I kind of liked her before the plastic surgery and/or extreme body toning. Not only was she more real-looking, but you kind of rooted for her, because she was sort of chubby and awkward, but plucky in her determination to make it anyway. Even if she couldn't, technically, "sing."

She also made records that you liked, even if you pretended you didn't.

Posted by: Ace at 05:11 PM | Comments (35)
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Use the New Comments Thingy at the bottom of the post.

Here's the trick-- unlike the regular comments, you MUST enter an email address, even if it's fake, like eatme@deathmachine.com.

That's what I didn't get, until someone explained it to me.

Posted by: Ace at 04:24 PM | Comments (33)
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I dig on Dennis Miller. Let's hope he gels better with Hannity & Spock better than Al Michaels and Boomer Esiason. I don't want to say that Dennis Miller was a bad commentator on Monday Night Football, but some of his analogies and references felt more strained than Rosie O'Donnel's lawsuit against TCBY that frozen yogurt toppings should include pork chops.

I owe someone a hat-tip, but I can't find who tipped me.

PS, yes, it's old-- he did this in 2003. Now he's doing it again.

Weird Ish Goin' On, Yo: FoxNews wants an interview tomorrow. At 9 AM.

I don't think 9 AM interviews are part of the Ace of Spades Lifestyle (TM), alas.

I need a drink. I can barely manage to hold it together for a radio show no one listens to. There's no way I can avoid a meltdown in the studio.

Thanks for buying, everyone.

Posted by: Ace at 03:00 PM | Comments (178)
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Update: CNN actually lowered itself to cover this non-story on Inside Politics today. You can watch their in-depth coverage of the story, all two minutes and six seconds of it.

I haven't watched it, but I imagine Bill Schneider managed to say something profound, like "It's not considered ethical to doctor photos."

Anyway, back to my exchange with "Foreign Stringer."

...

At least he identifies himself as "Foreign Stringer." Whether he is or not, here's the exchange: more...

Posted by: Ace at 02:08 PM | Comments (17)
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To steal from Ann Coulter again: What Mel Gibson says when he's drunk, Tom Ricks says when he's sober. And on Howie Kurtz.

As someone else noted: Isn't it remarkable how Howie Kurtz just played along with that? It's like someone telling you they have fourteen heads and just saying, "Hat costs must be rough, huh?"

Allah compares it to the blood libel. But at least in the blood libel Jews are supposedly drinking the blood of others, not of their own.

Update: Stands by his remarks, but wishes he hadn't made them.

Hewitt says his book is the most serious attack on Bush's handling of Iraq thusfar, for what it's worth.

It could be he's just being nice to an interview. I don't know what Ricks' claims (I'm sure we'll be hearing soon), but Hewitt says his book relies a lot on anonymous sources.

And we sort of know where Ricks' anonymous sources are coming from.

Specifically, from Joe Wilson's and Valerie Plame's monthly "Frogmarch" party.

Thanks to John.

Posted by: Ace at 01:11 PM | Comments (9)
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In a Qunnippinininapipianianinac poll (posible spelling error), not one of those fakey internal polls.

He could win.

Because a great number of Lamont's most passionate supporters do not know where their local polling station is, or have valid ID, or even know enough to thorougly wash their junk at least once per month.

Here's the deal: Lieberman will not run as an independent. He says he will, but that's part of a bluff strategy to convince people not to vote him out. He's holding the spoiler card up his sleeve.

But he won't play it. Politicians want to be beloved, not despised. If Lamont wins, then the entire Democratic establishiment, as well as the grassroots, will wail for Lieberman to drop out of the race. (As mentioned on FoxNews Sunday yesterday.)

He will collect the signatures to run as an independent, to keep his options open, but ultimately, he will bow out. It would take a very tough man to completely ignore the passionate opinions of his fellow party members, and I don't think Joe Lieberman is that kind of tough.

If he had been, he would have more frequently voted against his party, instead of (like famously reasonable-talking Daniel Patrick Moynihan) always saying all the right things before voting almost down-the-line with the liberal wing of the party.

I don't think we're going to have an Independent Lieberman as Senator. It's a nice dream, but ultimately no one wants to be reviled by the people who once admired you.

Whether or not a Lamont win helps or hurts the Democrats is open to debate.

I know one thing: If Lamont wins, you're going to see Kos' face everywhere, and you will not be able to read about politics for the next five months without seeing him praised as The Man Who Crashed The Gates.

I don't know if I can handle that, man. I really don't.

Now the Netroots Are Gunning For Ed Rendell? They're going to purge the party for ideological purity until the only three Democrats left are Helen Thomas, Cynthia McKinney, that liberal jagweed The Green Arrow.

Some superpower. Shooting arrows. Yeah, that's impressive. You can do something my ten year old niece Heather does at Bible camp.

Aquaman laughs at the Green Arrow.

Posted by: Ace at 12:55 PM | Comments (41)
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Seems like as good a day as any.

My lease here is up August 31st, and I have no earthly idea where I'll be living September 1. As my credit rating is about what you'd expect for someone living the Ace of Spades HQ Lifestyle (TM), it would probably help to have a little bit in the bank before pitching myself as a renter.

That's where you come in.

As I've noted before, I have about 5000 regular readers, I'd guess. If each of these readers would send just $1, that would be $5000 for me in sweet, sweet blog-money.

Of course, if each of those readers sent $5, that would be even better. That would be $25,000 in crazy blog-money.

But what stop there? If each regular reader sent in just $100, that would sum to $500,000 in delusional schizophrenic blog money.

But of course I still think we can do better. If each regular reader took out a second or third mortgage on their home, or cashed in their children's educational trust, and sent me $10,000 each, why, that would add up to a Jane Hamsher mental instability amount of $50,000,000 cash-money, US coin.

A man could live nicely on that for a couple of months. Why, he might even be able to buy Andrew Sullivan a few days of server-space and bandwidth.

The little "PayPal" button in the left sidebar is where to donate, once you've consulted with your accountants about the (minor) consequences of cashing out most of your equity in your home and giving it to a complete stranger. I've put it right after the BlogAds, so it's high in the sidebar now.

And no, you don't need a PayPal account to donate. PayPal accounts are only needed to receive money. To send money, you just need to click on the button and punch in a credit card number.

For those worried about PayPal -- well, it's part of eBay, I think, so it's not a fly by night operation. I'm not aware of any security problems with it. But I'll also open up an Amazon account for those of you with concerns.

Thanks so much. (And PS: There will be thank-yous for everyone this time. No missing anyone. If I have to, I'll pay someone to help me send them out.)

I know sacrificing your children's future is a lot to ask. I know that. But, really -- do your kids ever crack you up with pooter jokes? Unlikely, it seems to me.

So let's have a sense of perspective here. Your kids will do just fine. Frankly, you don't want to burden them with all those advantages you never had. You turned out okay without those advantages, right? So have a little more faith in your children, for crying out loud. They're not made of glass. It's a tough world out there, and you're not doing them any favors by coddling them with toys and ponies and medical insurance.

Bonus: And, once again, for the ladies. While the Ace of Spades Mystique is what keeps my ladies coming back, sometimes one has to drop the veil and put a little of oneself out there.

So, yes, again: the only picture of myself available on the web.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 10:43 AM | Comments (84)
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Wow.

I mean: Wow.

Did I mention, Wow?

THOMAS RICKS, REPORTER, "THE WASHINGTON POST": I think it will be. But I think civilian casualties are also part of the battlefield play for both sides here. One of the things that is going on, according to some military analysts, is that Israel purposely has left pockets of Hezbollah rockets in Lebanon, because as long as they're being rocketed, they can continue to have a sort of moral equivalency in their operations in Lebanon.

KURTZ: Hold on, you're suggesting that Israel has deliberately allowed Hezbollah to retain some of it's fire power, essentially for PR purposes, because having Israeli civilians killed helps them in the public relations war here?

RICKS: Yes, that's what military analysts have told me.

KURTZ: That's an extraordinary testament to the notion that having people on your own side killed actually works to your benefit in that nobody wants to see your own citizens killed but it works to your benefit in terms of the battle of perceptions here.

RICKS: Exactly. It helps you with the moral high ground problem, because you know your operations in Lebanon are going to be killing civilians as well.

Which "military analysts" would those be, Ricks? Hezbollah military analysts? Larry Johnson? Scott Ritter? Markos of the Daily Kos?

I'm so glad that we have a MSM that refuses to indulge in thinly-sourced wild speculation and conspiracy theorizing, unlike all these irresponsible bloggers.

Remember what I was saying before about foreign stringers?

Forget that. I'd say we have bigger problems.

Thanks to Amish Doesn't Live Here Anymore.

Posted by: Ace at 10:27 AM | Comments (33)
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Russ from Winterset says the lead singer from Survivor (Eye of the Tiger) is the guy doing the "Real Men of Genius"/"Real American Heroes" commercials for Bud Light.

And I actually bothered to fact-check before bringing that to your attention. Status: True.

Funny commercials. You can enjoy some of them at the link above.

More here and here, for videos. H/t PetiteDov.

I like beer commercials. They sing about stuff I "get," like silent-but-deadly gas-passing.

They don't make me feel all dumb and unsophisticated, like that fancy-pants Frasier show does.

Although-- that dog is pretty funny, I have to admit. I wouldn't mind a show called "Frasier's Dog."

Random YouTube Link: Hall & Oates videos.

Sad fact: the various hard-metal names I drop on this site come from Boston Irish/Like A Viking. Blackie Lawless? I only name-check him because Boston Irish used to make me giggle when he name-checked him.

In point of fact, I'm much more fluent with the music and history of Hall & Oates. When other people were listening to Led Zeppelin, I was listening to Kiss on My List. It was only later, when I learned how massively uncool Hall & Oates were, that I started listening to Led Zep. Then, a couple of years later, now knowing most Led Zep songs and hence no longer a complete gaywad, I went back to sneaking Hall & Oates into the mix.

So, there you go. Ace of Spades: huge Hall & Oates fan. Had every record of theirs until, ummm, Big Bang Boom. And I mean every record-- like War Babies, X-Static, and Beauty on a Back Street. I don't even think Hall & Oates had copies of those albums.

Of course in college, I was then taught that Led Zeppelin was also massively uncool, and I had to get into Elvis Costello, sort of as a defensive maneuver, just so I'd have an acceptable answer to the question of what I listened to.

It kind of helped that Elvis Costello was, before he totally jumped the shark with Spike, seriously, amazingly good.

Posted by: Ace at 09:22 AM | Comments (34)
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A nice review from My Pet Jawa.

I'm very happy that the Right Wing Smear Machine is now working so effectively. As the lefties have it, smears percolate up from the dregs of the blogosphere (e.g., me), then Instapundit popularizes them, then they burst on to Rush Limbaugh, then they become conventional wisdom on paid straight media like Fox and the Washington Times.

Step Two is now in full effect:

I'll just note one recent event that suggests that the standards set by alleged professionals aren't very high.

That, of course, is Reuters' use of faked photos from Lebanon, part of a larger trend on the part of allegedly professional and objective Western media to use local stringers who are thoroughly anti-Israel and anti-American and then present the resulting reporting as if it were neutral and factual.

I've been pounding that drum for a while now. I don't know if anyone else was pounding it. I'll do a double-secret Instapundit link to myself, in my own mind.

I don't think Instapundit would swipe without hat-tipping; unlike Andrew Sullivan, Instapundit is pretty damn good with links. (Instapundit is a dedicated blogopshere promoter; Andrew Sullivan is a dedicated Andrew Sullivan promoter.)

Either this drum has been beaten by others I wasn't aware of, or it occurred to Instapundit independently, or it just sort of bubbled around and Instapundit wasn't really sure of where it was bubbling up from.

Hey, I'm just happy to do my part to keep the Right Wing Noise Machine putting out lies and smears on a daily basis. Knowing in my heart I had some impact in spreading Evil and Darkness throughout the world is all the credit I really need.

Posted by: Ace at 08:47 AM | Comments (27)
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