If you ever meet him, ask him to pull up his shirt. Don't worry, he's used to it. The real Jamil has two pupiks. Also, you can say any phrase you want to him and he will turn it into an anagram, just like Dick Cavett. He's slightly colorblind, plasma TVs give him a headache, and he's gonzo for Parker Posey.

-- Police Commissioner Akim Hussein

Other cool facts:

* Jamil Hussein created the popular kids' games Operation! and Hungry Hungry Hippos. His career took a bad turn, however, after the poorly-received boardgame "Douche-Chills!" and its annoying commercial campaign ("Mom! Sis keeps giving me the shivering douche-chills!").

* Jamil Hussein was once attacked by a cougar. Once.

* Justin Timberlake brought sexy back, but only Jamil Hussein can bring pleather back.

* Jamil Hussein orignated his own style of martial arts, emphasizing flashy leg kicks, ground-fighting manuevers, and shooting people in the face with a fucking shotgun.

* Jamil Hussein does not giggle when he hears the refrain "Turn around, Bright-Eyes." He just sighs wistfully.

* Children all over Iraq look forward each year to Jamil Hussein Day, when they go out in the neighborhood dressed in colorful traditional costumes, festoon trees and houses with brightly colored ribbons, and kick passing strangers in the genitals when they're not looking. Adults are less keen on the holiday.

* Never speak the name "Bruce Villanche" within earshot of Jamil Hussein. Trust me-- just don't.

Posted by: Ace at 12:04 PM | Comments (362)
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US Traction has the combined pool results here. (These results may not be final, but they're more or less ballpark.)

Congrats, Mob. And amazing powers of precognition were likewise displayed by moflicky, Rob A., Bart, Pupster, LauraW, and even Michael of InnocentBystanders. And rounding out the top ten were hockeypuck, doctorswoop, and Dave at Garfield Ridge.

There will be some Amazon gift certificates for the high-place finishers.

For the rest: Well, you get to lord it over us. That's... something.

Posted by: Ace at 10:58 AM | Comments (27)
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On the low end of what is needed, but I suppose we've become used to half-measures from Bush on all things.

Posted by: Ace at 09:28 AM | Comments (159)
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If no one else can find your sources, maybe it's because they're not really sources.

No one could else could find Steven Glass' "sources" either.

Checking the Web and Lexis-Nexis for the people and organizations mentioned in Glass' articles, you do not come up empty-handed. Although there are often no references before Glass published his fantasies, there are often references afterward. These are generally in British publications--or publications in places to which Britain brought the benefits of advanced civilization, such as hack journalism.

Between the Web, Nexis, and the good old telephone, it took little effort to discredit such apparent Glass inventions as the National Memorabilia Convention, Monicondoms, or the investment firm RBL. Other untraceable organizations, publications, and individuals include Patriotic Profits, P.J. Hozell, Isaac Tyo, Climate Lookout, Truth in Science, the Association for the Advancement of Sound Water Policy, Jim Sackman, Back to Eden, Naked Truth, Ryan Hogin, Andrew Zubitsky, the "Newt-O-Meter," the First Church of George Herbert Walker Christ, the Committee for the Former President's Integrity, Steve Tellis, the Tellis Times, and the Commission to Restore the Presidency to Greatness.

Listed here, it all seems transparently bogus or at least deeply suspicious. Yet I'm embarrassed to confess that every Glass story passed my stink test when first published in the New Republic. Now, plowing through the big Nexis dump, my hindsight is golden. Glass moved monumental piles of bullshit past me, a vain skeptic.

...

[One] explanation is that Glass built up credibility as each story was published and went unchallenged. You figured that if RBL didn't have a bond dealer with a urinal on his desk, someone from RBL would call the writer's bluff. What you didn't figure is that Glass would make up RBL itself. The principals in his stories didn't complain about the falsehoods for the simple reason that they often didn't exist.

he main reason Glass spoofed everybody's radar is that his stories were, in the self-mocking journalists' phrase "too good to check." As a reader, not his editor, it was not my job to check them. But I didn't even bring my usual editor's skepticism to reading them, because I wanted them to be true.

AP is in trouble. Blood is in the water. Forbes eagerly destroyed TNR -- and that was just TNR, a small magazine very nearly just a vanity imprint.

Does AP really think that no other MSM organization is going to dig here?

Are you mad at me, Katty?

Katty, are you mad at me?

Please talk to me, Katty. Please don't destroy me.

Are you mad at me, Katty?

Posted by: Ace at 09:25 AM | Comments (25)
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Unbelievable:

Kathleen Carroll, AP executive editor, told E&P today that she had not read Jordan's latest item, posted Monday, and likely would not. But she stood by the news organization's previous statements backing the existence of an Iraqi police captain, Jamail Hussein.

She won't even read it?

"I've been pretty public about what we have done to get to the crux of the criticism we have gotten about it," she added. When asked about critics' demands that AP produce Hussein to prove his existence, she said "that area [where he works] has pretty much been ethnically cleansed, it is a nasty place and continues to be."

Ummm... you're providing what you claim is his name (Jamil Hussein) and his title (Captain of Police) and now you're suggesting you can't produce him, lest you put his life in danger?

Carroll said that Hussein "is a guy weÂ’ve talked to for years," adding that "we donÂ’t have anything new to say about it, nothing new to add."

Linda Wagner, AP's director of media relations and public affairs, said she had just seen Jordan's post, but did not expect to have more to say about it. She said "it would be highly unusual for any news organization to provide sources on the demands of critics."

The trouble is, darling, you have "produced" him, by name and title, and yet no one else in the entire world can find him.

"Captain of Police" is not an obscure job. He is not being cited anonymously. He is not a secret source like Deep Throat.

If he exists, other people should be able to easily confirm this.

But they can't. Only AP says they've met him. Only AP says they've visited his offices.

Why is that?

If this is actually a pseudonym, then AP had a responsibility to admit that fact. They can't just make up names and pass them off as real.

Linda Wagner (who didn't bother responding to an email question about this) is blithely unconcerned over why no one in the world, except for AP, has heard of this supposed "Captain of Police:"

When asked about the fact that no other major news outlet appears to have been using Hussein as a source, Wagner said, "whether he might be used as an anonymous source by someone else, I donÂ’t know." She added that having a source that is not used by others may not be unusual in a war zone.

Doesn't know, doesn't care. A bit of the ol' intellectual incuriosity, no?

Enron, baby.

Ms. Wagner and Ms. Carroll, prepare your resumes. You're going to be AP's fall-gals on this, and you'll have no defenders whatsoever, given your haughty and high-handed dismissal of quite-legitimate concerns about this "source."

Posted by: Ace at 09:09 AM | Comments (22)
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If you still consider Eason Jordan part of the MSM.

But either way he's still influential in those circles -- and he just pronounced AP to be engulfed in huge scandal. Must read. Start with Allah's quotes, then read the rest of it, if you're so inclined.

Can't wait for Katty Carrol to haughtilly tell him off.

Kudos to Jordan for calling it straight.

I'm not sure what exactly happened, nor if there is a man called "Jamil Hussein" nor what his actual official capacity might be, if he does exist, but I know that AP can't just keep up with its "Shut up, they explained" defense any longer.

AP might just be looking at a journalistic Enron here. How can they presume to criticize governments and corporations for burying their mistakes and refusing to take any accountability when their institutional response to gross error, and possible malfeasance, is precisely the same?

We do need a vigilant press in this country to press uncomfortable questions to those in power. But if the press itself continues indulging in the same deny and lie spin cycle as any other organization caught dirty, how can it act in this role?

Bonus: Confederate Yankee searches through items attributed to Jamil Hussein by the AP to see if any other news agencies independently confirm his claims. (If "he" actually exists, of course.)

After searching through 40 of the sixty stories, Confederate Yankee cannot find a single independent confirmation of any of the specific claims he was able to check.

Posted by: Ace at 07:39 AM | Comments (16)
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I had no idea there was such a charge. I pray every state has one.

Guess she didn't like the sweater he got her for Christmas:

A woman attacked a man in his genitals during a Christmas party, injuring him badly enough that he needed 50 stitches, authorities said Friday. Rebecca Arnold Dawson, 34, was charged with malicious castration in a fight early Tuesday at a party hosted by the 38-year- old man's girlfriend, police said.

All three were heavily intoxicated, police Chief Frank Powers said.

About as unnecessary a statement as describing a serial killer as a "quiet type who kept mainly to himself."

Dawson is accused of grabbing the man's genitals. Police said a weapon was not used. He declined to elaborate.

Does anyone understand that bit? A weapon was not used... and he declines to elaborate further. What more elaboration is needed exactly? Did he decline to specify what sort of weapon was not used in the attack?

"I believe he needed more than 50 stitches to repair the damage, but he is back home at this point," police Cpl. Brad Stevens said. "All we can tell you is that the injury was done with her hands."

Still not getting the elaboration the reporter feels necessary to properly explain this scenario. It's as if the reporter is baffled at how an unarmed woman could have wreaked such havoc on a man's genitals.

Has this reporter ever seen a guy's genitals? They're not made out of fine Italian marble, you know.

Dawson does not have a listed phone number.

I swear to God, this reporter is just plain wacky. An odd conception of what he/she thinks need to be in the article. "Hey... maybe my readers are interested in dating this woman...? Better tell them the bad news: she's unlisted."

State law describes malicious castration as cutting off, maiming or disfiguring a person's genitals with the intent to hurt or render the victim impotent.

There you go, in case you were curious.

One more bit of weirdness from this reporter:

The castration arrest was the first of its kind in Lillington, a town of about 3,000 roughly 30 miles south of Raleigh, Powers said.

I just think that's an odd and pretty obvious detail. How many states have such a law, and further, how many genital-targeted attacks occur each year? Not many. Pretty much anywhere an attack like this happens it's going to be the first time.

Weird story reported by a weird reporter.

Thanks to Brown Line.

Posted by: Ace at 07:20 AM | Comments (20)
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"Don't be evil."

A grim milestone was reached today as the MSM including the phrase "grim milestone" in its 10,000th story.

Posted by: Ace at 07:10 AM | Comments (5)
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Fairly convenient how one Putin enemy is poisoned and another Putin enemy turns out to be the poisoner. At least according to Russian prosecutors:

Prosecutor General's Office said yesterday it suspects former co-owner of YUKOS Leonid Nevzlin of being involved in the poisoning of former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko in London. Nevzlin also became suspected in being linked to the “poisoning of Russian citizens with toxic agents”. Nevzlin’s lawyer Dmitry Kharitonov believes that Prosecutor General's Office is pushing for Nevzlin’s extradition from the U.S.. Nevzlin said the Office’s statements are “complete nonsense which is not worth any comments”.

...

The Office’s statements were transmitted to news agencies with “urgent” markings on them.

I'll bet they were.

Countries, including the US, have refused to extradite Nevzlin into Putin's tender mercies.

Nevzlin has a big list of accusations against him:

Leonid Nevzlin is a former Russian business oligarch and the former CEO of the Russian oil company Yukos. After several officers from his company were arrested for murder and other crimes, he fled to Israel. In November 2003, he was granted Israeli citizenship.

On 14 July 2005, the Russian Government asked the United States Government to hand over Nevzlin to face prosecution in Russia. Nevzlin has been charged with various offenses, with one of them including organization of a contract killing. "Nevzlin, who was Yukos owner Mikhail Khodorkovsky's right-hand man, has been charged with "entering into a criminal plot with Yukos' internal and economic security chief Alexander Pichugin to kill certain individuals who posed a... danger to the company, and to Nevzlin and Pichugin," Prosecutor General's Office said.

...but I have trouble taking any claim coming from Putin's thugs at face value, and this all seems rather too convenient for Putin.

I keep asking how difficult it is to detect Polonium poisoning. Those who claim a frame-up of Putin seem to think Polonium is easily detected, and thus the radiation trail would lead to him, seemingly, and by intent.

Still no real answer on that -- is the MSM interested in such trifling details? -- but this article suggests it's hard to detect:

Pound for pound, polonium-210 is at least a million times more toxic than hydrogen cyanide, the poison used to execute prisoners in gas chambers, according to medical toxicology books. Radiation safety experts calculate that a single gram of polonium could kill 50 million people and sicken another 50 million.

But it is extremely hard to get. About 100 grams — or 3 1/2 ounces — are produced each year, primarily by Russia.

It is also elusive. Whereas most radioactive elements emit gamma rays, which register on radiation detectors, polonium-210 instead emits alpha particles.

"There was no way that forensic scientists could detect it" until it had done its damage, Emsley said.

It also explains why Polonium winds up being scattered all over London:

Unlike other radioactive elements, polonium-210 is relatively safe to transport. Highly lethal gamma rays pass through most substances, but alpha particles — each composed of two protons and two neutrons — can be blocked by a sheet of paper or the thin layer of dead cells on the surface of the skin.

To kill, polonium must be inhaled or ingested so that it is in direct contact with healthy tissue.

"I could put it in a tiny Ziploc bag, and I would be fine," said Dooley, president and chief executive of MJW Corp., a consulting firm in Amherst, N.Y., that specializes in radiological and health physics services.

But that doesn't mean it's easy to handle. Polonium-210 is a determined escape artist.

The energy produced as it naturally disintegrates is so great that "small chunks, perhaps a few hundred atoms in size, are blasted out of the surface and then drift around the room," Zimmerman said.

"It would tend to creep around the lab," Dooley said. "If you had polonium in an open jar and you left it overnight, the next thing you knew, it would be all over the lab. It would jump on a dust particle and end up on lab benches and floors and things."

Posted by: Ace at 07:01 AM | Comments (3)
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High-quality crazy:

Just when you thought the Iranian leadership could stoop no further: A top advisor to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claimed in an interview with Iranian website Baztab that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler's parents were both Jewish and that Hitler himself was one of the founders of the State of Israel.

Well, duh. Some of us have known this for years. He was also a judge at the Nuremburg trials, but the Jew-controlled Western media doesn't want you to know that. Because the truth can set you free.

In the interview, translated by MEMRI (Middle East Media Research Institute) Mohammad-Ali Ramin, a chief aide to Ahmadinejad, told Baztab that Hitler's paternal grandmother was a Jewish prostitute and his father even kept his Jewish name until finally changing it to Hitler when he was 40.

Honestly, I'm not sure what to make of this. On the one hand, it's the same old insane anti-semitic Hebrew-aliens-are-poking-holes-in-my-wife's-diaphragm paranoid raving that we're used to from these guys.

On the other hand, at least they're not saying Hitler was a hero.

Progress, or just expectations that couldn't possibly be any lower?

Posted by: AndrewR at 04:11 AM | Comments (23)
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