These are the big buzzwords they say are sure to impress in British business.

The best jargon in the poll was "thought grenade," which means an explosive good idea.

Maybe, if you're gay.

Another was "let's sunset that," which means putting a bad idea to rest.

How about putting your cock to rest, Nigel? Yeah. Let's sunset that for ten damn minutes, huh?

"Little ‘r’ me," which is a request for a private reply to an e-mail.

Again: very, very gay.

"Information touchpoint," which means that office workers will no longer attend meetings in 2007, instead Information Touchpoints will be on the daily agenda.

Apparently gay sex will also be on the daily agenda.

Even their list of bad office catchphrases is gay.

"Getting down with the kids." (i.e. junior office workers)

Pederasts.

"Open up your kimono."

See, this one almost sounds not-gay, until you realize that this is only said from one guy to another guy (no English guy would have the balls, in that hyper-PC country, to say this to a woman), making it even gayer than the last one.

"LetÂ’s raise the anchor and let this one drift."

Very... nautical. As Stan Lee says, 'nuff said.

Posted by: Ace at 07:51 PM | Comments (69)
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Howard Fineman truly is an idiot. Read his bold statements about what the public wants in their next president -- "NO IDEOLOGUES, PLEASE;" "KNOW THE MIDDLE CLASS" -- and tell me if each of them is not either utterly obvious, or cutesy Bush-bashing disguised, as Time and Newsweek occasionally like to pretend, as nonpartisan horse-race analysis.

Gee, the public wants a "SERIOUS STUDENT" this time? I can't imagine whom Howard Fineman is saying they don't want.

And that thing about "ideologues"? As always, Howard, an "ideologue" is someone who believes things you don't. If he believes in the stuff you believe in, he's just "principled." I doubt very much if Fineman or his nitwit liberal "source" for this pap finds the Democrats' lockstep enthusiasm for an increased minimum wage to be the fetish of "ideologues" at all -- no, that's just plain ol' horse sense.

"WASHINGTON EXPERIENCE NOT NECESSARY"? Are you shittin' me? This country hasn't elected someone directly from Congress since frigging Kennedy and Howard Fineman's here to give us the inside scoop that a career in Washington may not be a prerequisite for the presidency?

In related news, water is wet, night is dark, and the "cycle of violence" continues to spiral out of control in the age-old dog-squirrel conflict.

Anyway. It's so stupid I've quoted almost the entirety of it below.

I've Got Nothin'

I'm completely tapped. I haven't had an original or interesting thought since 1985, and that one was about selling cinnamon-raisin bread (just like the bagels!), but it turned out they already were doing that. So, I guess it wasn't original. But I thought it was interesting. Then again, I'm a fucking moron.

WEB EXCLUSIVE COMMENTARY

By Howard Fineman
Newsweek
Updated: 2 hours, 16 minutes ago

Jan. 3, 2007 - Now that the 38th president has been laid to rest, the capital can take up the main business of 2007: trying to figure out who will be the 44th. What type of leader does the country want? Here is my sense of it, based on talking to politicians and party strategists from both sides of the aisle (the left side, and the center-left side) and voters here and around the nation. And when I say "voters," I mean politicians and party strategist; they vote too, you know. So, basically, I called up my friend and met him at a Georgetown bar to knock this thing out on Newsweek's dime.

MAMMALS ONLY PLEASE
It might be considered phylumist to suggest, but the American people feel most comforted by a leader who shares similar values to themselves -- such as giving birth to live young, being warm-blooded, and having an endoskeleton supporting their body weight. "The American people have briefly flirted with non-mammalian candidates," says Dan Pfeiffer, a former staffer to the Evan Bayh campaign, as he tries to close out nineteens in our cricket rubber-match. "But they find reptiles too cold, they don't like they way their tongues flicker out and they don't get the whole 'swallowing mice whole' thing."

His argument rings true to me. Perhaps it's because I'm on my ninth dirty martini, maybe it's because I'm still bothered, somewhere deep inside, by the short-lived NBC science-fiction series V, a show which pitted reptiles who looked like humans against actor Marc Singer, a human who looked like a reptile. But for whatever reason, our next President will almost certainly be a human being, or at least be both bipedal and mammalian, maybe a big friendly dog like Scooby-Doo or, better yet, First Officer Spock.

"The Roadmap to Peace...? Fascinating."

IT'S PARTY TIME-- *THIRD* PARTY TIME, THAT IS
The public is tired of the same binary choice in their President's party affiliation. "Historically," Dan Pheiffer says as he orders us round of Kamikazes, "the public has only had two choices for president. Those on the right could chose the Republican Party. Those on the left could choose the Communist Party. But many of us wish there were, I don't know, some sort of new, exciting democratic alternative between those two extremes."

And that's the sort of party America wants this time 'round.

Both Pfeiffer and I put on our "thinky looks" as we try to imagine what that third party might be.

B.Y.O.H.
Pfeiffer tells me he's fairly confident that the next president will have a functioning head, preferably attached to his body.

There was a time, to be sure, when the country seemed ready to embrace a headless President, one whose suddenly-truncated neck bubbled over with red grue, whether he frightened the children or not. But those carefree, less-judgmental days seem to have passed like the Age of Aquarius and my own late-eighties crack addiction.

Pfeiffer moves on to eighteens, plugging a double and a triple, and going up 36 points. "The public wants its president to look them in the eye," he says, now nailing another double, just to be a points-douche. "And for a candidate to look you in the eye, he himself must have an eye, and that implies a head. The public is tired of turning on the TV set and looking at blow-dried politicians with neck-stumps whose severed esophagi gurgling up saliva and stomach acid as they try, futilely, to speak. Quite frankly, it's a bad look."

And Pfeiffer is equally bearish on candidates with more than one head. "Just the standard number, I think," he says. "It's like the number of men you should have sex with before committing to heterosexuality -- zero's too few, nine's too many. Somewhere in the middle would be nice."

NO SERIAL KILLERS OR CHILD RAPISTS NEED APPLY
The popularity of William Bennet's The Book of Virtues suggests that the American public is still concerned with issues of character. Although the public is willing to forgive a candidate for his transgressions, a candidate must still be relatively clean, even in this post-Clinton age.

First among those disqualifying transgressions: being a serial killer or a child rapist. A candidate must be certain he has no "skeletons in his closet" or, for that matter, skeletons in his basement crawl-spaces or vegetable garden. "This eliminates Dennis Kucinich, unfortunately," Pfeiffer says. Then he winks flirtatiously at what he thinks is a "woman" but which I can see, based on the telltale signs, is actually a transexual.

We both begin chugging triple-shots of bourbon to drown out the gnawing tedious obviousness of our discussion. "I'm not one for predictions," Pfeiffer says, "But I will make you one guarantee about the next president: He will have absolutely no history of stalking, killing, and eating his fellow human beings."

That seems strict. Not even one?

"Well perhaps one or two," he allows, "but only if he can somehow incorporate it into his biography, and explain to the American public the lessens he's learned from his cannibalism, and how that's taught him about the insecurity of the middle class, and how Mexicans need papers or, I don't know, whatever the fuck he's talking about. God, I think I'm getting fucking drunk."

By the way-- that "woman" I thought was a transexual? Turns out I was wrong.

It was a cigarette machine. It did have big hands, though.

That last round of Dewers and LSD was a bad idea.

THE CANDIDATE'S NAME SHOULD BE A PERFECT ANAGRAM OF "ORACK BABAMA"
This is the key consideration, both Pfeiffer and I decide, as we now move on to straight tequilla shots and have now been asked to stop playing darts since we began drunkenly spraying them around the room with less precision than a Palestinian terrorist in a Rome airport.

"I think the next Preshident should be Orack Babama," I say, and then realize my mistake. "I jussht said Orack Babama."

"That'shh funny," Pfeiffer says, and spills his drink all over his crotch. "You sshaid Orack Babama."

"Orack Babama," I say again.

"He's a very attractive candidate," Pfeiffer says. "Very attractive. I'd break my Rule of Nine for him, if you know what I mean."

There is an uncomfortable silence, which seems as good a time as any to spark up a bowl of crack.

"You're the bessshht," Pfeiffer tells me. I shake him off as he grabs my shoulder. "No, no lishhten to me. I love you, man. I serioushly love you."

He then falls off his chair as I take a wild swipe at grabbing the waitress' cooter.

"Orack Babama," we both say as the bouncers haul us out and toss us onto the cold Georgetown pavement.

"So what'shh thish article going to be about?" he asks as we collect ourselves up, wobbling, from the ground.

"Oh I don't know, politicshhh or shomething," I say as I vomit on to a stray cat. "No one readsh thish shit anyhow. It's Newsweek. Now let me bang this stupid article out, and then we can go see if we can double-team that cigarette machine."

Posted by: Ace at 06:10 PM | Comments (98)
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Apparently I'm supposed to write about him. Actually, I'm supposed to have writtten about him numerous times in the past month.

Well, there you go. "Barack Obama."

Done. Check.

Glad that's over with. Quite frankly, there's something about him that scares the crap out of me.*

* Of course, it should be noted that Manly Keyboard Bravewarrior Tbogg is not afraid at all of Barack Obama. He, unlike me, is not afraid of any brown people.

Then again, like most liberals, he doesn't actually know any, either. It's easy to not be afraid of brown people when the only brown person you've ever seen is Cliff Huxtable. Cliff Huxtable isn't threatening, unless you're threatened by puckish sarcasm and constant nagging to go to a good college.

Now, in my case, I know several brown people. One used to work in Accounts Reconcilliation where I used to work, and she was terrifying.

And she was only a Light Brown Person. An Indian or something. A technical-support Indian, not a, you know, a blackjack Indian. From one of those savage lands where they wear brightly colored gowns and worship monsoon spirits and eat white people like they're Raisinettes or, God help me, Goobers.

Posted by: Ace at 02:34 PM | Comments (127)
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I apologize for the lack of accuracy. He really didn't suggest anything of the sort. He does say he wishes Confederate Yankee would join her in Iraq, and giggles girlishly at the thought of ConYan running at the sound of (imagined) gunfire*, but unlike Kos and Wonkette, he doesn't ever say anything to the effect of "I hope she stays there."

Sorry, slapdash of me. I just... really have trouble reading Tbogg.

But, reading it more carefully (difficult to keep my eyes on the computer monitor), he's innocent of the charges.

* Presumably, the rather effeminate Tbogg is so super-tough he wouldn't flinch at the sound of gunfire, but would instead rush towards the shooter and strangle him, skin him, butcher him, and make himself some spicy terrorist stew.

It's really silly how these mincing ponces have built themselves up as Manly Keyboard Warriors, isn't it?

Overcompensation can be so embarassing.

Posted by: Ace at 02:25 PM | Comments (23)
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Good Lord.

Guys, if you want someone to come in and gut your company and drive it into the ground -- I'll work for half that much.

Posted by: Ace at 02:20 PM | Comments (59)
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He may be more accurate that NRO's Bench Memos credits him.

Judicial activism comes from a royalist impulse, of course -- benevolent Philosopher Kings imposing "Good" on a population over which they have total power, and to which they owe no accountability, whether the hoi polloi recognizes it as "Good" or not.

That Royalist theory of judicial power is precisely contradictory to the democratic theory, that the public shall make its own laws through participatory democracy.

So, in a way, Stevens is the ultimate royalist/conservative, while Scalia is a democratic radical.

This would be an interesting experiment to let play out, were it not for the inconvenient fact that the Constitution itself endorses one and repudiates the other.

Posted by: Ace at 02:17 PM | Comments (7)
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Remember all that crap about needing to rebuild the surplus and spend within our means?

The left doesn't.

Turns out -- if you can believe this -- it was nothing but election-year lies.

I don't know how I can soldier on. The world doesn't even make sense to me anymore.

When the GOP controlled Congress, Krugman devoted column after column to what he called America’s “fiscal train wreck,” “fiscal catastrophe,” and “fiscal quagmire,” and President Bush’s “sheer banana-republic irresponsibility.” Of course, when Democrats were out of power they followed Krugman’s deficit-hawk lead. Hillary Clinton worried about the “staggering federal deficit.” Nancy Pelosi warned about “mountains of debt.” Barack Obama fretted about “our structural deficit problem.” And John Kerry raved about “fiscal cancer.” But now they can follow Krugman’s new deficit-embracing talking points. He’s got it all figured out: Surpluses are bad; deficits are good.

According to Krugman, while the budget surplus of 1998 to 2001 was “a bad thing, because it greased the rails for Mr. Bush’s irresponsibility,” Democrats today can “let the deficit be.” He writes,

By spending money well, Democrats can both improve AmericansÂ’ lives and, more broadly, offer a demonstration of the benefits of good government. Deficit reduction, on the other hand, might just end up playing into the hands of the next irresponsible president.

Let me get this straight. Liberals whined for years about Reagan's supply-side deficits, which effectively hamstrung them from increasing spending.

So their new plan is to... rack up massive demand-side deficits to hamstring Republicans from further tax cuts?

One would begin to imagine, if one were cynically-minded, that our Democratic leaders are not being precisely straight with us.

Posted by: Ace at 01:46 PM | Comments (48)
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The thing is, I'm sure they'd rather go to any other school.

The problem is that -- well, universities are so PC-crazy that I'm guessing they don't want the students.

Oh, they all know they're innocent as lambs. But still, they've been accused by a black woman of rape, and, innocent or not, they just don't want those sorts of people around.

I wonder if the invite comes with a required waiver of lawsuit. I bet it does. In which case they should tell them to go fuck themselves.

"As circumstances have evolved in this extraordinary case, we have attempted to balance recognition of the gravity of legal charges with the presumption of your innocence," Larry Moneta, Duke's vice president for student affairs said in a letter to Seligmann dated Tuesday.

"Now with the approach of a new term, we believe that circumstances warrant that we strike this balance differently. At this point, continued extension of the administrative leave would do unwarranted harm to your educational progress."

Duke President Richard Brodhead issued a statement Wednesday saying: "We have decided that the right and fair thing to do is to welcome back Reade Seligmann and Collin Finnerty to resume their studies at Duke for the spring semester. Although the students still face serious charges and larger issues require Duke's collective attention, the circumstances in this case have changed substantially, and it is appropriate that the students have an opportunity to continue their education."

Finnerty's attorney, Wade Smith, said his client was invited back at Duke for the spring semester but would not say for sure whether he would accept the offer.

Wbat "larger issues"? The "larger issue" of being the victim of a shakedown-artist whore, who probably just lied about rape to get off of a drunk and disorderly charge?

Thanks to Slublog.

Correction: One of the students, at least, has been attending Hofstra. Which is good and all, but few would mistake Hofstra for a top-thirty college like Duke.

Posted by: Ace at 01:26 PM | Comments (21)
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Boy, there are some funny people on this site.

Stop me if you have heard of this one before:

A Shiite, a Sunni, and a Sadrite each walk into a mosque - the mosque is destroyed by the fire of the infidel. On this point you must believe me.

I am making the funny ...

What do you call six Shias and two gallons of kerosene and a match?

A good start ....

This is funny because of its truthfulness ....

Say, I as, you: What goes clip-clop, clip-clop, clip-clop KABOOM?

A martyr's oxcart the moment before he experiences the joy of Allah.

Say - how many people are here from out of town?

The Blog: I suspect Greg Gutfeld. He does this kind of thing.

The profile:

Thank you for visiting my blog. My name is Captain Jamil Hussein of the Iraqi Police Service and I am actually existing. If you are a Hollywood celebrity or agent please contact me

In all seriousness -- if the guy exists, if AP stands by its reportage so forcefully, please explain why Mr. 61* (sixty-one citations in AP reports; the asterix is to indicate, as it does in baseball, the dubiousness of that mark) has not been cited a single time since this story broke.*

* As Slublog, I think, recounted, he was actually cited in a single story since then, but well before there was any attention paid to the story. The story had, in a way, "broken," but barely anyone knew about it yet, and certainly AP hadn't realized it had a problem on its hands. Since then -- nada. Mr. 61*, the Chatty Kathy of the Yarmouk Police Station, has gone radio-silent.

Posted by: Ace at 01:22 PM | Comments (19)
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So annoying.

It is a sad thing to watch James Wolcott continue in his hobby of pissing up ropes, but I suppose we all need to pay a bit of attention to this barren man from time to time lest he abandon his wife and their family of cats for Air America.

...

What's really going on here is the latest installment in "James Wolcott, Link-Whore." Wolcott's been sinking lower on the NY Scribbler Food Chain for years. To revive his slumping significance, Wolcott has latched onto blogdom -- probably because the initial plan of changing his first name to "Alexander" didn't land him a lot of lunches at Michaels.

And how do you "rise" in blogdom? Pretty much in the same way you rise in the Lit'ry World of New York City -- you get the attention of the Alphas.

...

All you have to do is to open your posting program, quaff a six-pack, strip to skivvies, roll out the yoga mat, rig up the rope, assume the position, and let nature take its course.

Wolcott's strategy for getting attention is basically to insult right-wing bloggers in approximate order of appearance on the Truth Laid Bear ecosystem. It's pretty lame.

There's a weird dynamic -- right wing bloggers cover the news, left wing blogs cover... right wing bloggers.

Wolcott is said to have been the model for Jon Lovitz' "The Critic" character. Here I review the reviewer himself, and here I review his godawful novel.

At least the first couple of pages. Who has time for the rest of this dreck?

Apparently no one did.

I'm not even sure James Wolcott read James Wolcott's novel.

Thanks to Larwyn.

Oh, and... Jane Hamster is whining that she lost out to Markos in RWN's twenty most annoying liberals list.

What did I do wrong? Was I not shrill and caustic enough, did I not do enough to mock Michelle Malkin and her histrionic halucinations, did I not post the requisite number of offensive images, sing kumbayah in the comments section too few times or was it the fact that I simply never compared George Bush to Hitler? Is it just that my megaphone is not as big as Markos's, or am I not being taken seriously because I am a woman?

Does anyone get that? One would imagine it's a light-hearted, ironic rant, but some of that reads as if she's really pretty angry she doesn't have the mindshare that Markos does.

Either way, VanDerLeun responds to her questions.

Posted by: Ace at 01:02 PM | Comments (9)
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