hell kind of valedictions is that? "Be adequite"? How about "Be blandly mediocre, Love & Kisses, Lindsay."

Mild retardation is kind of sexy, but Lohan seems to be a full-on brain-gimp.

Not hot.

Thanks to Blacksheep.

My Misspelling of "Adequate:" Hey, typos aren't the same thing as misspelling.

Posted by: Ace at 11:45 AM | Comments (42)
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A third jet is being closely examined. The good news, I guess, is that radioactive toxins are now pretty decisively no longer effective as secret poisons.

A link with one of the Russians he met:

The investigation into the death of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko has spread to 33,000 British Airways passengers after radioactive traces were found on aircraft.

Experts found low levels of radioactive traces on two aircraft at Heathrow airport and were preparing to examine a third in Moscow, the airline said.
...

The airline said in a statement: "British Airways has been advised that three of its Boeing 767 short haul aircraft have been identified by the UK government as part of the investigation into the death of Alexander Litvinenko.

...

Sky's Crime Correspondent Martin Brunt said: "It appears that after Mr Litvinenko met the Italian Scaramella for lunch on November 1 he met two Russians.

"At least one of them flew back to Moscow on November 3."

Those who read much into the radiation traces found at Berezovsky's offices also need to explain these traces, I think.

A former Russian Prime Minister fell ill as well:

In another development, it has emerged a former Russian Prime Minister is seriouly ill in hospital - possibly the victim of poisoning.

Yegor Gaidar fell ill during a book tour of Ireland and was flown back to Russia for emergency treatment.

In the UK, low levels of radiation have been found on two BA jets connected to the case.

A third is being held in Moscow until it is safe for it to return.

Mr Reid said checks had been carried out on a fourth plane which flew into Heathrow from Moscow on Thursday morning.

The Russian Boeing 737, which is leased by Transaero, was later given the all clear.

Mr Reid said concerns have been raised about a fifth plane - also a Russian aircraft.

BA is contacting 33,000 passengers and 3,000 staff after "low levels of radioactive traces" were found on the two jets at Heathrow. Both had flown between London and Moscow.

A spokesman said they were being examined because "individuals involved in the Litvinenko case" had travelled on them.

...

It has been suggested polonium 210 could be present in other locations because it leaked from a container or was present in people's bodily fluids.

That's not definitive, but I take from that that one can in fact sweat out some Polonium, or carry it around after touching someone else who's sweating it out.

Update: Indirect Link Between Gaidar and Litvinenko Poisoining: Well, I mean a direct link between the men.

The only reported link between Mr Gaidar and Mr Litvinenko is another ex-KGB spy, Andrei Lugovoy, who once served as Mr GaidarÂ’s bodyguard and met Mr Litvinenko on the day he was allegedly poisoned.

Posted by: Ace at 11:36 AM | Comments (14)
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Let's make sure they're helping to stabilize Iraq. And then maybe Israel, and then maybe New York City too, which could always use a little stablilization.

U.S. officials say they have found smoking-gun evidence of Iranian support for terrorists in Iraq: brand-new weapons fresh from Iranian factories. According to a senior defense official, coalition forces have recently seized Iranian-made weapons and munitions that bear manufacturing dates in 2006.

This suggests, say the sources, that the material is going directly from Iranian factories to Shia militias, rather than taking a roundabout path through the black market. "There is no way this could be done without (Iranian) government approval," says a senior official.

Iranian-made munitions found in Iraq include advanced IEDs designed to pierce armor and anti-tank weapons. U.S. intelligence believes the weapons have been supplied to Iraq's growing Shia militias from Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which is also believed to be training Iraqi militia fighters in Iran.

Evidence is mounting, too, that the most powerful militia in Iraq, Moktada al-Sadr's Mahdi army, is receiving training support from the Iranian-backed terrorists of Hezbollah.

Posted by: Ace at 11:24 AM | Comments (38)
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Just wanted to snatch a moment to say hello.

Open thread, guys. Yeah, I know...lame.

I want to blog something good for you, but there's just too much going on in reality land right now.

Posted by: LauraW. at 09:01 AM | Comments (135)
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Experts, schmexperts. If the Palestinians don't call a poorly-aimed rocket only useful for area attacks on major civilian populations a "terrorist" weapon, then who are the AP or Reuters to quibble with them over word choice?

Posted by: Ace at 01:56 PM | Comments (275)
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