Turn your bed into a dedicated internet platform. Why not?

Is it just me, or does anyone else see something wrong with this configuration? A lack of thought about the ergonomics of one of the most popluar internet-centered activities, is what I'm trying to say.

Thanks to yls.

Posted by: Ace at 08:35 AM | Comments (24)
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Couldn't AP at least verified whether the "four mosques consumed by flames" were actually consumed, or at least even showing any fire damage at all?

Posted by: Ace at 07:43 AM | Comments (7)
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If there is, it could be fun. Let me know.

Okay... I've spent the whole morning googling on this. Thanks to you guys, and some help from a neocon coward chickenhawk who will go unnamed, we've determined the emails are from the same guy, but we can't prove, yet, they come from the idiot I want to nail.

He's a major idiot, but not "major" in the sense you ever heard of him. He thinks you should have heard of him, but no one ever has.

Posted by: Ace at 07:29 AM | Comments (29)
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Ralph Schulenburg Sr. feared if he didn't take action, the two armed intruders would kill everyone inside his Division Street home.

The pair, he said, made no attempt to hide their faces, and one of them even boldly gave his name as ``Charlie'' when one of Schulenburg's sons asked.

``I wasn't about to just sit there,'' Schulenburg, 50, said Saturday as he recounted the events that played out inside 421 Division St. on Friday afternoon.

But he said it was his son, Ralph Schulenburg Jr., 23, who grabbed an old Mauser rifle and shot the intruders during a fierce gunbattle.

Aaron Peavy, 21, of Albany, was shot in the heart and killed. His alleged accomplice, Charles E. Little III, 20, of Troy, was shot in the left hand and lost at least one finger. It was the fourth time since early December that alleged intruders have been shot inside homes they targeted in Schenectady.

"I can live with this kind of vigilantism. Home invaders, not so much."

Note to lefties: You can kinda get away with demanding complete submission to the authority of the state. When you extend that submissive impulse to also demanding complete submission to the authority of armed home-invaders looking to loot and perhaps even rape, well, you just sound like fucking idiots.

It just doesn't sell, is all I'm sayin'.

Why does the left find self-defense by innocent, law-abiding civilians against loathesome criminals so endlessly worrying?

Posted by: Ace at 07:20 AM | Comments (29)
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When worlds collide.

He likes it, overall, but with pointed criticisms, of course. It's really a review of the current War Against the West more than a review of one man's book about it. Worth reading in full, especially Hitchens' suggested eight-point plan for defeating Islamist lunacies.

But...

2. A strong, open alliance with India on all fronts, from the military to the political and economic, backed by an extensive cultural exchange program, to demonstrate solidarity with the other great multiethnic democracy under attack from Muslim fascism. A hugely enlarged quota for qualified Indian immigrants and a reduction in quotas from Pakistan and other nations where fundamentalism dominates.

3. A similarly forward approach to Nigeria, São Tomé and Príncipe, and the other countries of Western Africa that are under attack by jihadists and are also the location of vast potential oil reserves, whose proper development could help emancipate the local populations from poverty and ourselves from dependence on Middle Eastern oil.

It sounds good-- reward the sane while punishing those cultures that celebrate a viral mutate of homicidal psychosis. But reward those countries by offering to let more of their most talented and ambitious immigrate to the West? A reward for those who immigrate, but surely a punishment for the immigrants' home countries, no? India can surely afford to lose some of its population, but what about a country like Niger, where the net subraction of non-psychopaths might actually throw the remaining population into the hands of the killers?

I like this a lot:

8. We should, of course, be scrupulous on principle about stirring up interethnic tensions. But we should remind those states that are less scrupulous—Iran, Pakistan, and Syria swiftly come to mind—that we know that they, too, have restless minorities and that they should not make trouble in Afghanistan, Lebanon, or Iraq without bearing this in mind. Some years ago, the Pakistani government announced that it would break the international embargo on the unrecognized and illegal Turkish separatist state in Cyprus and would appoint an ambassador to it, out of “Islamic solidarity.” Cyprus is a small democracy with no armed forces to speak of, but its then–foreign minister told me the following story. He sought a meeting with the Pakistani authorities and told them privately that if they recognized the breakaway Turkish colony, his government would immediately supply funds and arms to one of the secessionist movements—such as the Baluchis—within Pakistan itself. Pakistan never appointed an ambassador to Turkish Cyprus.

We've got to get over the very childish idea that has taken hold that "War is the enemy" and that we musn't stir up wars, even in the nations which are our sworn enemies. We saw this in the Balkans, where NATO and the whole west (including America) refused to provide arms to populations being slaughtered because -- well, war is bad, right?

Yes, war is bad. But there are worse things, and it's time for us, and Bush, to grow up about that.

And it's about time we started funding Iranian rebels, whether or not the left will knee-jerkedly whine we're supporting "terrorists." They may in fact resort to terrorism; perhaps they'll even become exclusively terrorist. But the left likes to pretend that terrorism is no different than guerilla rebel groups. They are different -- the former primarily targets civilians, while the latter primarily targets military forces and police (which, in most developing/totalitarian/wartorn societies, are essentially the same thing anyway).

Good quote here from Martin Amis, a very liberal British writer. This is quoted by Hitch, not Steyn.

There’s a definite urge—don’t you have it?—to say, “The Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order.” What sort of suffering? Not letting them travel. Deportation—further down the road. Curtailing of freedoms. Strip-searching people who look like they’re from the Middle East or from Pakistan. . . . Discriminatory stuff, until it hurts the whole community and they start getting tough with their children. . . . They hate us for letting our children have sex and take drugs—well, they’ve got to stop their children killing people.

If even liberals (albeit a tiny minority) are talking like this and mocking Muslims' claims of "Islamophobia" -- guys, maybe it's time to start rethinking this whole "Holy Murder" deal, huh?

Thanks to Brown Line.

Posted by: Ace at 06:56 AM | Comments (49)
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Taking Glenn Reynold's An Army of Davids far too literally.

Yes yes, the tree of liberty must be fed and all that. I don't know if Jefferson was writing about this sort of thing, though.

Miguel Grima was not a well-liked man. As mayor of a tiny hamlet in the foothills of the Pyrenees in northern Spain he had ruffled a few feathers.

The farmers turned against him when he put a stop to the centuries-old custom of herding livestock through village.

The hunters got annoyed when he refused to issue them with shooting licences and the local drinkers revolted after he prevented the settlement's only bar from setting out tables on the terrace in summer.

He had repeatedly received anonymous threatening letters and reportedly told friends recently that he feared for his life and he was considering standing down as mayor of Fago at the next election.

So last Friday evening when he failed to return home from a late council meeting in a nearby town, his wife took his absence seriously and contacted police.

The next day the battered body of Mr Grima was discovered in a roadside ditch. He had been shot at least four times in the head and chest at point-blank range.

Police believe Mr Grima was the victim of a meticulously planned ambush involving at least three perpetrators and, in a move worthy of an Agatha Christie murder mystery, the police are considering the entire population of the village as suspects.
...

There is no shortage of [suspects]. During his 12 years in office, the mayor, a member of the conservative Popular Party and the owner of the village's only guest house, had been involved in almost four dozen individual court cases with homeowners in Fago.

He had taken out injunctions to prevent people making home improvements and closed down a bed and breakfast because it competed for business with his own establishment.

Mr Grima had even incurred the wrath of the parents of the only two children living in the village by banning basketballs and shooting hoops in the village's only flat area - the central plaza.

The most public battle in recent times came about after the mayor imposed taxes of almost 400 euros a month on outdoor tables at Fago's only drinking establishment – the Casa Moriega bar – an amount locals consider high for an isolated village which attracts only a modest number of visitors in summer.

To protest against the prohibitively high tax, the owners of the bar hung a huge banner on the facade of the building stating: "Fago is not Madrid, not Paris, not London... Fago is not New York."

Santiago Miramar, the only villager who would comment on this week's events, said there were few in Fago who didn't consider themselves an enemy of the mayor.

"He was an unpleasant man who ran this place like his personal kingdom. He made life difficult for most of us but for a select few he made life impossible," he said.

Another villager, who refused to be named because he had been told by a judge that no one was to speak publicly while they were under suspicion, said: "Revenge is a dish best served cold. I'm not saying anything more than that."

Come to Fago

Don't let the name fool you. We'll whack any motherfucker who gets in the way of your vacation magic. That's the way we roll.

Thanks to JohnS.

Posted by: Ace at 06:42 AM | Comments (45)
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Bumper-cars in Portland.

From Al Gore's upcoming book, Global Waming: The Icy Chill of Death.

My Thoughts Exactly: An anonymous commenter writes--

Once you hit four or five cars, you might as well just floor it and see what happens.

Indeed. What's the worst that could happen?

Posted by: Ace at 04:23 PM | Comments (191)
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Wow, she's running. I had no idea.

More shocks: She talks up the claim she grew up "middle class." (Um, not so much.) And she wants to "talk" more, and "discuss" issues, and wants "the converstation [to] begin."

Leadership: A yenta asking other yentas what she should do.

The "listening" crap is so Oprah. She sort of had to do it in New York, as she'd never lived there, so had to claim she was "listening" to what the people of New York might want. Otherwise voters might get the kooky idea she was just an opportunistic carpetbagger who had engineered Daniel Patrick Monynihan's retirement just to run in an open seat in one of the three states liberal enough to even consider voting for her.

So the "listening tour" made strategic sense there, I guess. She could always rebut the carpetbagger charge by saying, "Hey, I'm listening to the people. And who knows more about the problems of average New Yorkers than average New Yorkers themselves?"

Idiotic, but whatever.

But now she's running the same campaign template again. Does she really need to "listen," at age 90 or whatever she is, to understand the problems of Americans? Is this a concession that she knows as little about Americans as she knew about New York Staters in 2000?

More at HotAir.

Posted by: Ace at 04:57 PM | Comments (365)
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"Vladislav."
Who met with Litvenenko, as well as Kotvun and Lugovoy, in a Millenium Hotel room. And arrived in London on the same flight as Kotvun, the guy whose Hamburg apartment is, coincidentally enough, a HazMat site.

Although that might just be a code-name. Allah thinks "Vladislav" may have some connection with this guy:

Alexander Litvinenko, who died after mysteriously absorbing polonium210, a rare and highly toxic radioactive material, said in his last full interview from hospital that he knew he was an “active case” for Russian intelligence.

He named the agent in charge of monitoring him as “Viktor Kirov”. A man called Anatoly V Kirov worked at the Russian embassy in London, where he was listed as a diplomat, until late last year.

Russia's all eager to help find this guy, of course:

Scotland Yard have asked to return to Russia so that they can continue their hunt for the suspected murderer, but have been told that they will not be allowed back until after a team of Russian investigators have completed their own inquiry in London.

The fear is that the Russian investigators will use their trip to pursue enemies of President Vladimir Putin living in London. The Kremlin has offered an amnesty for some on its wanted list in return for information against Mr PutinÂ’s main foes given asylum in Britain. They are thought to include former executives of the fallen oil giant Yukos, whose assets have been seized by the Kremlin.

Complicating the search for "Vladislav" is the fact that he was almost certainly murdered a month ago.

Posted by: Ace at 04:41 PM | Comments (11)
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It all starts as a tale of ordinary self-defense:

COLUMBIA, S.C. - A man trying to steal a car at gunpoint from a couple ended up being shot himself, Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott says. Harold Levar Jeffcoat, 29, was arrested Sunday at the hospital where he was being treated for a gunshot wound to the buttocks, Lott said.

A woman in the passenger seat pulled a gun from the glove compartment and fired five shots at Jeffcoat, hitting him once, investigators said.

Then things go horribly askew. Sit down, it's pretty bad.

First of all, the story gets reported in the mainstream media.
Hey, I'm as flabbergasted as you are. This is unacceptable.

Wait, it gets worse. Shh.
Here, bite down on this dishtowel so you don't hurt yourself if you go into fits.
OK.

Anyone- and I mean just any old citizen- could read this article and understand the simple, straightforward narrative of What, Who, Where, When and Why. Independent of any pissy anti-gun context.

No editorial guidance. No Storytelling. Not even a whiff of Framing, dammit!

Someone defended herself and her loved one with a firearm, and everything went just swimmingly. Period.
In the MSM.

This is chaos. Madness. My advice is to begin drinking heavily.

Posted by: LauraW. at 01:52 PM | Comments (76)
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