No longer interested in passionate or loving relationships.

many eligible Japanese men are in the throes of what's become known as "Renai Ken-o Sho (Dislike of Love Relationships)" and, consequently, the number of loving couples has plummeted to probably the lowest in the last decade.

...

And this would seem to be the collective Japanese female wail. They just don't know what men are thinking, or want anymore. Before, it had been so simple. Men wanted women and that was all there was to it. It was the guy's job to deduce the workings of the female mind.

Now, the tables have turned. Men are constantly shying away and looking embarrassed while women lay bare their hearts and fling them at their reluctant, shuffling feet. "I sense a nation-wide wave of 'don-biki (a great, pulling away)' on the part of men" analyzes Michiyo. "They actually act affronted when women confess. They act like little girls, they act like 'otome (virgins)!' "

Damnit, those Japanese are friggin' innovators.

Blame metrosexuality:

... The widespread ["love strike"] goes hand in hand with the widespread otome-ization of the Japanese male. Ten years ago the media gasped when young men were discovered to shave their legs and buy skin-care products.

Allahpallooza.

Posted by: Ace at 10:55 AM | Comments (34)
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If Republicans want to weather the Abramoff storm, they're going to have to be committed to reform, as they were supposed to be in the first place.

Getting out ahead on pork is as good a method as any:

It's fitting that Rep. Tom DeLay is returning to his seat on the Appropriations Committee now that he is gone for good as House majority leader. It was his years serving in that "favor factory" that gradually turned him into a purveyor of pork who last fall claimed there was no more budget fat to cut. His departure gives Republicans a chance to return to first principles. If they don't, they may face a political drubbing.

...

...

Nothing better illustrates the meltdown in spending restraint than earmarking, the process by which members secure special pork projects such as Alaska's infamous $223 million "bridge to nowhere." Pork is an inevitable product of political compromise, but earmarks are a particularly corrupt form. They are often last-minute additions to conference reports that were never considered in the original bills passed by either the House or Senate. They can thus avoid competitive bidding, performance standards or even disclosure of the direct recipient.

In 1998, Congress approved 1,850 earmarks just for transportation projects. Last year's transportation bill contained 6,371. Earmarks have become the corrupt currency by which bills like the ruinously expensive prescription drug entitlement are bought vote by vote. They inevitably result in some lower-priority projects being funded first, with potentially disastrous results. In Louisiana, the Army Corps of Engineers spent $1.9 billion between 2000 and 2005, more than 80% of which was earmarked. Less than 4% of the total was spent on protecting levees, while over a third of the money went to building a new lock on an underused canal. Then along came Hurricane Katrina.

...

The federal government is now 250 times as big in real terms as it was a century ago. If Republicans don't use Mr. DeLay's departure to restore their limited-government credentials, they will see their own voters rebel.

Read the whole thing. Rep. Jeff Flake and Sen. Tom Coburn propose some common sense reforms-- like subjecting earmarks to amendment (they weren't already?) and requiring those who offer earmarks to identify who requested the earmark and who benefits from it. (Again: this wasn't required already?)

Those two very simple reforms could go a long way towards cutting down on the problem. No one wants to have a montage-clip of them running during an election season introducing earmark after earmark requested by "the poor farmers at ADM."

More on the earmark-corruption connection at Instapundit, via a Tom Coburn staffer named Sean Davis.

Posted by: Ace at 10:47 AM | Comments (4)
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Thank goodness Europe is waking up:

Iran has broken the seals at nuclear facilities signaling its intention to start production of enriched uranium anew. This is seen as a major provocation in Europe and many newspapers in Germany warn that it's time to drop the carrots and starting wielding the sticks.

Iran has called the Holocaust fiction, it's called for the destruction of Israel and, on Monday, it removed the seals from nuclear fuel research facilities so it could resume uranium-enrichment work. It's been an escalation in antics from the mullah-led country that has caused many in Europe to throw up their hands in dispair after months of exhaustive diplomatic work and painstaking negotations.

Officials in Europe and the United States fear the enriched uranium will be used by Tehran for a suspected clandestine project to produce the mullah regime's first nuclear warhead. Monday's move drew sharp criticism in both Europe and the United States. In Germany, Foreign Minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier said the move "cannot be left without consequences," adding he would discuss the issue with France and Britain later this week. In Germany, most newspaper editorialists say there's been enough talk -- now it's time for stronger measures.

Emphasis in original, though I think they just do that with their lead paragraph.

The Allahpallooza rolls on.

Posted by: Ace at 10:29 AM | Comments (11)
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Killed by jihadis over a year ago, he defiantly said "This is how an Italian dies" as he stoically took the killing blow.

Personally, I'm not watching it, but it's at BareKnucklePolitics if you care to.

Posted by: Ace at 10:20 AM | Comments (1)
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The results aren't pretty. Before and after:

Okay, okay, I don't buy that either. The woman did this when she was 39; obviously that first pic is from her late twenties, tops. But that second pic-- that's not a normal 39 year old, either. Looks more like 55.

That deceptive dramatic flair out of the way:

Over 30 days, going out five nights a week, Nicky consumed a staggering 516 units of alcohol -- 17.2 units a day. Guidelines say women should drink no more than two or three units a day, and a maximum of 14 a week.

One unit is 8g of alcohol, or a small glass (125ml) of wine, half a pint (284ml) of beer or a pub measure of spirits. But stronger beers may contain 2.5 alcohol units per half pint.

Nicky hopes her experiment will open people's eyes to the gravity of binge-drinking in the same way Morgan Spurlock's film Super Size Me (in which the American filmmaker ate McDonald's for 30 days) did to the dangers of junk food.

"What I discovered shocked me to the core," says Nicky, who was monitored by medical experts during the experiment.

...

Her body fat increased from 37.4 per cent to 38.9 per cent, she put on more than 3kg, and her skin became so damaged she had the complexion of a 50-year-old.

...

"I was drinking the equivalent of about 2000 calories a night and developed a big tyre of fat around my stomach. I also became really depressed."

Hey, I never said the Ace of Spades Lifestyle(TM) was a wise option. I just said it was an option.

I hope we see the end of this sort of stunt-documentary. Someone's going to wind up dead.

And do we really need documentaries telling us that eating at McDonald's three or four times a day (always supersized) or drinking like fish five nights a week is unhealthful?

My problem with Supersize Me was the liberal condescension of it all. It wasn't made to actually alert people to the dangers of eating at McDonald's so much; it was made so liberal art-house movie-goers could chuckle in superiority at how the other half lives.

Well, actually, how the other half doesn't really live at all, but they pretend that maybe a lot of people are eating like this, so they can once again feel superior.

Posted by: Ace at 10:08 AM | Comments (49)
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"

The Allahpalooza rolls on.

Posted by: Ace at 10:01 AM | Comments (19)
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Note: It's oooold. But if you haven't read it, as I had not, it's a chilling read.

None dare call it what it is -- a racism to rival Hitler's:

While African women in Darfur were being raped by the Janjaweed militiamen, Arab women stood nearby and sang for joy, according to an Amnesty International report published yesterday. The songs of the Hakama, or the "Janjaweed women" as the refugees call them, encouraged the atrocities committed by the militiamen. The women singers stirred up racial hatred against black civilians during attacks on villages in Darfur and celebrated the humiliation of their enemies, the human rights group said.

"[They] appear to be the communicators during the attacks. They are reportedly not actively involved in attacks on people, but participate in acts of looting." Amnesty International collected several testimonies mentioning the presence of Hakama while women were raped by the Janjaweed. The report said:"Hakama appear to have directly harassed the women [who were] assaulted, and verbally attacked them."

During an attack on the village of Disa in June last year, Arab women accompanied the attackers and sang songs praising the government and scorning the black villagers.

According to an African chief quoted in the report, the singers said: "The blood of the blacks runs like water, we take their goods and we chase them from our area and our cattle will be in their land. The power of [Sudanese president Omer Hassan] al-Bashir belongs to the Arabs and we will kill you until the end, you blacks, we have killed your God."

The chief said that the Arab women also racially insulted women from the village: "You are gorillas, you are black, and you are badly dressed."

The Janjaweed have abducted women for use as sex slaves, in some cases breaking their limbs to prevent them escaping, as well as carrying out rapes in their home villages, the report said.

If Europeans/whites exhibited this sort of horrifying ethnic solidarity -- my race and religion, right or wrong or mass rape and murder -- would people note that maybe there was a problem?

Another A-Man link. Or, as someone might call it, part of the Allahpallooza.

Clarification: SobekPundit writes--

I think you've got it wrong, Ace. Even American lefties and Europeans tend to complain about the atrocities in Darfur. The problem is that's all they do -- complain.

That's not what I was referring to, exactly; I apologize for the lack of clarity.

I've argued this before, so I just wanted to say it briefly. My point is that there is an ethnic solidarity among many Arabs/Muslims/Arab Muslims that would make KKKers turn pale underneath their white sheets. An ethnic solidarity/"pride" that is in fact full-blown vicious racism and hatred of anyone who does not share in their race/religion.

This is just the latest example-- women cheering on the gang rape of African women.

There are a lot of "root causes" of terrorism. One of those root causes that the left doesn't like to talk about -- though they would were it perpetrated by Europeans/whites -- is this vicious racism that dehumanizes anyone not of their tribe to the level of an animal to be raped or slaughtered for pleasure.

Posted by: Ace at 09:57 AM | Comments (28)
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Only RedState's reading of the Turkish press brings this wider American notice:

Three Algerians arrested in an anti-terrorist operation in southern Italy are suspected of being linked to a planned new series of attacks in the United States, Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu said Friday.

The attacks would have targeted ships, stadiums or railway stations in a bid to outdo the September 11, 2001 strikes by Al-Qaeda in New York and Washington which killed some 2,700 people, Pisanu said.

Printing that may have undermined their "NSA interecepts threaten our libertries" storyline.

Thanks to Brad Hamilton, who wonders "Doesn't Al Qaeda knock any more?"

Posted by: Ace at 09:51 AM | Comments (2)
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Football Fans for Truth thinks it's only limited to actual voice calls, placed via VOIP services, which would make a hell of a lot of sense.

Orin Kerr of the Volokh Conspiracy says so too.

Emily Latella ON: Well... nevermind! /OFF

It might be helpful if that were clearer. Judges have a way of applying laws to the Internet in unexpected ways. Like subjecting bloggers to campaign finance regulation laws.

Posted by: Ace at 09:31 AM | Comments (1)
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Curiouser and curiouser.

Remember her?

She was kidnapped in Iraq and then began acting very strangely.

UPI now reports she was a spy:

Susanne Osthoff, the German archeologist kidnapped by Iraqi gunmen on Nov. 25 and released before Christmas was connected with her country's intelligence service, the BND, and had helped arrange a meeting with a top member of the terrorist organization al-Qaida, possibly Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi himself, according to well informed German sources Sunday.

The sources confirmed German press reports that the 43-year-old woman had worked for the BND in Iraq on a freelance basis, and had for some time even stayed in a German intelligence safe house in Baghdad.

It would, I guess, help explain why the Germans had ransomed her.

Posted by: Ace at 07:35 PM | Comments (32)
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