Okay, it has to do with sock-puppets. But it's not my post, and it's humorous, so I'm not counting it against my quota. Hey, it's just a link.

Even if you don't dig this story-- sock-puppets are adorable!

Not sure why I'm linking this, as it was this sonofabitch Wuzzadem who got me all riled up about the idiots on that other site. Wuzzadem is a g-darn instigator, that's what he is.

Thanks to Patterico.

Dan With The Funny: Sock-puppets on Air America.

Thanks to Dawnsblood.

Posted by: Ace at 12:27 PM | Comments (10)
Post contains 94 words, total size 1 kb.

This word "peace" you keep using. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Thousands of demonstrators marched through London and hundreds more gathered in Amsterdam and Chicago on Saturday to protest against Israeli attacks in Lebanon and the refusal of the U.S. and British governments to condemn them.

ADVERTISEMENT

Police said around 7,000 people joined the London protest as it snaked from the banks of the Thames to Hyde Park, first in brilliant sunshine and then in torrential rain.

Many carried red and white Lebanese flags and placards condemning "Israeli crimes in Lebanon."

"We are all Hizbollah. Boycott Israel" read one.

We are all Hizbollah?

We are all terrorists?

As the majority of these protestors were Muslims, doesn't that sort of, ummm, suggest that Muslims are in fact all terrorists?

Oh, I'm not saying they actually are. But that's what this "peace" protestor is saying.

All Muslims are Hizbollah, ergo all Muslims are terrorists.

Ergo: They really shouldn't be allowed to fly on jets or attend our universities, correct?

Again, I don't take that as strictly speaking perfectly accurate. Sometimes (and this would shock some bloggers, I guess) words are used that overstate things a bit.

But still.

"We are all Hizbollah."

Interesting.

Thanks to yls.

Sorry... I have violated Rule Zero and I am commenting on other blogs. I have no idea if you guys want to be informed about a personal, meaningless blogwar. I imagine most of you do not. Further, I'm not inclined to give the imbeciles in question any traffic.

(Oddly enough, this scary-important blog linked me, and yet, my sitemeter shows no referrals from that site that I can see. )

Mystery Solved: Juvenile to the end, they didn't link my site; they linked a cached page, which doesn't give me Site-Meter hits.

Ah, well, I did de-link them. Pretty immature, I admit. And I'm not linking them now.

Still, the Preening Pretty Ponies are putting on such a show of cantering their civility and "substance" that one would imagine they really would strive to outclass their beneath-them "punks," such as myself.

Alas, Some In the MSM are Stupider Than Bloggers Update: Dawnsblood sends this

Laura: HereÂ’s my question to you: If HezbollahÂ’s strength is seriously degraded, is that good for America and our security interests, or bad for America and our security interests?

Juan: ItÂ’s TERIFFIC for American security interests.

Laura: So, why on earth, Juan, would we tell Israel to stop, cease fire, because a cease-fire applies to whom? It really applies to Israel. It doesnÂ’t apply to Hezbollah, theyÂ’re not listening to anybody.

Juan: What is going on in your head? Where are you? Have you noticed lately how many people who are dying? Both on the Israeli and the Lebanese sides.

I wish I had the brainpower right now to address this, but my mind fails me. I suppose I'd like to say something about the fact that the left simply cannot comprehend that two sides in a dispute may not be able to use "diplomacy" to resolve their differences, as their aims and agendas are fundamentally irreconcilable and non-negotiable, and in such cases, no matter how horrible war is (and Juan is right, of course: people are dying, and that is not a good thing) war is inevitable unless and until one side has been punished so much and with such great loss of life that what was previously "non-negotiable" becomes somewhat more negotiable.

Hezbollah is not at that point yet, and neither is Israel.

Lefties hate war, of course, and as they know they cannot jawbone or bully Hezbollah, or use the "international community" to pressure Hezbollah, or appeal to Hezbollah's sense of humanity, their only recourse is to relentelessly attack Israel.

Oh-- plus, they're by and large Jew-haters and have the reverse-racist belief that in any dispute between people with slightly-lighter and slightly-darker skin, the slightly-darker people are right and are entitled to commit mass-murder to vindicate their poltical agenda.

Posted by: Ace at 11:24 AM | Comments (49)
Post contains 700 words, total size 5 kb.

But I'm shocked. They're for peace or something, right?

Hezbollah terrorists disguised as UN "peacekeepers" attempted to attack Israeli soldiers. However, there were realy UN "peacekeepers" in the area. They did nothing to stop the attack. Not because they were fooled by the uniforms; because they'd been bribed.

According an Indian solider in UNIFIL who witnessed the kidnapping, "By this stage, there was a big commotion and dozens of UN soldiers from the Indian brigade came around." The witness stated that the brigade knew that the kidnappers in UN uniform were Hezbollah. One soldiers said that the brigade should arrest the Hezbollah, but the brigade did nothing.

...

It appears that at least four of the UNIFIL "peacekeepers," all from India, has received bribes from Hezbollah in order to assist the kidnapping by helping them get to the kidnapping spot and find the Israeli soldiers. Some of the bribery involved alcohol and Lebanese women.

And it just gets better:

A few hours after the kidnapping, UNTSO learned that two abandoned cars had been discovered. One was a white Nissan Pathfinder with fake UN insignia; it had hit an embankment because it was being driven so fast that the driver missed a turn. The other was a Range Rover; it was missing a tire rim, and was still running when it was discovered.

Rather than using the very-recently-abandoned vehicles as clues to rescue the kidnap victims, the UN initiated a cover-up. The next morning, eighteen hours after the kidnapping, a team of OGL and the Indian UNIFIL began removing the contents of the cars.

The Range Rover was soaked with blood. Among the contents of the vehicles may have been a cell phone belonging to the terrorists. The UNTSO officer confirmed that the cars contained "extremely sensitive" items which included "current and relevant information that could have been easily linked to the incident."

No, that's not even the bad part yet.

A UNIFIL peacekeeper videotaped the removal of the contents, and attempted to tow one of the cars. According to a much-later U.N. report, there were fifty items taken from the car, seven of them blood-stained. (Report of the fact-finding investigation relating to the abduction of three Israeli soldiers on 7 October 2000 and subsequent relevant events, Aug. 2, 2001.)

The end of the UNIFIL videotape featured armed Lebanese men confronting the UN forces, and taking the cars away from the UN. The UN personnel did not resist, because, they later claimed, the cars did not belong to the UN anyway.

The UNTSO officer told The Daily Star that the UN ordered its personnel to destroy all photographs and written reports about the incident.

The U.N. did not provide the Israelis with the automobile contents, or the videotape, both of which might have helped the Israelis rescue the kidnap victims. Instead, the seized contents of the cars were taken to a town in Lebanon, stored in a safe, and some were eventually returned to Hezbollah.

Israel found out about the videotape, and demanded that the UN let Israeli investigators see it. Kofi Annan and his Special Envoy denied that any videotape existed. It is not clear whether Annan was lying, or whether he was misled.

Nine months after the kidnapping, July 6, 2001, the UN admitted that is had the videotape. Annan ordered an internal UN Report, which was led by UN undersecretary-General Joseph Connor. (Connor was later implicated in the Oil-for-Food scam.) The report revealed that the UN had two additional videotapes—one of which contained still photographs from the kidnapping itself. The UN investigation declared that there was no evidence that the UNIFIL forces had been bribed, or that the UN had deliberately misled anyone.

Even after admitting the existence of the first videotape, Annan refused to allow Israel to view it. He claimed that letting Israel see evidence about the kidnapping would undermine the UNÂ’s neutrality. Thus, Annan insisted on neutrality between innocent victims and terrorists who had used fake UN insignia and who had taken vehicles from UN staff a gunpoint.

How ya like them apples?

Posted by: Ace at 08:58 PM | Comments (65)
Post contains 698 words, total size 4 kb.

Posted on a dead-to-me site, which is, quite frankly, sort of needless to say, because I never read the damn thing, in response to a preening bitch who whines about taking the moral high ground and dealing with substance and prides himself about not attacking Glenn Greenwald, though he says it's okay to attack blogger Bithead because it "amuses" him. He buys the Magic Boyfriend theory, of course, and is outraged that anyone would dare to question Greenwald.

Anyway, posting this here, so you don't have to go over there. more...

Posted by: Ace at 07:51 PM | Comments (79)
Post contains 359 words, total size 2 kb.

Although a few left wing blogs noted this controversy when it first broke, they tended to do so in a mocking, "don't you have anything better to do" way, while of course defending Greenwald.

Well, I should say that my first post on this teased it as "deliciously embarassing," and then the actual post was written in a humorous way. I consider sock-puppetry to give the impression of greater popular support than you actually have to be juvenile, dishonest, and demonstrating a rather absurd level of vanity, but not some sort of grave sin. The sock-puppetry itself was, just as I described it, "deliciously embarassing" -- but not damning. A simple mea cupla, my face is so red post would have made this all go away.

But he lied, with no wiggle room, on his website, to his readers, and to the world at large. Does the left now give that a pass, too, so long as the liar is on the "right team"?

Are lefty blogs really going to presume to critique rightwing blogs when they maintain a Townhouse-style code of omerta on Glenn Greenwald?

Are you all afraid you won't get linked by Glenn or Kos or Atrios anymore if you show the stones to admit what is perfectly obvious? Is that what passes for "moral courage" on the left these days?

Well, fine-- if that's the case, don't expect anyone on the right to ever criticize a fellow conservative again, no matter how voluminous the evidence. If we're just playing "teams," fine. We'll each let our own liars get away with serial deception. Hey-- can't let a little intellectual honesty get in the way of "the movement," right?

And if any left leaning blogs actually do have the guts to comment on this matter, please let me know. I'd like to know that someone on the left can manage to rouse himself from retarded partisanship.

Posted by: Ace at 03:11 PM | Comments (102)
Post contains 328 words, total size 2 kb.

Maybe Not As Good As I Thought Update: The post will remain, but in the jump. See the BumperStickerist's points before the post. more...

Posted by: Ace at 02:12 PM | Comments (22)
Post contains 1864 words, total size 12 kb.

Because, apparently, she's not getting enough work, and her mother figures child-rape movies are always good for an Oscar.

This girl is 1, an amazing actress, and 2, in every damn movie made. It doesn't matter what the movie is. Somehow they managed to work her into Doom, I think basically playing a Newt knock-off. Or a Marine. I forget.

A new adaptation of To Kill A Mockingbird will star Dakota. No, not as Scout. Dakota will be playing Boo Radley, the scary adult male neighbor once played by Robert Duvall. And you know what? I'll bet she pulls it off.

Anyway, we're always in a very weird and sketchy area when a very young girl who is, well, attractive for a young girl does a movie like this. Is this necessary? Do we really need to see her in her skivvies?

Based on the description of these scenes, it appears Dakota goes a bit farther than Brooke Shields and Jodie Foster did when they were that age.

Though it's been done before, I was still somewhat shocked to read Dakota's mother and agent liked the explicit scenes, thinking they had Oscar written all over them. While that may be true, who in their right mind wants to see a 12-year-old girl stripped naked and raped on screen? Would you want to pay ten bucks for that?

There are people who will, and somehow I think they'll manage to miss the "message" of this film.

Does no one appreciate the irony that a movie about child-abuse will draw a huge number of guys with sexual designs on a 12 year old girl?

But the Oscar! The Oscar! The mom needs that Oscar for Dakota, at 12 years old, as if it's not pretty much an inevitability at some point.

Hey, Mrs. Fanning. Just have her play a mentally retarded girl. No nudity required, and the Oscar is pretty much guaranteed.

Thanks to JohnS.

Whoops: Yeah, I never read To Kill A Mockingbird. Sue me. yls straightened me out on the names.

Whoops II: Okay, I didn't get the correction right either. Now I think it's correct.

I just think "Boo Radley" is a cute name for a little girl. Harper Lee should have named the girl "Boo Radley" and the scary guy "Scout."

I just saw Capote (well, until I got bored) and came away with a couple of things.

1) If you begin doing a Capote impression all day, people will hate you.

2) People hated Capote for doing a Capote impression all day, but also because he was an asshole.

3) He was such an asshole, in fact, that when rumors began that he, and not his dedicated assistant/lifelong friend Harper Lee, had actually written Mockingbird, he never strenuously denied them, but chose to let the rumor live on.

4) Because -- I didn't know this -- the idiot wrote two books in his whole life. When asked what he had written, I could only name Breakfast at Tiffany's and In Cold Blood; but, I said, "I'm sure there are lots of others." Guess what? There weren't.

5) Thus requiring the narcissitic prick to let it be believed he'd written Mockingbird.

Seriously though? Point number one? Start doing a Capote impression and see how long it takes your wife to hit you in the face with nine iron. The under/over is about two hours and ten minutes.

More Hollywood: Shayamalan's Lady in the Water (great title! I love movies with "water" in the title!) disappoints; Super Ex-Girlfriend bombs.

M. Night jumped the shark with the atmospheric and well-acted but pointless and Scooby-Doo-obvious The Village. Luke Wilson, for reasons I can't peg, is doomed to third-tier status, like the guy from Office Space.

Posted by: Ace at 12:22 PM | Comments (43)
Post contains 652 words, total size 4 kb.

Annonymous Geek sends this.

Okay, I got it. At least 1/3 of you, if not 1/2, are sick to death of Greenwald.

Let me defend my coverage on this, though. There are only two or three people on this story, and I'm, well, not to be all immodest and stuff, but an emailer I know as "Acellson" says that I'm the lead blogger on it, despite the great coverage from Shawn and Patterico and Dan.

It's not the most important story in the world, I grant you. But Glenn Greenwald is taken very seriously by his cultish leftwing fanbase, so much so that pre-ordering on Amazon made his book a bestseller 24 hours after it was announced-- before it came out. And of course, in case you didn't know, Russ Feingold quotes him. Or reads him. Or something.

If I don't cover this, then it basically does not get covered. Or it gets covered a lot less. So, yes, I could do my normal thing and just post links to important or silly news with little jokes and occasionaly some analysis (most of it perfectly predictable), but that would mean that the story would be more or less abandoned. The entire universe of news would shrink by one story.

Now, if I don't cover the Israel/Lebanon War, it's not like there aren't a thousand other newsites, newsboards, and blogs that will cover it. (Actually, a lot of us seem to be avoiding it, because, while things are happening, in another way, nothing much is happening. "Nothing" in the sense that anything is ever going to change, whether this war actually happens or not, or whether the Israelis triumph or not. Little will change.)

If I don't cover that douche from UWM claiming Cheney arranged the 9/11 attacks, it's hardly as if you don't know about it. Everyone's writing about it. (Though I'm going to write about that next.)

But if I don't cover Greenwald, then pretty much that's the end of one story. One story goes away. One story, even one you're not interested in, is no longer much covered at all. (Yes, Dan and Shawn and others may continue the fight, but Patterico, for one, is laying off, figuring he's done enough damage and needs to move on.)

So yes, I could try for a complete moratorium on Greenwald. But that would be one less story being covered. Which isn't a big deal if you don't care about the story, but if you do, well, that's it. End of story. "Journalistic resources" reassigned to something else, the story gets spiked.

But I do know that I have been single-minded on this for the past three days.

So I will try: Three for one, or better. Three non-Greenwald stories for every one Greenwald thing. Again-- I may manage better; some days there will be no Greenwald stories, other days just one.

And obviously at some point there is no more digging that could possibly be done, and the story goes away completely. We may be pretty much there, though there are at least a few odds and ends to wrap up. (Being worked on in background... I'm, like, researching stuff when I'm not blogging.)

Of course, understand that the Greenwald thing is actual sluething and stuff. I hate to call it this, but it is "reportage," which means I'm on my emails talking with people trying to get things confirmed, and analyzing old posts, and following up and verifying tips, etc., so these take more of my time than just throwing up a bit about Clinton campaigning for Lieberman with some bare-bones commentary. So I don't know if I'll have time for long posts or comedy bits on days I'm actively on Greenwald.

But I will try to make this site less Sockpuppetocentric, and less Sockpuppetnormative. I will try to again do the pooter jokes and D&D references and name-checks of 1980's tv action shows which have gotten to me where I am today, right in the mediocre middle of an alternate media which is read by almost no one at all and gains one absolutely no respect or credibility.

Fair?

Posted by: Ace at 11:14 AM | Comments (74)
Post contains 707 words, total size 4 kb.

You are aware, I imagine, that the film The Boys From Brazil was about Nazi cloning, right?

Photoshop?

Also, anyone want to do some video editing? And maybe some light filming? Let me know if you're up for some shenanigans.

Posted by: Ace at 10:33 AM | Comments (16)
Post contains 44 words, total size 1 kb.

A post that has absolutely nothing at all to do with Glenn Ellison Willson Ellers Ellensburg Greenwald. Nothing.

Bush-hatin' Doug Thompson seems to have "quoted" a "man" of great accomplishment, wisdom, learning, and virtue, deficient only, apparently, in the category of "actual real-world existence."

George Harleigh, supposedly a professor at Southern Illinois University, and formerly a WH aide to Nixon and Reagan, said this, supposedly, which has been quoted on innumerable left-wing websites:

The very future of this Republic may well rest on whether or not anyone can, or will, stop George W. Bush.

He also was on hand to provide Doug Thomspon with good anti-Bush quotes at the time of Reagan's death:

Professor Harleigh was quoted in a report not long after the Reagan funeral:

Capitol Hill Blue has an unsourced report that, amid rumors of proposed Bush ads featuring Reagan's image, Former First Lady Nancy Reagan has sent a message to the White House expressing her “extreme displeasure” at any attempt to use her late husband as a campaign tool in the Presidential campaign.

and quotes retired Southern Illinois University political scientist George Harleigh.

"Ronald Reagan has achieved god-like status among conservative Republicans and you donÂ’t mess with his memory. If they are smart they will pull the plug on the campaign and order the ads destroyed. Unfortunately, the Bush campaign has not yet impressed us with its intelligence."

Classical Values felt dumb that he had never heard of this very famous and very important and very soundbite-friendly man, and so he went a-lookin' for him. He searched far and wide, ranging up and down the Internet tubes, and even, get this, picking up the phone to call Southern Illinois University, but he came up dry.

FWIW, Thompson has also reported the following:

President Bush tortured cats when he was a boy;

President Bush said the Constitution was "just a goddamned piece of paper."

... which Classical Values was also unable to verify.

Others, including Clayton Cramer, joined in on the hunt, combing Lexis/Nexis and public records for a "George Harleigh." They, too, cannot find this mysterious man, who apparently lives in Doug Thompson's closet, and only appears when the magic words are spoken to deliver a key quote for an anti-Bush hit piece.

The left-wing media: Your trusted source for 100% bullshit "news."

Ohhhh... Yeah. One thing? When I said this post had nothing to do with Glenn Greenwald?

That wasn't technically accurate.

MORE: In March, Doug Thompson not only called Glenn Greenwald a “prominent New York litigator,” but he recounted his personal tale of oppression at the hands of Alberto Gonzales: “The significance of this cannot be overstated,” says prominent New York litigator Glenn Greenwald.

There's more to that quote, too. Good stuff.

"His personal tale of opression at the hands of Alberto Gonzales." Hee, hee, hee.

I only wish Doug Thompson had gotten around to a political roundtable with Wilson, Ellison, Thomas Ellers, Rick Ellensburg, and the rest of the merry band of sock-puppets.

Posted by: Ace at 10:22 AM | Comments (16)
Post contains 529 words, total size 4 kb.