It's something:

"The most poisonous dagger stabbed in us, the Iraqi Shi'ites, is the (Iranian) regime shamefully exploiting the Shi'ite sect to implement its evil goals. They have targeted our national interests and began planning to divide Iraq and to separate the southern provinces from Iraq." -- From the petition

John Murtha immediately praised the letter, suggesting that the US could help defeat the Iranian menace by re-deploying our troops to Trinidad/Tobago, an island strategically located, of course, between Iran and Iraq. Plus, he continued: "All that jerk chicken! Mmmm!"

Thanks to CJ.

Posted by: Ace at 03:56 PM | Comments (50)
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You probably don't need this timewaster now, but who knows.

It's not just stupid, it's deceptively hard and frustrating. Perfect!

Thanks to RobG.

Update: I really hate this game; the frustration factor is high. It induced me to curse out loud.

Some may like this sort of thing. But unless you're looking to be pissed off, skip it.

Posted by: Ace at 02:51 PM | Comments (6)
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He's now at The Nation, where he always belonged. But what the hell was this unreconstructed red-diaper baby doing managing the Middle East desk for a supposedly objective newspaper?

I will not pay my income tax if we go to war with Iran. I realize this is a desperate and perhaps futile gesture. But an attack on Iran—which appears increasingly likely before the coming presidential election—will unleash a regional conflict of catastrophic proportions. This war, and especially Iranian retaliatory strikes on American targets, will be used to silence domestic dissent and abolish what is left of our civil liberties. It will solidify the slow-motion coup d'etat that has been under way since the 9/11 attacks. It could mean the death of the Republic.

Here's a video of Hedges being eviscerated by Hitchens, calling Hedges a "mediocre pseudointellectual" and apologist for (enthusiast of?) psychopathic evil:

The best part I think is at the end, where Hitchens calls Hedges "a perfect picture" of the "cretinous relationship between sloppy moral relativism, half baked absolutism, and the journalism that lies in between." The moderator asks Hedges if he'd like to respond, but he merely waves her off. No mas, no mas.

And in case you forgot, Hedges was the douchebag who provoked a college graduation audience into jeering and shouting "USA! USA!" by spoiling a ceremony for students and families by droning on and and on in a Marxist diatribe against "American Empire."

How braindead do you have to be to repeat the tired and utterly wrong cliche that "war is now just a videogame"? That was stupid as fuck and endlessly parroted by empty-headed half-wits in 1991, for God's sake. Update your stale act, man. Might as well toss in a couple of cutting insights about Dynasty while you're at it. Joan Collins! What a dirty bitch!

There are times I slip into the easy and obvious myself, of course, but trust me, were I giving a public speech, I would never allow myself to lapse into such musty cant. This jackass, on the other hand, thought the war-as-videogame stupidity was rather clever and worth repeating for the eight billionth time.

And this is just the sort of highly-trained, maverick-minded genius the MSM believes is uniquely -- uniquely -- qualified to pick and choose and spin the news for you.

Thanks to CJ.

Posted by: Ace at 02:25 PM | Comments (30)
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I don't find this as compelling as others seem to, but I seem to be in the minority. So here is the video you've all seen already.

The cop seems to have a bad case of Respect My Authoritah, but I don't find it as clean an indictment of him as I might like because the driver turns his body three quarters away from him -- which can be seen, arguably, as a provocative action. Who knows, after all, what he may be doing when his body is turned and hand not in full view.

That's not a defense of the cop, who seems to have acted violently due 90% to his belief he wasn't being afforded proper respect or deference. I note it more as an argument that can be made at trial.

Though trial or not, he's gone from the force, I think it's safe to say.

Posted by: Ace at 02:10 PM | Comments (63)
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Seems appropriate. "You party with the late great great Lincoln?"

Posted by: Ace at 02:00 PM | Comments (5)
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The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies.

To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God.

In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict....

I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.

From Lincoln's 1863 Thanksgiving proclamation.

Additional Thanksgiving proclamations, from the first one in 1621 until George W. Bush's several days ago, at the Tax Prof.

Posted by: Ace at 01:37 PM | Comments (1)
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MamaAJ linked this in the Happy Thanksgiving thread.

I added the payoff scene in the extended entry:

more...

Posted by: Dave In Texas at 08:18 AM | Comments (19)
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By now everyone knows about the woman who asked McCain "how do we beat the bitch?" right? Well, Leonard Pitts (columnist for the Miami Herald) is trashing McCain for not smacking down the woman who asked the question.

The problem here is, Pitts makes this statement:

...I get that many people don't like Clinton. I don't like her much myself, and my reasons echo the consensus. She seems cold, calculated, brittle...

"Bitch" actually expresses some measure of internal toughness, those other three Pittsian terms don't. Maggie Thatcher was a bitch - just ask the Argentinians. Not that I'm saying Hillary! is any Maggie Thatcher, but you get my point.

Pitts' nuance here is so fucking nuanced its gone right over my head. I'm also pretty sure this column is going to result in his getting no Christmas cards from the Clinton campaign this year.

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 07:29 AM | Comments (16)
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Fun Sony Commercial.

70,000 litres of paint, 358 single bottle bombs
33 sextuple air cluster bombs, 22 Triple hung cluster bombs, 268 mortars, 33 Triple Mortars, 22 Double mortars, 358 meters of weld, 330 meters of steel pipe, 57 km of copper wire.

Check out the Sony 'Bouncy Balls' vid too.

Do they still sell Superballs? Those things were great for ricocheting around a classroom when the teacher had her back turned.

UPDATE UNDER THE FOLD

UPDATE2 [Dave in Texas]: Another Sony ad. Clay bunnies.

These are pretty clever. more...

Posted by: LauraW. at 06:58 AM | Comments (10)
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He's done enough time in the barrel right? Been kicked around and slammed enough, right? Now its OK to declare him "rehabilitated" and not a reviled incompetent torturing covering up thug anymore. Soon he'll be the universally respected media sage on all things Iraq making big bucks on the talk show and college lecture circuit and offering "sound advise" on Olby's Countdown.

Retired Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez [of Abu Ghraib fame], the top commander in Iraq shortly after the fall of Baghdad, said this week he supports Democratic legislation that calls for most troops to come home within a year...

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 06:18 AM | Comments (12)
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