Seems like a winning combination to me.

Ace's Rule of Cult-of-Personality Tyranny: You can't be a long-lived tyrant when you project the all the sex appeal and virile authority of the little bald guy from The Benny Hill Show.

Cuban Defense Minister Raul Castro is President Fidel Castro's staunchly loyal younger brother and his designated successor. At 75 and five years younger than Fidel, Raul is far less charismatic than his brother though far more radical.

...

Three weeks after taking power in January 1959, Castro named Raul his successor, telling supporters: "Behind me are others more radical than I."

...

While Fidel headed up many of the mass protests in Havana, it was the mustachioed Raul, dressed in his olive green uniform and a full head shorter than his brother, leading tens of thousands of chanting, flag- waving citizens in the provinces.

SlapSlapSlapSlapSlap.

Hey, if such superficial concerns as looks, height, and charisma matter in a mature, extraordinarily-successful democracy, they must count ten times as much in Cult of Personality Tyranny.

Cuba may be about to get a bit of political pluralism.

Not by design, of course. But while no one would dare challenge Fidel for power, I think there are going to be a few ambitious generals who think they're more suited to be Dictator For Life than Slappy Castro.

Posted by: Ace at 09:52 PM | Comments (26)
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Yeahhhh... I'd imagine so.

Gibson, who apologized Saturday for making "despicable" remarks in what was described as an anti-Semitic tirade after a drunk-driving arrest, in some ways now finds himself at the mercy of a Hollywood establishment that may or may not be inclined to extend forgiveness.

His most immediate issue is with Walt Disney, which is distributing Apocalypto and that also, through its ABC television network, has a development deal with his company to make a miniseries about the Holocaust.

Several prominent critics of The Passion already have stepped forward to suggest that Gibson, who denied there was an anti-Semitic undercurrent in his movie about the last hours in the life of Christ, has now shown his true colors.

"Mel Gibson's apology is unremorseful and insufficient," said Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, who added: "His tirade finally reveals his true self and shows that his protestations during the debate over his film The Passion of the Christ that he is such a tolerant, loving person, were a sham."

Foxman called on Hollywood executives to "realize the bigot in their midst" and "distance themselves from this anti-Semite."

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, urged Gibson to drop the Holocaust project, saying it would be "inappropriate."

Particularly inappropriate, executives feel, is Gibson's proposed marketing campaign, which promises "the feel-good roller-coaster thrill-ride of the autumn!"

Yes, I kick men when they're down. That always seemed to me to be the best time to kick them. If you kick a man who's on his feet, you stand a very good chance of getting beaten senseless.

In all seriousness, though, the Gibson Holocaust minseries always seemed to be a bit of an attempt to molify Hollywood's Jewish community for perceived antisemitism in The Passion. Given Gibson's latest outburst, he can't mollify with such a project anymore.

You can't have a miniseries depicting the horrors of the Holocaust where you're wondering if the producer intends it as a cautionary tale for humanity, or a cautionary tale specifically for the Jews, "who start all the wars."

BTW, I've always been a huge fan of Gibson's -- I can quote just about all twenty of the spoken lines in Road Warrior -- and I defended him through what i believed was an unfair smear campaign during the days of The Passion, so I really take no special joy in running down a man I once thought was pretty damn cool and had a pretty good bead on things.

But the guy hates Jews. It's just the way it is.

Posted by: Ace at 09:32 PM | Comments (100)
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A song to express Ace's true emotions about Andrew Sullivan. (Brokeback Mountain Content Warning.)

NOTE: Post edited by Ace, to tuck the video into a hyperlink, in order to spare Michael the embarrassment of screwing up the blog's template. The video was appearing in the left sidebar, for some reason.

Also, I couldn't find the exact live-performance video Michael linked, so I linked one in the spirit he was going for.

PS, Michael: My true feelings for Andrew Sullivan would be better expressed by Elton John's The Bitch Is Back.

Fixed. The glitch was actually that Michael put the YouTube embedded video link in the sidebar, like a moron.

Posted by: Ace at 08:27 PM | Comments (7)
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...you really have to check out the Gospel of St. Andrew of the Sacred Heart-Ache, whose every second post is about the gob-smacking vileness of Mel Gibson and the "Christianist right" and their "theocon agenda" (and also the apparently stealth-antisemite conservative Jews who have made an alliance with same).

I suppose he's entitled to an I-Was-Right-You-Were-Wrong victory lap. I'm hardly above that myself. Not by a long shot.

But one lasting three days long and counting? more...

Posted by: Ace at 08:03 PM | Comments (20)
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Some of you are probably wondering why Ace is posting like a maniac, even after he claimed to be exhausted. Well, I know.

It's all about the SiteMeter.

Normally traffic falls off when Ace has guest posters. But once again, the current guest posters have easily maintained his traffic volumes. Ace is just throwing crap up to share in the glory. And he missed the Castro story because he's not checking his RSS feeds.

Give it up, Ace. We all know who is doing the heavy lifting around here at the moment.

Posted by: Ace at 06:37 PM | Comments (21)
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Hokay. The Bulwer-Lytton Awards were established to recognize the worst opening lines in published fiction.

"Slash" fan-fic is a type of lunatic Internet twaddle in which writers, so to speak, write obscenely sexual porn about people from TV shows and movies. For some reason, a lot of women geeks write it, and for some other reason, they seem to prefer homosexual liasons between male characters. The shorthand "slash" derives from their indication of who is involved in the sexual doings: Gimli/Legolas, James Bond/M, etc.

And they seem to have a particular hard-on for "Kirk-slash-Spock" couplings.

Anyway, Something Awful has looked for the worst opening lines in "slash" fan-fic. Content warning, obviously. I don't think there's anything worse than this:

Lennie Briscoe had a case, a case that meant the difference between the bad guys going to jail for a very long time and the perps walking on a technicality, but standing between Briscoe and Justice was DA Jack McCoy and the only way to get him to press charges on the suspects was to make the DA [orgasm] harder than he ever had before, which wasn't an easy task when you had A-list [fellatrices] like, Lt. Van Buren, who had been known to ride a stiff at a crime scene until it came back to life.

Lennie Briscoe.

For the love of everthing holy, the man is dead.

I sort of doubt the physics of using a hobbit as an inserted sexual device, but apparently one can do so, even "until only the little manlet's feet dangle[] out."

I would propose a contest along these lines, but it would be far too depressing and creepy.

Scott sends this homoerotic, Abu Ghraib style "slash" coupling:

Surely there must be an injunction against this in Leviticus somewhere.

Something needs to be done.

Posted by: Ace at 06:17 PM | Comments (16)
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I'm not sayin' exactly what you should pray for.

By ANITA SNOW, Associated Press Writer, 4 minutes ago

HAVANA - Fidel Castro temporarily relinquished his presidential powers to his brother Raul on Monday night and told Cubans he underwent surgery.

The Cuban leader said he had suffered gastrointestinal bleeding, apparently due to stress from recent public appearances in Argentina and Cuba, according to the letter read live on television by his secretary, Carlos Valenciaga.

What's stressful about a public appearance? This guy is famous for running his yap in front of a microphone and delivering four-hour speeches.

"The operation obligates me to undertake several weeks of rest," the letter read, adding that extreme stress "had provoked in me a sharp intestinal crisis with sustained bleeding that obligated me to undergo a complicated surgical procedure."

Castro said he was temporarily relinquishing the presidency to his younger brother and successor Raul, the defense minister, but said the move was of "a provisional character." There was no immediate appearance or statement by Raul Castro.

I'm thinkin' Raul is saying the same prayers we are. He's been the Commandante-In-Waiting for a long time.

The elder Castro asked that celebrations scheduled for his 80th birthday on Aug. 13 be postponed until Dec. 2, the 50th anniversary of Cuba's Revolutionary Armed Forces.

Hell No! I'm going ahead with the Castro's 80th Birthday Party that I had planned. We already sent out the invitations.

AP - Castro relinquishes power before surgery

Posted by: Ace at 06:16 PM | Comments (22)
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It's just a formality really, Raul can handle things.

Even though he's a moron. Ok who am I kidding, he's a fucking retard.

Look, I'm not happy about this either. I got a bleedin gut thing and they gotta patch me up. I'm gonna be down for a few weeks.

Raul's a fucking idiot and everybody knows it. What the hell am I gonna do? He's the only brudda I got and Alarcon can't handle this shit.

Besides, Raul's 75. How long can he screw this up?

Oh. Ok, you got me there.

I don't feel so good.

Posted by: Ace at 06:06 PM | Comments (15)
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Hey, if you can fake cool video like this, you deserve to control the world.

The JEW is using DOCTORED VIDEO FOOTAGE to MOVE IN ON YOU, and you are left DEFENSELESS.

Via Powerline, who have audio of Rep. John Dingell (D-MI) with a curious answer to a question about Hezbollah.

And not related at all, but I can't help quoting Allah's suggestion that Mel Gibson will be posting at the Huffington Post within a month.

Well, sure. Now that he's not a celebrity anymore, why not?

Correction: As commenters inform me, Dingell is a Representative, and not yet a Senator, Allah be praised.

Posted by: Ace at 05:49 PM | Comments (18)
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Oh it is fucking ON biyatch!

We had more T-62s, more missiles, more submarines, more bombers than you have socks in your dresser drawer Mr. Ace of Spades! You have no idea. Your pathetic Gary Powers tried to count them all and he cried like a BABY when he saw the truth. Before we shot his impotent tookas out of the skies of the Motherland!

We had more tanks, more toilet paper, more milk, more hubcaps than you can imagine Mr. Ace of NOTHING. Mr. Ace that never shot down five U-2s! So how can you be an ACE of anything? We will bury you. And you will stay buried, and like it!

UPDATE: Who can deal with this fucking Cyrillic alphabet? Not me! That's who. Cause I'm DEAD.

hat tip: jive dancing Mrs. Peel.

Posted by: Ace at 04:43 PM | Comments (7)
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