From Wuzzadem.

Crazy-Related: You know that crazy game I wrote about yesterday? Shawn, but not lowercase shawn, tracked down a review of it. I think it was the review I read.

The game is called F.A.T.A.L. Some red flags right there.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 10:02 AM | Comments (20)
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This is just wild speculation at this point, but this dude does seem as likely as any.

On March 12, 1993, a series of explosions ripped through the streets of Mumbai, killing 257 Indians and injuring 713. The serial attack, presaging Al Qaeda's coordinated-bombing modus operandi, involved nearly simultaneous detonation of car-bombs across the city in crowded bazaars and near major hotels and Mumbai's stock exchange. While India is no stranger to political violence, the attack has been retroactively dubbed "India's 9-11" for its shock and devastation.

...

[Dawood] Ibrahim, the alleged mastermind of the 1993 bomb plot, is possibly the closest thing to a real-life Keyser Soze, the legendary mastermind of The Usual Suspects. Counterfeiting, assassination attempts on rivals in Bangkok, extorting Bollywood film studios, gunrunning to Africa, large-scale heroin smuggling to Europe -- Ibrahim and his violent "D-Company" gang do it all, all across the world. Despite fleeing India after the bombing, he is still alleged to control much of the subcontinent's underworld from exile.

But Dawood Ibrahim is more than just a sinister criminal and narcoterrorist; he is also a supporter of Al Qaeda. On October 17, 2003, the U.S. Treasury Department declared him a terrorist and froze his assets. According to Treasury, Osama bin Laden and his organization use Ibrahim's smuggling routes for a fee. (Treasury does not reveal exactly what Osama smuggles along those routes.) Furthermore, Ibrahim is a financial backer of the Pakistan-based terrorist organization Lashkar-e-Taiba, which continues horrific attacks inside India, including the December 2001 assault on India's parliament. When al Qaeda bigshot Abu Zubaydah was arrested in Faisalabad, he was hiding in a Lashkar-e-Taiba safehouse.

Drug-smuggling, couterfeiting, extortion, assassinations, mass murders, assassinations... but remember, they invented algebra.

Posted by: Ace at 09:36 AM | Comments (22)
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Even the NYT had to acknowlege it a few days ago:

Surprising Jump In Tax Revues Is Curbing Deficit

WASHINGTON, July 8 — An unexpectedly steep rise in tax revenues from corporations and the wealthy is driving down the projected budget deficit this year, even though spending has climbed sharply because of the war in Iraq and the cost of hurricane relief.

On Tuesday, White House officials are expected to announce that the tax receipts will be about $250 billion above last year's levels and that the deficit will be about $100 billion less than what they projected six months ago. The rising tide in tax payments has been building for months, but the increased scale is surprising even seasoned budget analysts and making it easier for both the administration and Congress to finesse the big run-up in spending over the past year.

Tax revenues are climbing twice as fast as the administration predicted in February, so fast that the budget deficit could actually decline this year.

The main reason is a big spike in corporate tax receipts, which have nearly tripled since 2003, as well as what appears to be a big increase in individual taxes on stock market profits and executive bonuses.

On Friday, the Congressional Budget Office reported that corporate tax receipts for the nine months ending in June hit $250 billion — nearly 26 percent higher than the same time last year — and that overall revenues were $206 billion higher than at this point in 2005.

Congressional analysts say the surprise windfall could shrink the deficit this year to $300 billion, from $318 billion in 2005 and an all-time high of $412 billion in 2004.

Kudlow notes that the economy has grown quite a bit in the last couple years:

Did you know that just over the past 11 quarters, dating back to the June 2003 Bush tax cuts, America has increased the size of its entire economy by 20 percent? In less than three years, the U.S. economic pie has expanded by $2.2 trillion, an output add-on that is roughly the same size as the total Chinese economy, and much larger than the total economic size of nations like India, Mexico, Ireland and Belgium.

This is an extraordinary fact, although you may be reading it here first. Most in the mainstream media would rather tout the faults of American capitalism than sing its praises. And of course, the media will almost always discuss supply-side tax cuts in negative terms, such as big budget deficits and static revenue losses. But here's another suppressed fact: Since the 2003 tax cuts, tax-revenue collections from the expanding economy have been surging at double-digit rates, while the deficit is constantly being revised downward.

20% overall growth. That seems somewhat good.

In response to the cowbell-worthy economic news, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid thoughtfully responded, "AIDS, crack, Bernie Goetz, rock-n-rolla cola wars, I can't take it anymore." Then he pointed down the hallway and said "Hey, oh my god, the dudes from Enuf Z'Nuff are going down on each other!" and then hid in a coatroom.

From a brand-new blog by a long-time reader, tipster, and commenter.

"But the deficit was going to bake me a pot!"

Shenanigans Called On Kudrow: Larry the Urbanite objects that Kudrow's growth figure is non-inflation adjusted. An inflation-adjusted figure would be 11.4%, still vigorous (and more plausible), and hardly in need of trickery to make more appealing.

TallDave objects to his using the non-inflation-adjusted US growth in comparison to the inflation-adjusted growth in other countries, which is obviously a bogus method of comparison.

Posted by: Ace at 08:35 AM | Comments (37)
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Dusty Springfield, originally.

Some are saying it was covered by an Italian player who sang the song to French-Algerian Ziginiarre Zibboobblehead, or whatever the eff his name is, who then head-butted him.

The French, eager to justify/mitigate the behavior of their star, have employed lip readers, who claim the Italian player said this to him, and then added "f--- off" for good measure. He denies it.

I don't care. But it's on Drudge.

Update: Everyone had it wrong. The BBC corrects.

The BBC has just reported Matarazzi called Zindane "the son of a militant whore."

Thanks to Driver.

You guys are a real bunch of weisenheimers.

Posted by: Ace at 08:20 AM | Comments (25)
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This is Ted Kennedy's project.

It involves vehicles and moving underwater.

There you go.

Posted by: Ace at 08:07 AM | Comments (22)
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All right, I'll admit it: Bush was wrong. They don't hate our freedoms.

They hate our commuting.

But they seem to hate mass-transit most of all. Ergo, applying the proper nuanced analysis of making them not hate us, we must not only repudiate Kyoto, we must end all public transportation systems, immediately.

The bloody borders of Islam just keep bleeding.

Update: Ghostcat suspects this may be a "vengeance bombing" in response to the Hadji Girl song. More as this story develops.

Headline Help: Thanks to Rick for reminding me about the "Broad Spectrum of Society."

I'm Dumb: For a while I've been hearing from the MSM about an Indian city called "Mumbai." Seemed kind of big and important. I figured I just never heard of it before; it's not like I'm Joe Indian Geography.

Just found out it's Bombay. Ah, so that's why it seems to be a large city.

I didn't get the memo. Peking is now Beijing. Bombay is now Mumbai.

The MSM just likes suddenly changing the names for places, preferably changes involving the addition or subtraction of a "B."

Pretty soon, A Tale of Two Cities will take place in Baris and Blondon.

Posted by: Ace at 07:59 AM | Comments (40)
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Thrilled at his graduation from MIT in only three semesters and his immediate hiring by the CERNE particle-accelerating lab in Geneva, a Grand Wizard of Mensa decides to test his theory that a bottle rocket can (and should!) be fired from a man's squeakhole.

The guy pulls down his pants, lifts his legs over his head to let his dirty nethers flap in the breeze, penetrates himself with a foreign object while other men watch and giggle, gets his ass half burned off by a rocket that blasts but doesn't want to blast off, and then, after all of this...

...jumps to his feet and throws his hands up in triumph.

Why? Because it's science. There are no failures in science; there are simply data-points for the next experiment.

Thank you, sir. If not for your bravery, dilligence, and sense of wonder about our cosmos, the next feller to try shooting a bottle rocket out of his ass wouldn't know that, whatever you do, don't clench up; it keeps the rocket right on your ass, sizzling your mansac.

A nonflammable lubricant might be helpful, too. And perhaps some sort of asbestos "ball-shield," as well.

Thanks to dawnsblood.

Dinner With Chris Walken: The quality of the sound makes it difficult to tell if this is a great Chris Walken impression, but it sounds pretty good.

Here's the warning; Do not download anything from this site, because they like to play tricks on people. I don't know if it's real or not, but a woman's son downloaded a pic from the site, and, when she called to get help in getting it removed from her computer, they guided her through the process of completely wiping out her machine, while pretending to be helpful.

So: Don't download anything. And definitely don't contact them for "tech help."

But this impression is kinda funny, and no download is needed.

If you remember the Joe Schmoe show, the guy doing the impression is Lance Krall, who played "Kip," the gay Cuban basket-case patterned after Pedro from Real World San Francisco.

Thanks to Andrew.

One More: The First Cat To Call His Opponent "Kitler" Loses The Debate: A website dedicated to "Kitlers," or cats that look like Hitler.

One would have a much larger website if one attempted to document the millions of cats who think like Hitler.

Maus had it right, baby. Trust me-- if they could manage it, we'd be gone.

Thanks to Jason.

Posted by: Ace at 09:00 PM | Comments (31)
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But I really don't want to suggest that there's something wrong with the culture as a whole, because there are, I'm told, many moderate Muslims who do not exult in mass-murder, just as there were many good Germans who did not support the Holocaust or the Nazis, and of course during World War II we were extraordinarily careful about only bombing homes and factories inhabited by known Nazis.

And I remember quite clearly how we dropped leaflets on Hiroshima and Nagasaki warning all non-Tojo-supporting Japanese to evacuate posthaste, so that we only incinerated the militaristic, confirmed enemies while sparing the women, children, and pacifistic men.

So really, it would be patently absurd and unhinged to suggest we treat the Muslim menace any differently than we treated the Nazi and Imperial Japanese threats. By all means, let us stick to those previous rules of engagement that served us so well in the last world war. Certainly I would not be so bloodthirsty as to suggest going beyond our WWII rules.

Print at Jawa.

Video at Allah.

More at LGF.

Posted by: Ace at 08:43 PM | Comments (38)
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Frederic Arthur (Fred) Clark, who had tired of reading obituaries noting other's courageous battles with this or that disease, wanted it known that he lost his battle as a result of an automobile accident on June 18, 2006.

...

During his life he excelled at mediocrity. He loved to hear and tell jokes, especially short ones due to his limited attention span. He had a life long love affair with bacon, butter, cigars and bourbon.

There's more, including his family's pride at his self restraint regarding shower-urination.

Posted by: Ace at 08:28 PM | Comments (17)
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Correction: As Prop 22 did not amend the state constitution, there is nothing untoward about Angelides promising to overturn the law. I was mistaken about it being part of the Constitution. So the only objection to it is on policy grounds, not procedural ones, and if that's what California decides, democratically, I guess I have no problem with it.

Thanks to Alex, JD, and SeanM for correcting my loose shit.

...

I'm so glad the reasonable centrists/libertarians have prevailed, and we don't have that icky, bigoted FMA as the law of the land.

After all, there's no danger of judges overruling laws or even state constitutional amendments, or governors claiming the power to redact portions of the lawfully-amended state constitution at will.

No chance. No chance at all.

I wish those who say they're against the FMA on "states' rights grounds" would just admit that, by "states' rights," they mean the "right" of the citizens of a state to have their laws and constitutions altered by unelected judges or by governors taking liberties with the law.

In other words, they support the "right" of people to have gay marriage forced upon them no matter what democratic process they attempt to stop it.

I mean, democracy is nice and all, Old Bean, but there are limits.

"The people's right to choose the laws under which they shall live is overrated, though not overtly so." -- Thomas Jefferson, from Stuff Jefferson Said About Gay Marriage Which Of Course He Always Imagined Was An Implied Constitutional Right Though He Never Actually Said So (That's Why It's An Implied Right, Dummy), 1st Edition, Andrew Sullivan & Assocs. Press, 2002.

Posted by: Ace at 05:35 PM | Comments (41)
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