Update: The Amazon pay page may, or may not, be working. It's here, if you'd like to donate through Amazon. Please let me know ASAP if I've screwed up and have left any personal information here.

Update to the Update: A lot of "Page Cannot Be Displayed" crap again. I've been going through this crap since Monday. What is wrong with Amazon?

Last Update: Amazon seems up and down, but here's the way to know it's up: When the Amazon button is showing in the left sidebar, or after he jump in this post, it should be up and running. When the button is invisible, that means the system's fragged, and there's no point clicking on the link above.

Thank you for trying.

...

I want to thank everyone who's contributed to the apartment-kitty so far. It's really appreciated. This weekend is set aside to finish all the thank yous.

As I wrote back to someone, sometimes I get a little choked up at the generosity and kind words of you guys, which bothers me, because I hate emotion.

Except for the emotion of hate.

One reader said he couldn't make a donation, but he'd donate his time in-kind to help me write thank-yous. How nice is that? I don't think I'll be taking him up on it; I've got a couple of funny thank-yous I've been doing and I'll just play with them a little so that not all thank-yous are 100% identical.

No one's sent me $10,000 yet, but I assume that's just because it takes a little while to free up assets in children's education and health trusts and the like. I forgive you for your tardiness in this.

The button's at the left, if you're inclined to donate, but just were waiting for me to plead with you again.

On Amazon: Well, now the system kind of works, and I entered in all my information, but at the last step -- pushing the button actually create the account -- it keeps telling me the system is encountering a problem and that I shoud "try again later."

So, that might not happen today.

Amazon Update: Well, the account is sort of created, but everytime I attempt to configure it, I get a "Cannot find serve" notice. After clicking five or six times, I eventually get to the next page.

Oh well. It's not like Amazon relies upon the Internet or anything, right? more...

Posted by: Ace at 12:47 PM | Comments (29)
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Thanks to Rocket's Brain Trust for this.

Ray Robinson is the guy translating captured Iraqi documents, often publishing his translations on FoxNews. He's doing good work. If I have to make a criticism -- and, frankly, I do -- I think a lot of his stuff is ignored because he fails to lay out what he intends to show, or suggest, in a bullet-point opening paragraph. I find my eyes glazing over in his articles, wondering which pieces (of they many he mentions) I'm supposed to be putting together.

From a blogger's POV, he's a tough one to link, because there is rarely a summary paragraph to quote.

Sorry, Ray. Just saying. Write more reader-friendly, and your important work will be more widely read. Conclusions first, then supporting evidence. Not all mixed together. This stuff is winding and confusing, so give us a road-map upfront.

At any rate, he seems to have found an indirect, but not too indirect, connection between the British Bombers and Saddam Hussein, but that's just crazy talk, because we know for a fact Saddam Hussein had absolutely nothing to do with terrorism (apart from inviting Al Qaeda to Iraq for sanctuary when it was forced to depart the Sudan, and apart from putting up Abu Nidal in Baghdad, and etc.).

To be honest, I have trouble following this, as I have trouble with a lot of Robinson's work. Maybe I'm dumb or impatient. Maybe it seems confusing because it is confusing, or the links Robinson attempts to show are very attenuated. Either way, these are what I think are the key bits:
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Posted by: Ace at 12:37 PM | Comments (21)
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Can we please get serious now?

BRITISH police claim to have found a "martyrdom video" in which one of the 24 British Muslims arrested over an alleged plot to destroy up to a dozen passenger aircraft sets out his reasons for joining the planned suicide attack.

British officials said the damning evidence had been found in the home of one of the suspects, who include a 23-year-old biochemistry student and a Heathrow security guard with an all-areas access pass.

The guard was in his airport uniform when he was arrested and led away in handcuffs.

The suspects are mostly of Pakistani origin but two are white converts to Islam. Abdul Waheed, 21, changed his name from Don Stewart-Whyte six months ago after growing up as the son of a Conservative Party official.

Race doesn't seem to matter. But religion definitely does, no?

Well, isn't he cute. I hope when he gets to prison the forcible sodomy will be -- mwah! -- exquisite.

Yeah, I'm very much against prison rape, and I think it's shameful the wardens don't crack down on it and eliminate this barbarity once and for all.

There are exceptions to every rule, though.

Thanks to Stephanie.

Update... David Stewart-Whyte, aka Abdul Waheed, is the brother of a Victoria's Secret model?

Warning: Do not click on this link unless you want to see a smoking-hot, lingerie-wearing sister of a terrorist.

Posted by: Ace at 11:06 AM | Comments (43)
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Not endorsing, just putting out there. Quoted from StratFor... how much stock you put in their analysis is of course up to you.

It bears on the partition question. I usually think that there is a hopeful, optimistic view on this -- that peoples of different races and religions can live in relative peace -- that is almost always wrong, except in, say, America. My solution is always to give up on the liberal multiethnic utopian dream and simply segregate the populations from each other, in a land and citizen swap, to keep the people from murdering each other.

Kashmir? Swap 'em out. All Muslims relocated to one side of a new border, all Shikhs and Hindus relocated to the other side.

Yes, it's ethnic cleansing. But it's reciprocal ethnic cleansing, and while the method may be objectionable, the goal -- the utilitarian preservation of the most human life as possible, with the least intercine strife -- seems worth it.

At least to me.

At any rate. The Statfor quote is beyond the jump. Thanks to Dave In Texas. I'm still wondering who this guy "Texas" is.
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Posted by: Ace at 10:58 AM | Comments (37)
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Good stuff on his website, and the trailer for "Young Americans" is, according to Craig, "awesome."

I'm late to this. Pat Dollard, I think, sent me a link a long time ago, but that was during the time of my video/audio problems, so I really couldn't watch it.

Definitely take a look.

Posted by: Ace at 10:12 AM | Comments (10)
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Humbert Humbert's wondering, "What the eff? Why do some guys get all the luck?"

MUSKEGON HEIGHTS, Michigan (AP) -- A woman who feared she would lose her boyfriend while she recuperated from surgery arranged for her 15-year-old daughter to have sex with him, authorities said.

Police said the three signed an agreement specifying the sexual services the girl would perform and the compensation she would receive, including clothing and body piercings. The 37-year-old man and the girl had sex about 20 times over two months, police said.

No comment. What can you say?

H/t to Allah.

Posted by: Ace at 09:54 AM | Comments (31)
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The media likes to defend itself against blogger criticism by noting that 1% of them are reporting from dangerous warzones. Well! 1% of bloggers are doing the same.

Not me, of course. But then Jane Hall -- a frequent proponent of this defense -- isn't reporting from anywhere more dangerous than the quad at Columbia University, either.

Nice work, Michael.

Michael Yon, meanwhile, is sounding the alarm bells on the long-feared (or long-anticipated, depending on your politics) Iraqi civil war.

When I first alerted the public about the growing civil war in Iraq back in February 2005, those cautions were dismissed or ignored. Yet in all the time since, the fire has been growing in Iraq, while people here quibble over the pros and cons of using terms such as “sectarian violence” versus “civil war.” Painfully silly. It’s as if firefighters rushed to a conflagration and instead of recognizing it for what it is, fighting it for what it is, calling it what is, instead of unrolling hoses, the firefighters instead began arguing over radios and loudspeakers about whether to call the fire a conflagration or an inferno. And while they argued, people were burning to death, and the blaze was spreading, and firefighters were being surrounded.

Despite incredible progress in Iraq, we are now in great peril of losing the war entirely. At the current rate, we will witness genocide as a nation rips itself apart along sectarian seams.

Yon isn't a knee-jerk defeatist or quagmirologist. So, if he says things are slipping towards the ragged edge of Hell itself, I'm inclined to take his word for it.

This is why I advocate the partition of Iraq. Some will say that a unified, peaceful, multiethnic Iraq is better.

I say do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. And the perfect, to me, is seeming more and more impossible.

And: It could very well be that the threat of partition causes the Sunnis to also accept the good (a unified, peaceful Iraq, where they get a say in, and a cut of, the oil sales) over the perfect, from their point of view (they get to rule Iraq).

Finally, we really do have a war that's "All about the oil," not that the lefties have noticed. The Sunnis live, largely, in areas that don't have oil. They want to have control over the crazy-oil money. Serious threats that they will be cut out of the oil money altogether will have an effect.

Quite frankly, I don't know why this wasn't expressly threatened two years ago.

Let them know: you can either have a proportional share of oil revenues -- 25% or so -- or 0%. It's that simple. If you want the 25%, stop killing people.

Hat tip Confederate Yankee, who also has a case of a photo with a very misleading caption.

Posted by: Ace at 09:31 AM | Comments (25)
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Cat is absolutely fascinated by flushing toilet, watching water vortex down the tube. Link Fixed!

It starts eh, but the repetitiveness of it -- and how seriously into toilet-flushing this cat is -- gets you.

Thanks to John, also known as Mrs. Susan McKibbish.

Peformance artist Sandra Bernhardt (a performance artist is a stand-up comedian who isn't funny) threatens "World War III" over airport security bans on her "MAC Plushglass" lipstick.

1) Some people aren't serious about terrorism.

2) Some people are very serious about getting their names into print on the thinnest of pretexts.

3) Some people have been coasting since their one intriguing gag -- announcing "My nipples are hard" on stage -- they first told in 1984.

Steven Baldwin may be the "good Baldwin," but he's, well, weird.

"I like to ask friends of mine, happy couples who seem to have a pretty good marriage, I will ask them, 'How's your sex life?'" Alec Baldwin's little brother writes in a new book excerpted in the upcoming Esquire mag. "They will say something like pretty good or okay or no complaints here. Here's what I tell them: Imagine taking a healthy sex life and inviting the power of God into that exchange."

Baldwin also seems to prefer a muscular — make that violent and aggressive — form of religion.

"I'd always imagined Jesus was the sweet, cuddly, loving dude, and suddenly I find out he makes Conan the Barbarian look like Conan the wimp," he says. "He didn't come with a guitar singing Kum Ba Yah. Jesus brought a sword to the earth, and he is still swinging it."

As for Baldwin himself, "God has called me to go and make disciples of the youth of America. That is what I am going to do. And if you try to stop me, I am going to break your face."

Vacationing guys snap pics of Mel Gibson as he drinks, right before his DUI; now making thousands of dollars selling pics to tabloids.

CELEB SHOCK: David Navarro and Carmen Electra divorcing.

Navarro filed for divorce, citing "irreconcilabe differences" regarding the fact that Electra has a vagina, and intends to keep it.

I keed, I keed. There is no reason whatsoever to suspect that David Navarro is "that way." I mean, the black nailpolish ain't helping, but I'm sure he's a man's man.

(Nice guy though. Absurdly nice. Nice to the point of being boring and annoying in his nicetude. Everytime I see him on Celebrity Poker, he's so such a nice guy I want to put his head into a vice and drill five or six holes into his head.)

H/t on celeb stuff to Gawker. Or Or Defamer. Eh, they're basically the same.

Celebrity Gossip Update From "Well-Placed Source" Stormy70:

Dave Navarro is now banging Jenna Jamison.
The various STDs among them have now formed into a superstrain of disease that will encompass the earth.

It will be the Andromeda Strain of itchy, oozing genitals.

Posted by: Ace at 08:47 AM | Comments (37)
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Moderate squirrel.

Moderate turtle.

Let's not have any anti-squirrel or anti-turtle backlash, people. The vast majority of squirrels eat nuts, not human flesh, and turtles invented algebra, which you really shouldn't hold against them, either.

Thanks to Craig.

Posted by: Ace at 07:49 AM | Comments (34)
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Damn. I wish I could say they ripped me off, except 1) Texas Rainmaker made the point first, 2) it's kind of obvious, and 3) they, uhh, technically published before me, too. Technically.

Eh. In a way they ripped me off.

Worth a read. It's not just an idiot saying it:

Americans went to work yesterday to news of another astonishing terror plot against U.S. airlines, only this time the response was grateful relief. British authorities had busted the "very sophisticated" plan "to commit mass murder" and arrested 20-plus British-Pakistani suspects. As we approach the fifth anniversary of 9/11 without another major attack on U.S. soil, now is the right moment to consider the policies that have protected us--and those in public life who have fought those policies nearly every step of the way.

It's not as if the "Islamic fascists"--to borrow President Bush's description yesterday--haven't been trying to hit us. They took more than 50 lives last year in London with the "7/7" subway bombings. There was the catastrophic attack in Madrid the year before that left nearly 200 dead. But there have also been successes. Some have been publicized, such as a foiled plot to poison Britain's food supply with ricin. But undoubtedly many have not, because authorities don't want to compromise sources and methods, or because the would-be terrorists have been captured or killed before they could carry out their plans.

...

"This wasn't supposed to happen today," a U.S. official told the Washington Post of the arrests and terror alert. "It was supposed to happen several days from now. We hear the British lost track of one or two guys. They had to move." Meanwhile, British antiterrorism chief Peter Clarke said at a news conference that the plot was foiled because "a large number of people" had been under surveillance, with police monitoring "spending, travel and communications."

Let's emphasize that again: The plot was foiled because a large number of people were under surveillance concerning their spending, travel and communications. Which leads us to wonder if Scotland Yard would have succeeded if the ACLU or the New York Times had first learned the details of such surveillance programs.

Via InstaHeh.

Drudge Updates: I won't even bother linking it all. It's right there.

-- Planned for 8/16

-- 24 terrorists -- ah, wait, "British insurgents" -- now in custody

-- Lattes, iPods now suspect (they always have been in my book)

-- police fear violence against Muslims

"Oh God, what did they blow up this time?"

Posted by: Ace at 07:36 AM | Comments (22)
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