She drove over a thousand miles to confront another astrogirl who was a rival for the affections of an astrostud, wearing diapers on the drive down so that she wouldn't have to pull over for bathroom breaks.

I'm not a space historian, but I believe this is the first time for this sort of thing. Though I hear Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong used to have screaming hissy-fits about who got to sleep next to Michael Collins in the lunar orbiter.

Florida authorities were planning to charge a NASA astronaut with attempted first-degree murder charges for allegedly attacking a woman that she considered her rival for the love of another astronaut, officials said today.

Jail spokesman Allen Moore told Associated Press that Orlando police were in the process of filing the more serious charge against Navy Capt. Lisa Marie Nowak [now filed -- Ace], who flew last summer on a shuttle mission to the International Space Station.

Nowak, who was scheduled to have been released today after being granted bail on earlier battery and attempted kidnapping charges, will now remain in custody in light of the more serious charges, Moore said.

Nowak was arrested early Monday after driving nearly 1,000 miles from her home in Houston to intercept the woman, who was just arriving at Orlando International Airport, police said.

Nowak, 43, accosted 30-year-old Air Force Capt. Colleen Shipman in a parking lot and sprayed her with pepper spray in an attempt to kidnap her, according to a police affidavit.

The arrest, first reported by the Orlando Sentinel, was an embarrassment for America's space agency, which for nearly five decades has obsessively portrayed its astronauts as paragons of personal integrity.

Police said Nowak considered Shipman a romantic rival for Navy Cmdr. William A. Oefelein, 41, who flew on the most recent shuttle mission in November.

Nowak, who is married with three children, was arrested on felony charges of attempted kidnapping, attempted vehicle burglary with battery, and misdemeanor charges of destruction of evidence and simple battery, according to Orlando Police Sgt. Kathryn Sullivan.

James Hartsfield, a NASA spokesman at Johnson Space Center in Houston, said this was the first case he was aware of in which an active-duty astronaut had been charged with a felony.

He said that Nowak's status as an astronaut "is unchanged; I cannot speculate on what may happen in the future."

"There is a feeling that it is all very unfortunate for the families involved," he said.

Hartsfield said all astronauts go through rigorous psychological and physical testing. But, he said, "we don't track the personal lives of the individuals that work for the agency."

..l.

At the time of her arrest, Nowak was carrying a black bag containing a steel mallet, a 4-inch folding knife, a BB gun, 3 feet of rubber tubing and several garbage bags. A wig was found in a plastic bag in a nearby trash bin.

A wig and a trechcoat, FoxNews now says. Inconspicuous-like.

Police said Nowak drove from Houston wearing diapers so she would not have to stop to relieve herself, the Associated Press reported. Shuttle astronauts wear diapers during launch and reentry.

Some people get lost in The Black and never really come back the same. Like Nietsche said about the abyss.

Posted by: Ace at 10:13 AM | Comments (61)
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He would have been 96 years old today.

Here's the link to his Presidential Library: Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Library.

Happy Birthday, President Reagan. You and Nancy will get a special shout out in my prayers (yeah, I pray..deal with it) tonight.

As an aside, I remain the only Presidential candidate committed to placing Ronald Wilson Reagan's image on Mount Rushmore. A great nation like ours should do no less.

Posted by: Jack M. at 06:08 AM | Comments (61)
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There's a dustup in environmental circles about polar bears.

Word is they're drowning en masse because the wasteland they call a habitat is slowly turning into kind of a nice place for jetskiing.
So recently the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service has considered listing polar bears as a Threatened species.

Many of you are aware that this blog has a love-hate relationship with polar bears. Of course we admire them for their cuteness and for their skill at hunting and eating eskimos.
But then again, there's the possibility for a new place to jetski, litter, and exploit indigenous people. It's a Republican conundrum.

Except it isn't.
Would it surprise anyone here that this issue hinges on a whole lot of unsupported junk science?
From Senator James Inhofe (R-OK), in a Senate floor speech delivered last month:

In the proposal, the Fish and Wildlife Service acknowledges that for seven of the 19 worldwide polar bear populations, the Service has no population trend data of any kind. Other data suggest that for an additional five polar bear populations, the number of bears is not declining and is stable. Two more of the bear populations showed reduced numbers in the past due to over hunting, but these two populations are now increasing because of hunting restrictions.

Other sources of data mentioned in a recent Wall Street Journal piece, suggest that "there are more polar bears in the world now than there were 40 years ago." The Fish and Wildlife Service estimates that the polar bear population is 20,000 to 25,000 bears, whereas in the 1950s and 1960s, estimates were as low as 5,000-10,000 bears due to sport hunting, which has since been restricted.

A 2002 U.S. Geological Survey of wildlife in the Arctic Refuge Coastal Plain noted that the polar bear populations "may now be near historic highs."

The law also allows for the Fish and Wildlife Service to justify its proposal on a sample from a single population in Western Hudson Bay in Canada, where bear populations have decreased by 259 polar bears in the last 17 years. Yet hunting was allowed during that entire period in the Western Hudson Bay population. In fact, according to the latest figures collectedÊby the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, 234 bears have been killed in the last 5 years alone.

OK, so we're down 259 bears, and 234 have been culled by hunters. Now, don't discount the effects of Climate Change.

Maybe it just finally became warm enough up there to put together a decent hunting party again.

If you read on further in the Senator's remarks, he excoriates the Endangered Species Act as a tool for subverting private property rights, and ties it all together beautifully.

The Global Warming page on Canada Free Press is a treasure trove. There's some other neat stuff in there too, just haven't had the chance to do more exploring.

Posted by: LauraW. at 08:20 PM | Comments (65)
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Join Americablog's boycott/protest against the demonically queer Mars Company, which seeks to "ram homosexuality down our throats" by suggesting that otherwise straight men, in a lapse of judgement due to cravings for peanut, caramel, and chocloate, may suddenly embrace the "gay lifestyle" and degenerate into man-on-man kissing at a moment's notice.

It is one thing to have such disgusting displays on Queer as Folk. If you're tuning in to that Cinemax sodomania, you know what you're getting. But when our children are watching the Super Bowl, and exposed to "alternate lifestyles" being practiced by men who work with trucks and appear otherwise "normal," I say it's time to give the Mars Company -- or should I say, Hermes-Aphrodite Company -- a piece of our collective mind.

In this ad, following the disgusting gay kissing, the newly-minted sodomites resort to imbibing dangerous amounts of mind-affecting engine oil, thus promoting the gay community's notoriously permissive attitudes on "recreational drug" use. The bottle's marked "oil" -- but it could more accurately be labled "Ecstacy" or "amyl nitrate."

Is this what Snickers considers good, wholesome family entertainment? A thirty-second version of Less Than Zero or any other Bret Easton Ellis blowjobs-and-barbituates filth?

The Seduction of the Innocents continues here. After the homosexualist kissing propaganda, these minicing mechanics then embrace the depraved sado-masochistic perversions so prevalent in the gay community, smashing each other in the faces with wrenches (penises?) and slamming each other's heads under car roofs. (Perhaps a stealth message evoking vagina dentata and further scaring kids into the gay recruitment centers?)

In the ad actually aired during the Super Bowl, the just-crowned queens follow up their degenerate tongue-kissing by tearing off their own chest hair. Is this an ad for a candy bar, or for the so-called "metrosexual" style of feminne grooming?

The entire thing is absolutely sickening. And while I can appreciate that Snickers didn't overtly think that promoting recruitment for gays and lesbians is "funny," they knew what they were doing. They were gay-pimping for fun. And they didn't just cross the line - they left the line in the dust.

One final point. Why is the NFL logo on the bottom of the Snickers pro-homosexual Web site? Why - because the NFL gave its permission for its logo to be on this Web site promoting new recruits for gays. And the Bears and the Colts gave their permission for their players to be filmed reacting in intrigued confusion to gay people.

What's next?

1. Mars Incorporated, the parent of Snickers, is in McLean, Virginia. That would be about a ten minute drive from where Joe and I live. I see some major "Snickers kills" protests coming soon at Snickers headquarters.

2. I give it one hour before the major family-values groups weigh in and accuse Snickers of promoting the gay and lesbian lifestyle.

3. Then it will probably be the end of the afternoon, or maybe tomorrow, when members of Congress start writing letters to the head of Snickers, demanding he address the company's call to sodomaniacal promiscuity. If you're in a Hill office, please consider doing this - and feel free to contact me for more information. I'd recommend a press release and a letter to the Mars president.

4. By the end of today, but more likely tomorrow, we'll start seeing articles in the press about Snickers associating its brand with gays.

5. And the Mars boycott will probably be called for by some independent activist by tomorrow, I think. And once that happens, it's out of our hands because there isn't much of anything Mars can do to negotiate with independent actors who will smear the company, permanently, online (remember folks, once something hits the Internet, it's in Google forever).

I've called the head of corporate public relations for Mars and am waiting to hear back. I've also talked with the lead press guy for Focus on the Family, the largest family-values group in the country, and they're not very happy, to put it lightly.

As the guy who launched the first-ever soon-to-be-successful boycott of a TV show (CSI:Miami, because it sucks so bad), I'm going to suggest to Mars that they had better nip this in the bud quickly, or they're not going to know what hit them.

Shock: PETA Uses Sex In Another Dumb, Unfunny Ad: It's amusing to see PETA keep going to this well.

If my experience is any indication, PETA chicks are cute but sexually confused and often sexually juvenile girls who haven't moved out of the "bunnies and ponies are cute" stage of development enough to even have a definite "sexuality" one way or the other. They're not lesbians, but they're also not really straight. They just like the cute and fluffy. Like six-year-olds.

So this is basically porn as imagined by space aliens.

Posted by: Ace at 05:12 PM | Comments (74)
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A dramatic reading of Marcotte's not-at-all-unhinged new campaign blogger, from Michelle Malkin, swearin' like a sailor. (Tastefully bleeped out, of course.)

Dan Riehl posts a lot of her more psychotic rantings, which alas have a curious habit of disappearing from her site.

Dean Barnett weighs in on this Edwards mis-step, and notes, correctly but unfortunately, no Republican candidate would ever hire me as a campaign blogger. Too much potty-mouth baggage and fear of brown people.

Curious though that the lefties imagine that different rules apply to them.

Which, of course, they do.

I Hate To Have To Say It, But We're Better: Can anyone point out a lefty site which is at all funny? With any amount of irony or self-deprecation at all?

Note: irony is different than sarcasm. A lot of lefty blogs do the sarcasm thing all the do-dah day, but do they ever manage any sort of ironic self-awareness and self-deprecation?

Every time I read them it's all crap like Marcotte's unhinged venom. Fuck this, fuck that, fuck it all to fuck the fucking brat. Fuck fuck fuckety fuck fuck fuckleducks.

Posted by: Ace at 01:56 PM | Comments (206)
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Dave in Texas took time off from pool blogging, and writing about an Army surgeon awarded the highest non-combat award for undertaking the daring surgery of removing a live RPG round from a soldier's belly, to judge the improptu contest. Winners below the jump.

He was also assisted by Kevlarchick, who judged the unfunny ones (the ones submitted by womenfolk). more...

Posted by: Ace at 01:15 PM | Comments (171)
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Allah Pundit is shocked.

So are we all. So are we all.

Posted by: Ace at 01:09 PM | Comments (6)
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Whatever. Supposedly this is a business column. And supposedly it's written by a dude.

A lot of people are going to claim this is a homophobic slam, but I don't think it is. It's just a can't-really-miss-it-even-if-you-try recognition that the NYT oddly chose to assign one of the most femme men on its staff to cover the commercials in the most guy-oriented event of the year. And, having done so, they can hardly be surprised that the subretard level quality of article they got out of him.

There are gay guys and then there are GAY!!! guys. Either this guy began psychically channelling the spirit of Paul Lynde while writing this, or he falls into the latter, ahem, camp.

Super Bowl Ads of Cartoonish Violence, Perhaps Reflecting Toll of War

By STUART ELLIOTT

No commercial that appeared last night during Super Bowl XLI directly addressed Iraq, unlike a patriotic spot for Budweiser beer that ran during the game two years ago. But the ongoing war seemed to linger just below the surface of many of this yearÂ’s commercials.

More than a dozen spots celebrated violence in an exaggerated, cartoonlike vein that was intended to be humorous, but often came across as cruel or callous.

For instance, in a commercial for Bud Light beer, sold by Anheuser-Busch, one man beat the other at a game of rock, paper, scissors by throwing a rock at his opponentÂ’s head.

In another Bud Light spot, face-slapping replaced fist-bumping as the cool way for people to show affection for one another. In a FedEx commercial, set on the moon, an astronaut was wiped out by a meteor. In a spot for Snickers candy, sold by Mars, two co-workers sought to prove their masculinity by tearing off patches of chest hair.

There was also a bank robbery (E*Trade Financial), fierce battles among office workers trapped in a jungle (CareerBuilder), menacing hitchhikers (Bud Light again) and a clash between a monster and a superhero reminiscent of a horror movie (Garmin).

It was as if Madison Avenue were channeling Doc in “West Side Story,” the gentle owner of the candy store in the neighborhood that the two street gangs, the Jets and Sharks, fight over. “Why do you kids live like there’s a war on?” Doc asks plaintively. (Well, Doc, this time, there is.)

Ahem. Look, I don't have any problems with gay guys, but is this sort of supra-gay type dude the best person possible for reviewing Super Bowl ads? He's referencing West Side Story for crying out loud.

Even Gay Robot laughs at this article. He likes sports. And also, balls and weiners. But sports too.

The whole column reeks of the bad sort of femthink -- free associations that would make little sense even in the appropriate context of a Take Back the Night Action Committee Meeting, where a furious two-hour debate erupts over whether Chewbacca should be taken as a phallic symbol (taller than he is wide) or a vaginal one ("walking carpet").

I supoose this whole article is the NYT's effort at counter-programming, like ESPN opposing the Super Bowl with a line-up of nothing but ice-dancing, cheerleader championships, and a twenty hour Ken Burns documentary on the history of menstrual cramps.

During other wars, Madison Avenue has appealed to a yearning for peace. That was expressed in several Super Bowl spots evocative of “Hilltop,” the classic Coca-Cola commercial from 1971, when the Vietnam War divided a world that needed to be taught to sing in perfect harmony.

Yes, no other commercials during any other war have featured slapstick, cartoonish violence.

If a commercial featured a guy getting hit in the nuts, this guy would claim it's a stealth analogy for Fallujuah.

How obvious is it that churning out these idiotic free-associations is all this poor sally can do from slitting his wrists at having to watch the game?

Coca-Cola borrowed pages from its own playbook with two whimsical spots for Coca-Cola Classic, “Happiness Factory” and “Video Game,” that were as sweet as they were upbeat. The commercials, by Wieden & Kennedy, provided a welcome counterpoint to the martial tone of the evening.

Those who wish the last four years of history had never happened could find solace in several commercials that used the device of ending an awful tale by revealing it was only a dream.

This guy is now seeking solace for the War on Terror in a Coca-Cola ad. He's hit rock bottom.

But I sense he's got more stupidity in him.

The best of the batch was a commercial for General Motors by Deutsch, part of the Interpublic Group of Companies, in which a factory robot “obsessed about quality” imagined the dire outcome of making a mistake.

The same gag, turned inside out, accounted for one of the funniest spots, a Nationwide Financial commercial by TM Advertising, also owned by Interpublic. The spot began with the singer Kevin Federline as the prosperous star of an elaborate rap video clip. But viewers learned at the end it was only the dream of a forlorn fry cook at a fast-food joint.

Then, too, there was the unfortunate homonym at the heart of a commercial from Prudential Financial, titled “What Can a Rock Do?”

The problem with the spot, created internally at Prudential, was that whenever the announcer said, “a rock” — invoking the Prudential logo, the rock of Gibraltar — it sounded as if he were saying, yes, “Iraq.”

To be sure, sometimes “a rock” is just “a rock,” and someone who has watched the Super Bowl XIX years in a row only for the commercials may be inferring things that Madison Avenue never meant to imply.

"May be" something Madison Avenue never meant to imply? May be? Does he really think that Prudential is trying to gain some subliminal positive feeling by associating itself with a grindingly bloody war?

Good God All Mighty.

Again I ask: is someone who proudly burbles that, like millions of housewives across the country, he's only watched the last 19 Super Bowls for the commercials really the best critic of advertisments aimed at men (either straight men, or non-sissy gay men)?

What the hell is wrong with the New York Times? Did his editors actually buy into any of this drivel? Was it really necessary for an article supposedly about commercials for beer, trucks, tits and farting to propagandize against/for the war?

Do left-liberals really watch commercials featuring horses playing football and think, immediately, of Bush's unilateral war in Iraq?

The evidence would seem to suggest -- Yes, they do.

Actually, I'm starting to think it's not that he's femme, so much as he was stinking-ass drunk while writing this.

There must be some explanation, surely.

Take for instance a spot by Grey Worldwide, part of the WPP Group, for Flomax, a drug sold by Boehringer Ingelheim to help men treat enlarged prostates.

“Here’s to men,” the announcer intoned, “to guys who want to spend more time having fun and less time in the men’s room.”

It was not difficult to imagine guests at noisy Super Bowl parties asking one another, “Did he just say, ‘guys who want to spend more time having fun in the men’s room?’ ”

Let's just say I think it's more difficult for this writer to make this mistake than 95% of the audience for this ad.

Would the NYT send a rolly-polly retrosexual sportswriter, real beer-swilling Oscar Madison type, to cover the Rufus Wrainwright one-man tribute to Liza Manelli? Wouldn't it make sense to send someone with a tad more appreciation for such a thing?

Well, yes, and that's why of course the Rufus Wrainright Liza Manelli tribute got such an orgasmic reception from the Times.

But for the Super Bowl, the NYT's go-to guy is so radioactively gay the wretched male excesses of the Super Bowl send him into fever-dream fantasias in which GoDaddy.com is sending him secret messages about Abu Ghraib.

Not only is the NYT laughably biased and increasingly inept, it's now outed itself as a very cruel organization besides.

This horrible testosterone-fest, and its attendant martial pomp, has surely scarred this poor man for life. Certainly it seems to have unbalanced him.

The Deadline Makes Whores of Us All Update: carl carlson points out:

to be fair, i think it's important to realize that satellite stories and sidebars about the super bowl and, in particular, commercials during the super bowl are an annual requirement for papers big and small around the country.

there are only so many devices you can use to lead a story and there are only so many different angles you can take on a story. if you're faced with writing a story about ads during the super bowl you can't simply say they are attempts to get you to buy things.

you don't HAVE to be so freaking gay about it, but nevertheless, you gotta say something.

i submit maybe this guy isn't gay, maybe he's just lazy. and gay.

That's true. A lot of the more mindrippingly stupid columns can be attributed to the fact that when you have a deadline, you've got to churn out something, even if it's so asinine it hurts.

But was this stupid "edgy" analysis really better than a simple reportage of what the commercials were about, and why this one worked and that one didn't?

Sometimes it's better to just play things (ahem) straight.

The sad thing I think this guy actually thought this was a pretty decent effort. And his editor apparently thought so too.

Posted by: Ace at 12:08 PM | Comments (56)
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Files a "statement of candidacy" with the FEC.

Dick Morris of Vote.com declares it a "Giuliani Romp," much to the chagrin of the Giuliani camp.

IT'S NOW A RUDY ROMP

By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN

February 5, 2007 -- Until now, the status of front-runner in the Republican primaries for president was jointly held by Arizona Sen. John McCain and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. McCain is clearly no longer the front-runner. In the last week or so, Giuliani has moved out to a clear lead.

* McCain's latest fund-raising report, for the fourth quarter of 2006, was pathethic: He raised only $1.7 million and has only pocket change - $472,454 - on hand.

* A Fox News poll of Jan. 30-31 shows the former mayor jumping out to a significant lead among Republicans - 34 to 22 percent.

* A Gallup poll taken Jan. 25-28 shows Giuliani is better liked by Republicans than McCain -74 to 21 percent and more trusted to handle a crisis (68-20). Some 60 percent say Giuliani "better understands the problems of the average person," against 33 percent who pick McCain. By 58-34, America's Mayor is seen as the stronger leader.

Conversations with conservative activists also show a remarkable openness to supporting Giuliani - a belief that he can overcome (perhaps finesse) his pro-choice, pro-gun-control, pro-gay-rights and pro-immigration positions. Feelings seem bitterer over McCain's role in Washington battles - his opposition to the Bush tax cuts and his support for "amnesty" for illegal immigrants and for campaign-finance reform.

Giuliani has developed an effective parry to charges that his pro-choice stance would undo eight years of pro-life heavy lifting by the Bush administration. He's saying he'd oppose partial-birth abortion and work to continue to curtail Medicaid funding for abortion. More, he'd appoint judges like Justices Samuel Alito and John Roberts to the Supreme Court.

Hmmmm.

Anyway, the buzz is that he might officially announce on his appearance on Hannity & Colmes tonight.

Why do it there? Do it on Leno, dude.

Posted by: Ace at 11:16 AM | Comments (141)
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Confederate Yankee has confirmation from a source in Baghdad that the crackdown has begun.

Meanwhile, Shiites blame American dithering for the fresh spate of mass killings:

A growing number of Iraqis blamed the United States on Sunday for creating conditions that led to the worst single suicide bombing in the war, which devastated a Shiite market in Baghdad the day before. They argued that slowness in completing the vaunted new American security plan has made Shiite neighborhoods much more vulnerable to such horrific attacks.

The chorus of critics said the new plan, which the Americans have barely started to execute, has emasculated the Mahdi Army, the Shiite militia that is considered responsible for many attacks on Sunnis, but which many Shiites say had been the only effective deterrent against sectarian reprisal attacks in BaghdadÂ’s Shiite neighborhoods. Even some Iraqi supporters of the plan, such as Hoshyar Zebari, the Iraqi foreign minister who is a Kurd, said delays in implementing it have caused great disappointment.

In advance of the plan, which would flood Baghdad with thousands of new American and Iraqi troops, many Mahdi Army checkpoints were dismantled and its leaders are either in hiding or under arrest. With no immediate influx of new security forces to fill the void, Shiites say, Sunni militants and other anti-Shiite forces have been emboldened to plot the type of attack that obliterated the bustling Sadriya market in central Baghdad on Saturday, killing at least 135 people and wounding more than 300 from a suicide driverÂ’s truck bomb.

I don't think the Mahdi Army was ever able to protect the Shiites. Or else there wouldn't have been so much carnage before now. All they can do is offer the weak deterrent that if Sunni terrorists kill Shiite civilians, they will in turn kill many Sunni civilians who are unlikely to be actual terrrorists.

There is some deterrent effect in that, but I imagine it's vastly outstripped by the natural result of Sunnis wanting more of their own payback.

And the terrorists on both sides aren't terribly concerned by mass killings of civilians. It empowers them both.

Posted by: Ace at 11:10 AM | Comments (7)
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