Idiot:

Hollywood activist SEAN PENN has a plastic doll of conservative US columnist ANN COULTER that he likes to abuse when angry. The Oscar-winner actor has hated Coulter ever since she blacklisted his director father LEO PENN in her book TREASON. And he takes out his frustrations with Coulter, who is a best-selling author, lawyer and television pundit, on the Barble-like doll. In an interview with The New Yorker magazine, Penn reveals, "We violate her. There are cigarette burns in some funny places."

Yes, "funny places," I'm sure.

Posted by: Ace at 06:57 PM | Comments (55)
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There's gold in dem darn pig's asses:

We are the first to actually do this,” professor Yuanhui Zhang says proudly of his team’s ability to turn swine manure into crude oil. He’s a bio-environmental engineer at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who has led the 10-year research project that recently announced a breakthrough in porcine petroleum.

...

Now the plan is to move from the lab to a full-sized pilot reactor on a farm somewhere Downstate. Zhang predicts the process could get 3.6 gallons of crude oil a day out of each pig. Illinois brings some 7.2 million hogs to market each year and the nationwide industry is about 100-million hogs strong.

Theoretically, the resulting millions of barrels of crude a day could make a significant dent in AmericaÂ’s dependence on non-renewable, and often imported, oil.

Let's see.

Muslims have most of the oil.

Muslims use the oil weapon against us.

Muslims hate pigs, considering them "unclean" because they root in their own feces.

Pig feces can be used to make oil.

I love it when God decides to get funny.

Posted by: Ace at 12:55 PM | Comments (73)
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I was born at the wrong time. Had I been born ten years later, I could have been an f'n' Ph.D. halfway through my sophomore year.

Absurd. Is anyone willing to admit that "porn studies," "rock music studies," "classic sitcom studies," etc., are simply not academic in nature?

It's hard to read Moby Dick. It's pretty easy to sit through Double D Vixens for an hour and ten minutes. The popularity of these courses comes from students who don't really want to engage in academics and professors willing to oblige them, especially if they can stop talking about boring Shakespeare plays and engage in dirty-talk with 18 year olds.

Is it more fun to talk about double-identities in Twelfth Night or double-penetrations in Dirty Filthy Slam-Whores 9? Obviously, the latter.

And I just don't believe there's enough here of academic interest to justify a single course, let alone an entire series of courses constituting a specialty or even a major. Power relationships, objectification of women, the transgressive becoming socially acceptable, blah blah blah. You can learn how to write about "porn studies" within three days, with all the buzzwords needed to then coast for four friggin' years.

Thanks to Allah.

Our university professors are, I fear, dangerously incompetent.

Posted by: Ace at 11:51 AM | Comments (58)
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It's hard to upset conventional wisdom, especially when that conventional wisdom is beloved by an entire political movement and their communications staff in the media. But truth is elusive and inexorable. It wants to be free.

Reams of documents – ultimately numbering in the millions of pages by the time CDs, hard drives, and computer memories are downloaded and printed – are slowly beginning to be translated and released for analysis. These documents – though only 2% or so are translated and available – substantiate without doubt the following allegations: Saddam Hussein and bin Laden, the Baathist regime and al Qaeda had extensive, wide reaching ties. Saddam was, at a minimum, a supporter of the 911 attacks if not a sponsor of them. Saddam’s intelligence services trained more than 8,000 al Qaeda terrorists, primarily from Somalia and Sudan, at camps such as Salman Pak and Ansar al-Islam within Iraq. And Saddam helped finance al Qaeda and similar terrorist groups.

Further, the documents substantiate a broad, on-going program Iraq had to develop nuclear weapons. Indeed, Saddam had instructed his minions to begin preparing to re-energize the program after UN sanctions were lifted, a hope he had reinforced by French, Russian, and German diplomats, and traitors like British Parliamentarian George Galloway, all of whom convinced him that delay and obfuscation of the UN would get him off the hook.

We also know, thanks to the work of former Iraqi Air Force General Georges Sada, that Saddam had several civilian aircraft – one Boeing 747 and a “group” of 727s - stripped of passenger equipment and converted into cargo planes. The aircraft flew 56 sorties between Iraq and Syria, delivering drums of the chemical weapon Sarin along with other chemical and biological weapons. The deal with concocted on Saddam’s orders by “Chemical Ali” his general in charge of special weapons, and Bashar Assad’s cousin, General Abu Ali. It was a rare occasion for cooperation between the rival Baathist states, but as Sada notes, “there was complete agreement between them.”

In addition to the air sorties an uncounted amount of WMD were transported to Syria by commercial trucks – familiar 18-wheelers – and other civilian vehicles, including ambulances. “Saddam was convinced,” according to Sada, “that commercial trucks could pass right through security checkpoints…and they did.” American CIA overhead assets – spy satellites – were on the lookout for military trucks and ignored “routine” commercial traffic.

General Sada is not a lone voice in this matter. The Mossad, Israeli intelligence service, has long claimed that the weapons were transferred out of Iraq. American generals Paul Vallely and Thomas McInnerny noted in their 2004 book, Endgame, that extensive stockpiles of WMD were hidden in three locations within Syria and in the Syrian-controlled terrorist camps of the Bekka Valley in Lebanon. Included in the stocks were nerve agents like Tabun, Sarin 1, and Sarin 2. They did not remain hidden for long.

Up to 20 tons of these chemical agents were intended for use by al Qaeda terrorists in attacking three targets in Amman, Jordan in 2004 – the Jordanian Ministry of Defense and Intelligence Service buildings, and the American Embassy. These were to be simultaneous truck bomb attacks that were thwarted by good counter-intelligence work. The trucks were large 15-ton capacity powerful vehicles that could power through barriers and obstacles to crash into the buildings. At that time the homicide drivers would detonate the ammonium nitrate load triggered by plastic explosives – probably C-4. Resting atop the explosive load were Saddam’s chemicals, sufficient to kill upwards to 100,000 people in downtown Amman, by conservative.

Actually, I'd put Sada's claims in the category of "Things We Suspect, and Require Further Investigation," not "Things We Know."

But that Amman chemical-bombing incident is compelling. And we have not yet heard where, precisely, this huge amount of chemical WMD's came from. Syria, perhaps, or maybe Iran; but Iraq seems a more likely place.

There's more, of course. Read the whole thing.

Thanks to Ogre Gunner.

Posted by: Ace at 11:09 AM | Comments (47)
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Turn about is fair play.

No celery-- John Kerry hates celery!

It's the sort of crap you'd expect. Yogurt, fruits, "recumbent bicycle exercise machines," all the, umm, manly stuff one associates with John Forbes Kerry.

Top Ten Comparisons Between Dick Cheney's and John Kerry's Hotel Requirement Riders

10. John Kerry insists on a "fruit assortment" of limes, kiwis, grapes, and passionfruits; Dick Cheney demands a live cow, a chainsaw, and goggles

9. Dick Cheney demands that all televisions in his suite be set to FoxNews; John Kerry has no demands in this area, at least not until the debut of the "Effete Liberal Douchebag Network"

8. John Kerry demands that the temperature be kept at a chilly 63 degrees, in order to save fossil fuels; Dick Cheney, the same, except he insists on this because he's "just wild about nipples" and never tires of the joke, "It's not polite to point"

7. John Kerry demands eight different-colored trashbags for properly separating and disposing of recyclables; Dick Cheny demands a bone saw and large "mansized" carpet for disposing of "various problems" that crop up

6. Dick Cheney demands a case of hard liquor and illegal BDSM Mexican pornography; John Kerry demands an "Imagination Box" filled with colored tissue paper, swatches of "fun fabrics," glue, glitter, and a Bedazzler-brand rhinstone adhesive gun

5. John Kerry requests that a DVD of the Special Edition of E.T. be available, the version where all the guns have been digitally replaced by walkie-talkies and flashlights; Dick Cheney requests that a special bootleg edition of The Return of the Jedi be available, a version in which all of the Ewoks have been digitally replaced with WWE wrestler "Stone Cold" Steve Austin and Morgan Fairchild

4. For exercise, John Kerry requires a yoga mat and aerobic "step" platforms; Dick Cheney requires a set of nunchucks and a kidnapped hobo

3. John Kerry requires one hour of undisturbed time for meditation and his daily affirmations; Dick Cheney requires an hour to beat his kidnapped hobo to death, two hours if he's "got some fight in him"

2. Dick Cheney has a standing rule that any call from the President, Donald Rumsfeld, or Condoleeza Rice be put through immediately; John Kerry, the same rule, except the calls must come from Clay Aiken

...and the Number One Comparison Between Dick Cheney's and John Kerry's Hotel Requirement Riders...

1. John Kerry requires an anteroom off his main suite for his "recumbent bicycle exercise machine;" Dick Cheney requires one for his cock, and a second anteroom if Bob Dole or John Bolton are in town

Thanks to Allah and Eric.

Posted by: Ace at 10:29 AM | Comments (79)
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Gargantuan Mutant Lemons!

Gargantuan. Mutant. Lemons.

Is this for real? It's on Reuters, which means it's... well, it's probably not real.

Thanks to Blue Merle.

Posted by: Ace at 09:56 AM | Comments (26)
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Afghans rally during a demonstration in the northern city of Mazar-i-Shariff, Afghanistan March 27, 2006. In the first protest over the case of Afghan man, Abdur Rahman who converted from Islam to Christianity, several hundred people led by clerics demonstrated in Mazar-i-Shariff, demanding Rahman be tried under Islamic law.

Unacceptable.

More from the AP, via Michelle:

Officials said the case was dropped Sunday partially because of concerns that Abdul Rahman is mentally unfit to face trial. The move also followed strong pressure from Western governments.

Prosecutors have said they want doctors to examine Rahman, but they have not confirmed that he would be released. Prosecutor Sarinwal Zamari said state attorneys were working on the case Monday and an announcement would be made later in the day. He declined to elaborate...

I don't believe Islam is capable of reform. The sad truth is that it doesn't matter what the government might say. Islam takes precedence over the government; indeed, Islam is supposed to be the government. To the extent the government deviates from Islam, it is unislamic and to be ignored and condemned.

Abdul Rahman can either flee the country or else he will have to go into hiding; it is likely he will be killed. Furthermore, there will be no real investigation into his murder; the culprits will never be brought to justice. Because they are, after all, just following the Koran, and no government will last long if it prosecutes those who faithfully follow the Koran.

Posted by: Ace at 09:50 AM | Comments (53)
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Claiming, falsely, that American flags were the most carried flag. (Skip down for that, though the current top story is related-- Can the GOP ride the immigration issue to victory in the midterms? The LAT's is certainly doing all it can to avoid that.)

Posted by: Ace at 09:16 AM | Comments (99)
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The AP report.

Al-Qaida conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui testified Monday that he and would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid were supposed to hijack a fifth airplane on Sept. 11, 2001, and fly it into the White House.

Moussaoui's testimony on his own behalf stunned the courtroom as he disclosed details he had never revealed before. It was in stark contrast to Moussaoui's previous statements in which he said the White House attack was to come later if the United States refused to release a radical Egyptian sheik imprisoned on earlier terrorist convictions.

Moussaoui testified Monday he lied to investigators when arrested in August 2001 because he wanted to let the attacks of Sept. 11 go forward.

"Yes, you can say that," Moussaoui said when the prosecution asked if that was why he misled them. The statement was key to the government's case that the attacks might have been averted if Moussaoui had been more cooperative following his arrest.

He told the court he knew the attacks were coming some time after August 2001 and bought a radio so he could hear them unfold.

Specifically, he said he knew the World Trade Center was going to be attacked, but asserted he was not part of the plot and didn't know the details.

Taking the stand in his own defense in his death-penalty trial, Moussaoui said he declined to become a suicide pilot in some future attack when asked by a senior al-Qaida official in 1999.

So... he's admitting he knew about the attack, and was asked to be part of the attack, but refused?

This is pretty pathetic:

Just before Moussaoui took the stand, the court heard testimony that two months before the attacks that a CIA deputy chief waited in vain for permission to tell the FBI about a "very high interest" al-Qaida operative who became one of the hijackers.

The official, a senior figure in the CIA's Osama bin Laden unit, said he sought authorization on July 13, 2001, to send information to the FBI but got no response for 10 days, then asked again.

As it turned out, the information on Khalid al-Mihdhar did not reach the FBI until late August. At the time, CIA officers needed permission from a special unit before passing certain intelligence on to the FBI.

The official was identified only as John. His written testimony was read into the record.

"John's" testimony was part of the defense's case that federal authorities missed multiple opportunities to catch hijackers and perhaps thwart the 9/11 plot.

His testimony included an e-mail sent by FBI supervisor Michael Maltbie discussing Moussaoui but playing down his terrorist connections. Maltbie's e-mail said "there's no indication that (Moussaoui) had plans for any nefarious activity."

I wonder if that guy has been fired. I bet $1000 he hasn't been.

Jenifer Loven will soon file a "news analysis" piece about Moussaoui's dynamite admissions, in which she examines Bush's use of the "appeal to authority" logical fallacy in his speeches.

Posted by: Ace at 08:50 AM | Comments (22)
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It's about time someone had the, um, genitals to say it:

According to a remarkable thesis that has blown open the debate around feminism, sexism and the future role of women, a new generation of bright, rich professionals have broken through the glass ceiling and have nothing to fear from the men around them. They will be just as successful.

The thesis was expounded in a highly controversial article for Prospect magazine by Alison Wolf, a professor at Kings College London and author of Does Education Matter? She argues that the meteoric rise of this new generation of 'go-getting women' who want high-powered, well-paid jobs has dire consequences for society. Wolf says it has diverted the most talented away from the caring professions such as teaching, stopped them volunteering, is in danger of ending the notion of 'female altruism', has turned many women off having children - and has effectively killed off feminism.

'[It is] the death of the sisterhood,' Wolf writes. 'An end to the millennia during which women of all classes shared the same major life experiences to a far greater degree than men.

'In the past, women of all classes shared lives centred on explicitly female concerns. Now it makes little sense to discuss women in general. The statistics are clear: among young, educated, full-time profesionals, being female is no longer a drag on earnings or progress.'

The article argues that the most educated women will now earn as much as men over a lifetime if they have no children. Even with children, the gap will be small. The desire to be successful acts as a major disincentive to women starting a family, Wolf argues.

I don't know how I feel about this. On one hand, it's good to see the passing of feminism.

On the other hand, it's only passing now because women won. How the hell did we let that happen?

Thanks to Allah.

Posted by: Ace at 08:38 AM | Comments (62)
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