Airforce Airguns has a solution.

The Condor pellet rifle. 1250 ft. per second in .22 caliber. 3000 psi. Hell don't hit the fence, you'd go through it.

thanks to James, who is fond of saying "Au revior, go-pher".

Posted by: Dave In Texas at 12:03 PM | Comments (156)
Post contains 46 words, total size 1 kb.

Opening hailing frequencies... in my pants.

Thanks to Michael Rittenhouse.

Posted by: Ace at 11:51 AM | Comments (30)
Post contains 26 words, total size 1 kb.

Here's Huck saying he's been "talking" to Frank Gaffney about foreign policy. In another statement, he'd say that a key influence on his foreign policy thinking is... NYT liberal columnist Tom Friedman.

CNN's WOLF BLITZER: "Who are your principal foreign policy advisers, Governor?"

GOV. MIKE HUCKABEE: "Well, I have a number of people from whom I get policy. I'm talking to Frank Gaffney, I talk to Richard Haas, I talk to a number of military people, some of whom I can't name because they're active in the militaryÂ…"

HUGH HEWITT: "What do you think Frank Gaffney?"

CENTER FOR SECURITY POLICY'S FRANK GAFFNEY: "For the purposes of setting the record straight, Hugh, I want you and your audience to recall that the other guy he mentioned in this New York Times Sunday magazine interview was advising him was Tom Friedman of The New York Times. That sounds a lot more like Tom's advice than my advice. I think that's cockamamie. And in fact, I had an hour and a half I think conversation with Governor Huckabee a couple of months ago over breakfast. And this was one of the main points on which I tried to educate him. This is not a sibling that you just aren't having a good time with. This is a country run by megalomaniacs bent on an apocalyptic outcome who believe that bringing about a world without America is their god given obligation. And, you know, just talking with them, you know, 'can't we all get along', Rodney King style, is not a prescription for a serious foreign policy I'm afraid."

HEWITT: "Did you make progress with him, Frank Gaffney, in that conversation?"

GAFFNEY: "Well, I thought so, but this certainly doesn't sound like it. He, just previous to that conversation given a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies."

HEWITT: "That's what this speech is from. That's that clip is from the Center for StrategicÂ…"

GAFFNEY: "If that is the speech before I spoke with him and that is no longer his view I've made progress. But that was a view that I tried to disabuse him of and I have not seen the Foreign Affairs article which presumably provides his current thinking and so don't know whether I've made any progress or not."

Quick, let's put him in charge of foreign policy.

And if you disagree with him, I guess that means you hate Jesus, huh?

Huck's Got A New MSM Booster: Oh, you'll love this.

Three guesses.

No, screw that, I'm too anxious to tell you: David Shuster.

Posted by: Ace at 11:47 AM | Comments (22)
Post contains 454 words, total size 3 kb.

Eerie, but probably bunk. 50% chance it's a forgery, 45% chance it's just the florid imaginings of a somewhat off-kilter woman with an addiction to drama, 5% chance that... well, I don't know.

The note was sent to Paul Burrell, the princess's then butler, in October 1993, 10 months after her separation from Prince Charles was announced.

The note written by Diana, Princess of Wales to her butler Paul Burrell
The letter written by Diana to Paul Burrell

She wrote: "I am sitting here at my desk today in October, longing for someone to hug me and encourage me to keep strong and hold my head high.

"This particular phase in my life is the most dangerous - my husband is planning 'an accident' in my car, brake failure and serious head injury in order to make the path clear for him to marry Tiggy. Camilla is nothing but a decoy, so we are all being used by the man in every sense of the word."

The letter has been shown at the inquest at the Royal Courts of Justice in London to witnesses who have been challenged over their assertions that the princess did not fear for her safety.

Mohamed Fayed, the father of the princess's boyfriend, Dodi Fayed, claims that the couple were killed by MI6 on the orders of Prince Philip to prevent them marrying and having a Muslim baby.

Michael Mansfield, QC, representing Mr Fayed, has suggested to close friends of the princess that she had expressed fears for her safety, which they have denied.]

During questioning on Tuesday, the letter was shown to Lucia Flecha da Lima, the wife of the former Brazilian ambassador to London and one of the princess's closest confidantes. She said that the princess had never expressed fears for her safety.

"I still don't believe in it," she said. "Paul Burrell was perfectly capable of imitating Princess Diana's handwriting. I don't believe she was fearing for her life, especially from Prince Charles, the future king of your country."

Paul Burrell was tried (in a case that collapsed) for allegedly stealing Diana's dresses.

Eh. Not sure why she would know about this super-secret conspiracy to kill her (or, it seems, to at least put her in a coma or inflict brain damage). She doesn't say how she knows this, just that she knows.

Posted by: Ace at 11:39 AM | Comments (18)
Post contains 413 words, total size 3 kb.

The buddy that I'm staying with just came home for lunch and asked me what was going on today in the news. I mentioned Rudy Giuliani's hospital visit and he reminded me that "flu-like symptoms" used to be code for "hung over." So I looked at the story again:

Sources tell FOX 2 that he was complaining of headaches nausea and slurring his speech...

Veeery suspicious, if you ask me. And Gateway Pundit has this statement from a Giuliani spokesman:

"He went to the hospital last night with flu like symptoms. We're told he's in good spirits and heading back to New York today."

Code?

My conclusion: Vote Giuliani; he's livin' the AOSHQ lifestyle.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 10:38 AM | Comments (31)
Post contains 120 words, total size 1 kb.

Pixy just fixed the Minx system.

I'd prefer if people commented there, for purely selfish reasons: Haloscan doesn't count as traffic and so doesn't pay the bills. Also, when we switch over the mee.nu system (tomorrow, hopefully), Haloscan comments won't be imported and saved, whereas the Minx comments will be.

Anyway, now both buttons are available in case Minx conks out yet again. You can use either one you like, and if threads are already going on Haloscan, keep using that thread and stuff. Just saying, Minx is back up and, if you have no particular preference for Haloscan, I'd prefer you using that one for new threads.

Unless, of course, it fails again.

DoublePlus Undead tells me there are no problems with the new system, so, fingers crossed.

Posted by: Ace at 10:07 AM | Comments (48)
Post contains 135 words, total size 1 kb.

UPDATE: Well, that was short-lived. A commenter at my other blog pointed out that the SWOSU homepage is decked out with Christmas cheer.

Also, Ed Morrissey followed up with a phone call to the AG's office and discovered that this story is untrue.

UPDATE: I'm putting this at the top because early callers to the AG's office claims this isn't true, and they are wishing people a Merry Christmas when greeting callers. So I called there myself, and spoke with Emily Lang, spokesperson for the AG. Ms Lang confirms that they are greeting callers with "Merry Christmas" as a means of refuting this story. AG Edmundson did not issue this order, she insists; they are checking with assistant AGs to see if the advisory ever existed at all. At any rate, the AG does not believe state workers should refrain from Christmas greetings.

Ms. Lang wants people to know that they have a Christmas tree in the office, and hopes everyone has a Merry Christmas.

So I was punked. My apologies for getting anyone riled up. And anyone who disregarded my "be polite" advice regarding emails to David Misak may owe him an apology.

Original Post is still here, just tucked below the fold: more...

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 09:57 AM | Comments (25)
Post contains 612 words, total size 4 kb.

Rod Dreher, "crunchy con," dutifully picks up the liberal meme of the horrid anti-Christian treatment of Huckabee by the GOP:

It's funny, but when it looked like Rudy Giuliani, a social liberal, was going to be the nominee, we didn't see many, if any, establishment Republican opinion leaders freaking out over what kind of danger to the future of the party and the nation he representedÂ….I think it's fair to say that it was assumed that Giuliani would be a sound representative of the Republican Party, and that the social and religious conservatives would do like they always do and get in lineÂ…

Fuck you, bub. This is risible. No one demanded they "get in line." A certain once-pro-Giuliani blogger I could name frequently worried he would divide the coalition by stubbornly and stupidly refusing to move further to the right to appease this bloc.

And if no one was worried that Giuliani, say, would fail to outlaw abortion: Newsflash, Rod. Abortion isn't getting outlawed under Giuliani, or Mike Huckabee, or Ron Paul, or Pat Robertson. The most that can possibly happen in the the next decade is that five justices decide (correctly) that Roe should be overturned and recommit that question to the states, where it belongs.

The biggest danger Giuliani posed here was that, being pro-choice at heart, he would flinch at nominating the fifth, crucial anti-Roe judge... but that's not much of a danger, because the Senate would never confirm the fifth, crucial anti-Roe judge anyway. The Gang of 14 agreed to not filibuster judges except in cases of "extraordinary circumstances," and by "extraordinary circumstances," they meant the fifth, crucial anti-Roe vote.

Now that Democrats actually control the Senate -- and in addition have perhaps a dozen pro-choice or squish Republicans backing them on this issue -- the entire question is even more hypothetical now.

On the other hand, Huckabee is a confirmed liberal in all the areas where he could, as President, make difference.

But lo, it turns out that the candidate who's caught fire comes straight out of the religious/social conservative wing of the coalition, and he is unsound on issues most important to the fiscal wing. It's not supposed to work that way. Nobody at the elite level seems to expect the economic conservatives to suck it up for the sake of party unity. What does that say about the place of social conservatives in the party all these years?

This is a good point. It does seem unfair that the born-again candidate George W. Bush (Governor of Texas, if you remember him) was thoroughly demonized by the GOP establishment to the point where he lost the nomination to economic conservative President Steve Forbes.

I'll give Dreher that.

I don't want to overdo this. I think it's perfectly fine to be worried about Huckabee's vagueness, and his unpreparedness. I'm worried about these things too, which is a big reason why I can't say I'd vote for him (though honestly, any Republican who finds himself worked up over Huckabee's lack of knowledge about foreign affairs, say, should ask himself if he felt the same way about Gov. Bush in 1999 and 2000, and if not, why not).

Why didn't we ask this about the born-again Christian George W. Bush? Dreher isn't even making sense, as he attempts to prove that very religious candidates are being treated more harshly but then injects Bush as an example of a non-religious candidate treated more leniently. But, see, Rod: Bush is rather religious. Just ask him.

As to why we're more concerned about foreign policy now in 2007 than we were in 1999 or 2000: Gee, Rod, I can't think of a single incident, certainly not one occurring in the second week of September 2001, that would tend to make foreign policy more important now than it seemed at the end of the Clinton Administration. I mean, it's not like we're involved in a Global War against Terror or something now.

So I guess you got me again. Well played, sir.

Still, it's hard to shake the belief that the real problem with Mike Huckabee, as far as the establishment is concerned, is that he's not clubbable.

Again, fuck you, pal. It's hard for you to shake because you've always been a liberal squish and you dutifully repeat the memes now flying around among your leftwing buddies' dinner parties. You are attempting to spin an antipathy towards Huckabee's liberal politics into some sort of hatred of a huge group of people, fanning the flames of tribal divisions by claiming that the only reason political conservatives reject Huckabee is that we consider him, as well as all those loathesome Christians, as Not Quite Our Class, Dear.

For the rest of us it's rather simple: We liked Bush (I was an enthusiastic supporter, despite not being religious) because he was a conservative candidate. Huckabee is not a conservative candidate.

See the difference there, Rod? It's really not that complicated I assure you.

George Bush: a born-again Christian and a political conservative.

Mike Huckabee: an evangelical Christian and... umm... lost a lot of weight.

Rod Dreher is wrong six ways to Sunday. He insists the east-coast swells of the GOP establishment are anti-Christian despite the fact that they enthusiastically supported the Christian candidate Bush in 2000. He further insists that the mere fact that a candidate is Christian should, somehow, be the only qualification necessary to lead a political party, and that the GOP establishment is somehow being inconsistent in asking that its leader actually share its politics.

Furthermore he's playing -- as Huckabee is -- a rather shabby game of identity politics, demanding that the "GOP establishment" endorse Huckabee despite not sharing many of its political convictions simply because he's the right religion.

I wonder if Dreher would agree that, if the Democratic Party rejects Hillary, it hates women, or if they reject Obama, they hate blacks. Somehow I rather doubt Mr. Crunchy Con would agree with those propositions. It's only the GOP, strangely enough, which is to be judged to be discriminatory, and, even more strangely, discriminatory against Christians, of all people.

A Vast Right Wing Conspiracy? That's essentially what Dreher is saying here. That, just as with Bill Clinton, a vast right wing conspiracy is conspiring against Huckabee.

I guess he's right on that score: There are in fact tens of millions of conservative Republicans who don't want a rapist and murderer pardoning, tax-and-spending, nanny-stating, illegal-immigrant-coddling, Why Do They Hate Us? asking liberal as the leader of the conservative party, and I guess that counts as both "vast" and "right wing."

I'm not sure why we are somehow obliged to vote for a liberal just because he really, really, really believes in Jesus (much more than any other candidate, who are, let's face it, not really Christians at all, are they?). But apparently Rod Dreher thinks we are so obliged, and it's pretty plain he also thinks Christian conservatives should quit the party if Mike Huckabee is not nominated.

Thanks to Gabe for noting the "vast right wing conspiracy" angle.

Unnamed Huckabee Supporter: Rush Limbaugh Doesn't Like Huckabee Because He Doesn't "Think For Himself," Secretly Wants Hillary To Win To Make More Money: Alas, Limbaugh won't take this personally.

I wish he would but he won't.

Still it's rather breathtaking how Huckabee and his allies claim that everyone who doesn't like Huckabee does so out of some deep character flaw.

I guess that's a better story to sell than "They don't like him because he's liberal."

Thanks to Cuffy Meigs.

Rush Update From Cuffy: Cuffy says Limbaugh did notice that comment, and wasn't pleased:

Rush was just talking about the Huck comment. Basically said "I hope Huck really doesn't have advisors like that in his camp. I REALLY hope that. Because if he does...(forboding unnamed retaliation)"

Oh, and he just wrapped up the hour by calling them IDIOTS.

Maybe Limbaugh hates Christians, too.

Ann Coulter too.

Anyone insufficiently impressed with the liberal Mike Huckabee hates Christianity itself and is most likely a part of a "GOP Establishment"/Satanic cabal.

Posted by: Ace at 09:09 AM | Comments (63)
Post contains 1355 words, total size 9 kb.

He had a lot of corrupt mongrel blood feeding his threateningly Negroid soul, but most alarming of all was his apparent Jewish bloodline.

In the fascinating book "Elvis and Gladys" by historian and biographer, Elaine Dundy discovers the Presley and Smith mixed bag of ethnic lineage from Native American Indian to Elvis' Jewish heritage.To be of Jewish heritage is maternal acquisition because there is no mistaking who is the mother of a child. Now because Elvis Jewish heritage ran uninterrupted down through his maternal grandmothers according to Jewish law Elvis Aron Presley would be considered Jewish.

This is what Dundy discovered in her research: "... Nancy Burdine was married to Abner Tacket. Nancy was of particular interest to Gladys for her Jewish heritage, often remembering Nancy's sons for their Jewish names Sidney and Jerome. Nancy and Abner had a daughter Martha (Tacket) who married White Mansell. The daughter which they named Octavia nicknamed Doll who was Elvis' maternal grandmother."

...

After his mother died Elvis personally sought to design his beloved motherÂ’s gravesite which included a Star of David on Gladys Love Presley's tombstone. The decision was made by him in honour of his Jewish heritage. Something his mother was proud of and acknowledged to Elvis at a very early age.

They control the media.

And also: Vegas.

Via the Corner.

It's Old? Apparently so. K-Lo linked it on a lark, not because it was fresh.

Still, news to me. Then again most things are.

Posted by: Ace at 08:36 AM | Comments (6)
Post contains 261 words, total size 2 kb.

The "silly hat" incident is considerably less of an incident than the Politico's Roger Simon claimed, as video shows.

Roger Simon reported it as an awkward moment which insulted the firefighters. The video shows it was actually a laugh-getter and not awkward at all.

The Deciders, baby.

Posted by: Ace at 08:22 AM | Comments (13)
Post contains 57 words, total size 1 kb.