Murders drop for 17th straight year, to lowest level since 1963.

The fall in crime began under former mayor Rudolph Giuliani in the mid-1990s, when he introduced his "zero tolerance" policies, whereby police clamped down hard on all crimes, from subway fare dodging to illegal gun possession.

Mr Giuliani flooded crime-ridden areas with policemen, increasing patrols and getting officers out from behind their desks.

Crime dropped 57 per cent under Mr Giuliani, and has fallen a further 20 per cent in the past four years under Michael Bloomberg, the media billionaire who began his second term yesterday.

Guiliani scared criminals so much they're still worried about him.

Posted by: Ace at 09:36 PM | Comments (16)
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Icke, 48, is a native of Leicester, England. For five years he played professionally for the Coventry City and Hereford United soccer teams until forced to retire by arthritis. He subsequently went on to become a sports announcer for BBC-TV. For three years from 1988 to 1991 he was national spokesperson for the British Green Party, until he began a political evolution that was to begin with his expulsion from the Greens and wind up with his current involvement with anti-Semitism, neofascism, and lizards from Mars.

...

Icke is now arguing in all seriousness that the Illuminati plot to take over the world is actually being carried out by a race of extraterrestrial reptiles in human form. They are described, literally, as being child-sacrificing, blood-drinking Satan-worshippers capable of changing their shape, whose ranks include George Bush, Bill and Hilary Clinton, Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mum, Bob Hope and Kris Kristofferson, among others.

He was making an awful lot of sense until Kris Kristofferson. That's where I said, "This guy is just plain goofy."

There's no conspiracy theory, it seems, that doesn't involve ugly stereotypes about the Jews. I count many Jews as my friends, Mr. Ickes, and I can assure you that only three or four of them are lizards from Mars, and only one of them ever tried to suck the blood from my neck while I slept. (Needless to say, I ended that friendship soon after.) Based upon these few "bad apples," you're going to malign an entire religion?

And further, let's say hypothetically -- hypothetically -- that the rest of my Jewish friends are lying to me and are, in fact, reptilian space vampires conspiring to deliver the world to their creator Satan for a 100,000 reign of Hell on Earth. Can't we still all be brothers?

More on David Ickes and other folks nuttier than a Snickers bar over at Demure Thoughts.

More... from Right Wing News.

They're called "Reptoids." They seem to have some connection with the Greys.

H/t to ChuckG.

Posted by: Ace at 08:54 PM | Comments (44)
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As Woody Allen said in Sleeper, "The New York Times is an organization that helps terrorists kill innocent civilians. Sort of as a public service."

Remember how liberals, in particular, blasted the Bush Administration for failing to engage the Muslim world through "public diplomacy" and the like?

Well, the Bush Administration did just that in Iraq, paying Muslim Sunni scholars to help them craft propaganda/information pieces to help defuse the insurgency.

The Times writes this up as if it's something nefarious, and also, you know, pretty much ends the usefulness of the program entirely.

Internal company financial records show that Lincoln spent about $144,000 on the program from May to September. It is unclear how much of this money, if any, went to the religious scholars, whose identities could not be learned.

Although, apparently, they tried to learn those names. To what end? To print their names so that they could be murdered?

The amount is a tiny portion of the contracts, worth tens of millions, that Lincoln has received from the military for "information operations," but the effort is especially sensitive.

Yes, it is especially sensitive. Propaganda efforts always are. And thank you so much for ratting us out.

How do they justify running a piece like this when they cannot even hint at what could be unethical, let alone illegal, about it? It's a nothing little fart of a story that does nothing to inform Americans (it's common sense that we'd be doing this, after all) and only serves the purposes of Al Qaeda.

So, Sunni clerics were paid by the US to help us. And yet the NYT continues to help Al Qaeda at no charge.

Thanks to Allah.

Posted by: Ace at 08:00 PM | Comments (169)
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Matt, a frequent commenter here, has decided to pursue some of that crazy cash-for-pixels money by selling little blog-insignias on his web-page.

He was nice enough to include me in his page (gratis), so I guess I'll help him in his dream. Just because my dream of crazy blog-money is dead doesn't mean the dream itself has died.

Posted by: Ace at 07:44 PM | Comments (14)
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He also wanted Hitler executed "like a ganster" in an electric chair (borrowed from America), should Hitler be captured alive.

He brings a knife, you bring a gun. He puts one of your boys in the hospital, you put one of his in the morgue. That's the Churchill way-- and that's how you bring down Hitler.

I fear this news is going to give Andrew Sullivan conniptions.

Thanks to Allah.

Posted by: Ace at 05:36 PM | Comments (25)
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The science, sort of, behind King Kong.

Thanks to Allah again.

Posted by: Ace at 05:17 PM | Comments (10)
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A kind of boring article, rescued only by the inevitable whining:

Danny Schechter, executive editor of MediaChannel.org and a former producer at ABC News and CNN, said that while the active participation by so many readers was healthy for democracy and journalism, it had allowed partisanship to mask itself as media criticism and had given rise to a new level of vitriol.

"It's now O.K. to demonize the messenger," he said. "This has led to a very uncivil discourse in which it seems to be O.K. to shout down, discredit, delegitimize and denigrate the people who are reporting stories and to pick at their methodology and ascribe motives to them that are often unfair."

Ittty bitty blogs are "shouting down" reporters are major media organizations? Really? Blogs have that kind of omnipresence?

Thomas Kunkel, dean of the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland, said reporting on reporters had created a kind of "Wild West atmosphere" in cyberspace.

With reporters conducting interviews more frequently by e-mail, he said, "You have to start thinking a couple of moves ahead because you're leaving a paper trail. And the truth squad mentality of some bloggers means you are apt to have your own questions thrown back at you."

The "truth squad mentality"? This is a bad thing? And why should reporters -- who are only dedicated to getting all information to their audience -- have to worry about a "paper trail"? Are they doing something they'd rather not have people generally know?

And why shouldn't they have their own questions thrown back at them?

Is it just me, or is the sense of entitlement and superiority in these people noxious?

Some are starting to get it:

Reporters say that these developments are forcing them to change how they do their jobs; some are asking themselves if they can justify how they are filtering information. "We've got to be more transparent about the news-gathering process," said Craig Crawford, a columnist for Congressional Quarterly and author of "Attack the Messenger: How Politicians Turn You Against the Media." "We've pretended to be like priests turning water to wine, like it's a secret process. Those days are gone."

You won't be surprised that a senior CNN correspondent doesn't get it:

Jamie McIntyre, CNN's senior correspondent at the Pentagon, said the traditional skills of sifting through information and presenting it in context were especially vital now because there were so many other sources of information.

"With the Internet, with blogs, with text messages, with soldiers writing their own accounts from the front lines, so many people are trying to shape things into their own reality," he said. "I don't worry so much anymore about finding out every little detail five minutes before someone else. It's more important that we take that information and tell you what it means."

That pretty much sums up the problem. Reporters believe they have to provide "context," to explain to the audience what information means. They know full well, as they were taught this in J-school, that there are several narratives -- several slants, several "stories" -- that can be written about the same kernel of facts -- but they don't like having the slant they've chosen challenged by anyone else. They have a monopoly on the gathering of information, which is not in jeopardy-- you have to be on a salary to do that sort of work.

But their monopoly on the "contextualization" of information is threatened, and they're pretty annoyed about that.

Thanks to Allah.

Posted by: Ace at 04:47 PM | Comments (20)
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The paint is still wet on 2006, and Excitable Andy is hyperventilating again.

I guess the Times offered more money than al-Guardian?

Posted by: Harry Callahan at 02:35 PM | Comments (3)
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They'll be broadcasting a signal in binary code announcing

1, Earth is the third planet from the star Sol,

2, We are a friendly people and mean you no harm, and

3, Zionism equals racism.

Posted by: Ace at 02:12 PM | Comments (19)
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At least I think it is. Andy Samberg (one of the rappers in Lazy Sunday) seems to be connected to this site, and it sounds like his voice on this similar kind of dork-rap. Language advisory.

Pretty funny, again, gangsta-rapping about Camomille tea, crying over sad books, and problems with girlfriends:

Yo son, your house looks beautiful, did you redecorate?

-- Nah, kid, the French lighting really opens up the place.

Well it feels so spacious

-- It's an optical illusion.

You didn't knock down a wall?

-- Nah, son, it's like diffusion.

H/t to Andrew.

Posted by: Ace at 01:47 PM | Comments (10)
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