That's one way to drop a quick buck thirty-two:

Although weighing as much as a normal adult woman by itself, the tumour was less than half the size of the largest ever recorded to be removed intact.

In 1991, a surgeon at California's Stanford University Medical Center removed a multicystic ovarian mass weighing 302 pounds (138 kilograms), which Guinness World Records holds to be the biggest ever.

The woman survived and, according to Guinness World Records, she "left the operating theater on one stretcher and the cyst left on another."

In related news, the Democratic Party has just announced its new "message coordinator," having the responsbilities of crafting a unified coherent Democratic position on Iraq -- a 302 pound multicystic ovarian mass.

"I can't wait to get out there and finally start giving the people the hope and concrete solutions they crave," the 302 pound multicystic ovarian mass was quoted as saying.

The mass is expected to "work closely" with Chris Lehane. It is believed this will be his first encounter with anything having to do with ovaries.

Thanks to Jack "Slublog" Straw.

Posted by: Ace at 09:39 AM | Comments (12)
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Express your gratitude, if you're so moved.

Thanks to Michael for pointing that out.

Good on ya, Monty.

They take 38 year olds? Hmmmm...

Posted by: Ace at 09:31 AM | Comments (43)
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-- by Madonna

Ignore that "By Ace" above. I've cleared this all with her PR people.

Shalom, Bubes!

I'm taking a break from my busy schedule -- my Kabballah studies, consulting with my personal Rabbis, and looking for a home in Israel -- to write what a schandeh this whole Iraq War is. It is beyond me how this privileged, pampered nishtikeit ganef became our "President" in the first place.

In 2004 we were presented a choice-- the mitzvah of President John Kerry, or the charpeh of four more years of Bush. What, for this I slaved away writing children's books? So Mr. Big-Shot could declare unilateral war on peaceful tyrants? No, no, don't worry about me. I guess I matter so bisheleh I should just curl up and die, that's all.

I am so, so proud of George Clooney for having the baitsim to allow his PR people to okay a post actually written by Arianna Huffington. Denken Got! What an choshever mentsh his PR guy was. He stands in stark contrast to the eizel un chutzpenik supposedly running our government.

Oy vez mir, Er iz a niderrechtiker kerl! Es brent mir ahfen hartz!

Well, bubes, I must run. I am working out how to incorporate various Jewish symbols into my upcoming Shiksa Ambition tour. I'm having difficulty with the last part of my act, before the encore; sure, I can eject a dreidl from my k'nish, but I can't seem to get it to spin. Perhaps some more intervaginal yoga exercises will do the trick.

Gai gezunterhait!

Madonna
(My actual confirmation name, by the way)

Posted by: Ace at 09:20 AM | Comments (141)
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I'm not in real contact with any actual celebrities,* but neither, as it turns out, is Arianna Huffington. And yet she posts "blog entries" by celebrities.

So I think I'll start doing the same thing.

* Well, one, actually, but I'm not in real contact with him.

Posted by: Ace at 08:55 AM | Comments (25)
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What's the opposite of cowbell? I wish I had a soundbite of Sting moaning as he enjoys his fourth hour of Tantric sex. That is the anti-cowbell, I'm thinking.

The Senate voted Thursday to allow the national debt to swell to nearly $9 trillion, preventing a first-ever default on U.S. Treasury notes.

The bill passed by a 52-48 vote. The increase to $9 trillion represents about $30,000 for every man, woman and child in the United States. The bill now goes to President Bush for his signature.

The measure allows the government to pay for the war in Iraq and finance Medicare and other big federal programs without raising taxes. It passed hours before the House was expected to approve another $91 billion to fund the war in Iraq and provide more aid to hurricane victims.

The partisan vote also came as the Senate continued debate on a $2.8 trillion budget blueprint for the upcoming fiscal year that would produce a $359 billion deficit for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1.

The debt limit will increase by $781 billion. It's the fourth such move _ increasing the debt limit by a total of $3 trillion _ since Bush took office five years ago.

The vote came a day after Treasury Secretary John Snow warned lawmakers that action was "critical to provide certainty to financial markets that the integrity of the obligations of the United States will not be compromised."

On Thursday, Treasury postponed next week's auction of three-month and six-month bills pending Senate action, though the move was likely to be quickly reversed given the Senate's vote.

The present limit on the debt is $8.2 trillion. With the budget deficit expected to approach $400 billion for both this year and next, another increase in the debt limit will almost certainly be required next year.

Well! Bush has raised the debt ceiling by 50% in his five years in office, from $6 trillion to $9 trillion. It's hard to put lipstick on that particular pig.

So I'll just talk about Sting's 9-hour Tantric sex sessions.

First of all, I kind of doubt this is "sex" as most people would envision sex. I have an image of candles and insense and he and Trudy just holding hands and rocking back and forth as their dirty parts make incidental contact with each other.

That's not sex. That's just two idiots chanting and ringing spirit-chimes with their puds out.

Second of all -- who the eff has time for nine hours of sex? Eating is an enjoyable thing, but I can't see myself doing "Tantric noshing" for six hours on a sandwich. You make the sandwich, you admire the sandwich for a moment, you spill some chips and pickles on the side, you eat the stupid thing. You take care of business in ten, fifteen minutes tops, and then you go back to important stuff in your life, like watching television.

How do you schedule these marathon non-humping "sex" sessions, anyway? How do you clear things with your agent, family, and friends for that kind of time? "Please hold all calls for the next nine hours; I will be unavailable, as I will be covered in exotic oils and ungents as I lightly rub my joint on my wife's thigh for better part of the day."

The only thing I want to do for nine hours straight is sleep.

Sting is the only frigging guy I know who can turn sex into a big, stupid, dorkwad timewaster. People who watch all three Lord of the Rings movies back to back to interminable back laugh at Sting.

Steve_in_HB once noted that some people were sooo into sports -- always watching, always looking up stats, in seven or eight fantasy leagues, always heavily betting games they didn't even care about -- they turn what would be thought of as a normal and manful hobby into pure dorkeriffic geekery. "Sports geeks," he called them. Sullying sports by turning it into a joke on par with collecting old Steve Austin action figures.

Sting is a sex geek. He's taken the most non-geeky pastime known to man and turned into an extended GURPs session with fewer dice-rolls and less clutter of graph-paper, and with genitals in place of miniatures, used to establish "marching order" when a "wandering monster" such as a "gelatinous boob" strikes.

I don't know. Personally, I think of sex the same way I think of brushing my teeth. It's a somewhat-distasteful but socially-required bother that shouldn't be attempted more than once or twice a month and which should be finished up in two minutes or less. And of course you should always gargle thoroughly afterwards.

Posted by: Ace at 08:19 AM | Comments (48)
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Mayor Eddie Perez of Hartford, CT has an innovative plan to deal with the beleaguered city's impending tax disaster:

Under Perez's plan, the amount of tax depends on who owns it. If the owner lives in the house and makes $90,000 year, the tax is capped at $3,600. If the owner-occupant makes $50,000, the cap is $2,000. But if the property is owned by a landlord who lives elsewhere, the city estimates a tax bill of more than $9,500.

The plan does offer an incentive to business: elimination of the 15 percent surcharge on commercial property taxes, which has been used until now to keep residential taxes down.

"This plan deals with two critical issues facing the city," Perez's chief of staff, Matt Hennessy, said. "It provides an incentive for homeownership in the city with the lowest homeownership rate in the state of Connecticut and one of the lowest in the country. And it provides an incentive for businesses of all sizes to reinvest in our city.

Hint to Mayor Perez: Nobody decent wants to be an owner-occupant in Hartford anymore because of the crime. It all begins and ends with crime and public safety. Good people won't raise their kids around junkies and gangsters. Sorry. Not even if you say 'pretty-please with sugar on top.'

Its hard to feel the pride of home ownership if you're afraid to leave the house.

Posted by: LauraW. at 08:11 AM | Comments (11)
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Who wins in a sissy-slapping, hair-pulling girlfight between Arianna Huffington and George Clooney?

We all do, my friends.

George Clooney is spitting mad at Arianna Huffington - and the blogosphere is wobbling on its axis.

"She said some things that I won't share, but she did tell me that this could be bad for me - bad for my career. Well, screw you!" the movie star told me yesterday about a conversation he had with the doyenne of Huffingtonpost.com. "I'm not going to be threatened by Arianna Huffington!"

Clooney, in his only interview on the subject, took off the gloves in his fight with Huffington over a blog purportedly written by the "Syriana" Oscar-winner and posted on her Web site Monday.

"I feel abused," he said.

What a tough-guy, huh?

It's long been a suspicion, but I think we now know that a lot of Arianna's "celebrity" blog-postings are actually written by Arianna or her staffers, sent to celebrity's PR people for approval, and then posted as if the celebrity had actually written the posting, when in fact they probably never even read it, or at least not the whole thing.

That's why Arianna is trying to get Clooney to shut up.

I'd like Alec Baldwin, John Cusac, etc., asked if they really wrote the blog-posts attributed to them.

Posted by: Ace at 07:18 AM | Comments (25)
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Lot of bias here. Hey, it's CNN.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has acknowledged a specific death threat against her and her retired colleague Sandra Day O'Connor, blaming lawmakers for fueling "the irrational fringe."

I think anyone making a death threat is a coward and a criminal and should be appropriately punished. But here the "death threat" was a typical posting on the Internet.

I can't help but notice the MSM only gets exercised against such lunatic Internet death threats when a liberal is threatened. Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Rice, etc. have been "threatened" thousands of times on the Internet. Where, exactly, is the CNN article about that?

The remarks came in a speech Ginsburg gave recently in South Africa, where she discussed her occasional reference to international law when looking at high court rulings.

The reporter is either incompetent or deliberately misleading. "International law" refers to treaties as well as some law enacted by tribunals which claim to have the capacity to pass binding law on other countries. What is really being challenged is Ginsburg's reliance on foreign law, not "international law," in shaping her USSC decisions. She and the liberals don't merely look at "international law," which may or may not be binding on the US. They specifically cite foreign law -- simply the foreign domestic laws of other countries, which no one even argues is actually binding on the US -- as a determinant of US law.

Throughout the article the reporter will insist on using the term "international law" instead of "foreign law," even when introducing a quote in which Gisburg specifically uses the correct term, "foreign law." Eh, what does she know, right? It sounds more persuasive (to some) to say "international law," so that's what we'll call it.

...

She said the court's marshal, Pamela Talkin, alerted her and O'Connor to a February 28, 2005, Internet chat posting by an unidentified person to his fellow "commandoes" urging a "patriotic assignment."

According to Ginsburg, the Web author criticized the justices' prior reference of international laws, saying, "This is a huge threat to our Republic and Constitutional freedom. ... If you are what you say you are, and NOT armchair patriots, then those two justices will not live another week."

Again, a horrible thing to write by douchebags who are likely mentally unbalanced. I don't defend this crap. I just want to know when CNN will get to noting the thousands of similar death threats made against Republicans.

Misinformation, said Ginsburg, was driving much of the debate over how the courts reach their decisions.

"Many current members of the U.S. Congress would terminate all debate over whether federal courts should refer to foreign or international legal materials," she said. "For the most part, they would respond to the question with a resounding 'No.' "

Two resolutions in the House and Senate from 2004 would prevent federal courts from using "judgments, laws, or pronouncements of foreign institutions unless such [materials] inform an understanding of the original meaning of the Constitution."

"To a large extent, I believe, the critics in Congress and in the media misperceive how and why U.S. courts refer to foreign and international court decisions," Ginsburg said. "We refer to decisions rendered abroad, it bears repetition, not as controlling authorities."

Justice Antonin Scalia has been an outspoken opponent of using foreign law in reference to U.S. statutes. He criticized a ruling last year by Justice Anthony Kennedy that banned the death penalty for juvenile killers.

In it, Kennedy wrote, "It is proper that we acknowledge the overwhelming weight of international opinion against the juvenile death penalty, resting in large part on the understanding that the instability and emotional imbalance of young people may often be a factor in the crime."

That case is cited by many conservatives in their opposition to use of international law in U.S. rulings. Other high court cases citing international law included a 2003 ruling banning state laws against homosexual sodomy. Several lawmakers called for the impeachment of Kennedy and other judges.

Note that every lawmaker and jurist seems to agree that the proper name for these "authorities" is "foreign law." Kennedy refers once to "international opinion," but not international law, which is a different idea. The reporter once calls it "foreign law," as it's supposed to be called, and then goes right back to discussing "international law."

Thanks to Andy the Squirrel.

Posted by: Ace at 07:08 AM | Comments (28)
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A blogger, saying she's disgusted by South Dakota's anti-abortion statute, has posted instructions for performing an abortion out of your own basement.

Start-up costs for such a business are kind of high -- $2000 at least, and of course you'll have to illegally obtain sedatives and antibiotics from Mexico and the like.

I was reading the instructions and I was pretty horrified. CONTENT WARNING past the jump. more...

Posted by: Ace at 04:51 PM | Comments (81)
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That Allah. One of the more, errr, lenient of all dieties out there, at least with regard to his followers. I tell you, when you're on his "good side," when you're a believer in Allah, he absolutely lets you get away with murder.

Other religions have these fuddy-duddy "commandments" against killing one's fellow human beings. How restrictive! How puritanical! How... Pat Boone!

But it's a lot different, a lot more... swingin', if you will, in Allah's Great Big One-World Caliphate Religion of Peace Sexy Hot Tub of Bloody Murder!

The suspect in this month's attack on the UNC-CH campus has written a letter to ABC11 Eyewitness News.

Eyewitness News received the letter Monday, in response to our request for an interview. It was sent from Central Prison in Raleigh and dated Friday, March 10.

...

"Allah gives permission in the Koran for the followers of Allah to attack those who have raged war against them, with the expectation of eternal paradise in case of martyrdom and/or living one's life in obedience of all of Allah's commandments found throughout the Koran's 114 chapters..."

"The U.S. government is responsible for the deaths of and the torture of countless followers of Allah, my brothers and sisters. My attack on Americans at UNC-CH on March 3rd was in retaliation for similar attacks orchestrated by the U.S. government on my fellow followers of Allah in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, and other Islamic territories. I did not act out of hatred for Americans, but out of love for Allah instead. "

Islamism

It's not backwards, medieval, and primative! It's in fact the most advanced and enlightened religion on earth-- so advanced and enlightened, in fact, it's "pro-choice" on murder!

What's that old Nietzsche quote? Something like, "When you go out to battle monsters, see to it that you do not become a monster yourself."

You know what? That doesn't even fucking apply here. No matter how bad we got battling these satanic sonsofbitches, we could not possibly hope to become the monsters they've made of themselves.

Thanks to Craig.

Posted by: Ace at 03:37 PM | Comments (59)
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