Rachel Marsden.

I mean, sure...all of you are going to accuse me of two-timing MKH and everything, but when is the last time MKH wrote lyrical stuff like this?

ItÂ’s Monday morning quarterback time after yesterdayÂ’s Super Bowl! Being a political analyst, this means I have an excuse to talk about my favourite linebacker, Hillary Clinton, who, incidentally, fills out a cup better than Peyton Manning.

Given that I hate both Hillary! and Peyton! i'd have to offer it up as proof that you can, indeed, kill two birds with one stone.

I can summarize, in exactly two words, why todayÂ’s polls donÂ’t actually matter: Howard Dean.

This early 2004 Democratic favourite and hero of every Doritos-chomping, pimple-popping, dorm-dwelling Internet diarist wanked himself into a frenzy during a single campaign speech — and then no longer appeared to be in care and control of the short bus, let alone able to take the wheel of the free world.

Has anyone ever captured the essence of a Kos-diarist so well? Wanking themselves into a frenzy....perfect.

What Clinton absolutely needs to avoid is hanging out with her old bra burning crew, like Vagina Monologues creator Eve Ensler, who helped Clinton decide on her New York Senate run.

Terrorism doesnÂ’t scare me as much as chicks who obsess over their vagina.

Sister...you are PREACHING. TO. THE. CHOIR.

What can I say...love is fickle. But Clinton-hatred?

That's forever.

Happy Valentines Day, Ms. Marsden. Call me!

The rest of you morons should just read (or, in your cases, sound out) the whole thing. It's that good.

Posted by: Jack M. at 10:45 AM | Comments (14)
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goo goo ga jews.

Man, oh man, sometimes I'm glad I didn't die in my sleep. Not often, mind you. I lead a very sad life. Today, though, is one of those days when I welcome the dawn. Well, more like the crack of 9:30 Am, but lets not split hairs.

Why am I happy to have awoken? Because I got to read the above linked unbelievable story on Foxnews.com today. To the blockquotes!

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was set to speak of his nation's "great achievements" on Feb. 11, Ynetnews.com reported Sunday, citing the Iranian news agency Fars as its source.

"We patented the art of crafting finely colored and intricately woven rugs about 1000 years ago. Really...you expect us to ever be able to top that? Maybe in another 1000 years, infidel son of a monkey and pig. By the way, those GEICO ads? Totally offensive!"

Along with the claim of nuclear "rights," Ahmadinejad was set to tout a purported "herbal" cure for AIDS, the news agency Fars reported.

Now look...you are talking to a guy that knows a thing or two about "natural herbal supplements". And let me tell you something, it's been three years and I'm still waiting for those things Ron Jeremy sold me on late night television to pay off. So I wouldn't get my hopes up here, if I were you.

"The drug named 'IMOD' is completely effective and safe with no proven side effects," Iran's Minister of Health Kamran Bagheri Lankarani said.

As a related bonus, the IMOD features 20 gigabytes of storage space, so you can download Ahmadinejad singing his favorite Koranic Verses at your leasure. Or Cat Stevens greatest hits. They're pretty much the same thing.

The report could not be verified.

Of course not. But get this: if the dude really has developed an AIDS cocktail (umm, no pun intended) and a Nuke program and he still hates George W. Bush?

Andrew Sullivan might just have found his one true love.

Posted by: Jack M. at 06:41 AM | Comments (51)
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But if Israel can get rid of this dipshit, and make it look like a work-related accident to boot, why is still Ahmadinejad still leeching off my air?

Either/Or: richard mcenroe doesn't care how the guy died:

Win-win. Either the Jews are competent or the Iranians ain't.

Posted by: Ace at 04:37 PM | Comments (38)
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Rumors of war:

A U.S.-Iraqi campaign to stabilize Baghdad will begin soon and the offensive against militants will be on a scale never seen during four years of war, American officers said on Sunday.

Briefing a small group of foreign reporters, three American colonels who are senior advisers to the Iraqi army and police in Baghdad said a command center overseeing the crackdown would be activated on Monday.

"The expectation is the plan will be implemented soon thereafter," Colonel Doug Heckman, senior adviser to the 9th Iraqi Army division, said at a U.S. military base in Baghdad.

"It's going to be an operation unlike anything this city has seen. It's a multiple order magnitude of difference, not just a 30 percent, I mean a couple hundred percent," he added, referring to previous offensives that failed to stem bloodshed.

...

NO BARRIERS

Asked if the Mehdi Army's stronghold in Sadr City would be cleaned out, Heckman acknowledged the political sensitivity but said all options were open.

"If we feel we need to clear Sadr City to bring stability, we will do that. Are there restrictions that will not allow us to do that? Right now there are not," Heckman said.

Via Dan Riehl.

Posted by: Ace at 04:34 PM | Comments (31)
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A game I really don't care much about suddenly becomes interesting as I find myself rooting for rain.

Thanks, Nancy!

Super Bowl Commercials... over at Hot Air.

Not sure why everyone gets so excited about these. They're still, like, commercials, right? The things we fast forward through every other day of the year?

Kind of like the Olympics. Every four years, everyone's so totally into tobaggan. And then we go back to hating it.

Update: Rain scores twice more. Lovin' it.

Even Better: The more rain, the more fumbles, and then the more mentions of "ball security" by tv announcers, and thus the more giggles for me.

Ball security.

Good stuff.

Prince: Is his guitar the only thing plugged into an amp?

The Goat:

Unconfirmed that that is in fact Grossman, though that is definitely vodka.

We know this is Grossman.

Both pics boosted from Deadspin.

Thanks to Spongeworthy. He sent them a while ago. I knew it would be better to wait on them.

Posted by: Ace at 04:28 PM | Comments (117)
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I ask, because I went to the store this morning, and there were a lot of people in there. A lot more than usual, really.

And they were all buying things like beer, and chips, and various and sundry kinds of dips. Occasionally, I even heard one of them speak of "parties".

So I ran home, and looked at my calendar. It isn't a holiday. And I haven't received any party invitations in the mail, although I never do anyway, so that really isn't indicative of much.

Which makes me wonder? What gives?

If anybody has an answer, I'd appreciate it. Meanwhile, I'm going to plan on spending this Sunday afternoon/evening the way I always do: curled up in the fetal position under my dining room table, cursing the extreme social isolation that made me turn to blogging to begin with, as I softly cry myself to sleep.

I find that tears can often help ease the overwhelming pain of loneliness. Especially if you name them.

Posted by: Jack M. at 08:31 AM | Comments (132)
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This story is very old in blog terms, but as I've been criticized for prejudging it before reading it, the least I can do is offer the judgment of someone who has read it. Stuttaford will be familiar to readers of the Corner, and I believe he is, despite being British, no homo:*

Even if it's clear that the hedonism of the West has contributed in some way to its current difficulties with the Muslim world, the size of that contribution is not. The primitive political structures and woeful economic underperformance that have characterized the Middle East for generations, not to speak of the resentment felt over Israel, have also played their poisonous and, I suspect, substantially more significant part. There's also the delicate, not-supposed-tobe-asked question as to whether there is something built into the very nature of Islam that ensures that it will always, to borrow Samuel Huntington's despairing phrase, have "bloody borders."

Unfortunately, this is a question Mr. D'Souza doesn't really put to rest. Instead, in his fawning, flattering portrait of a supposedly "traditional" Islam, he offers Americans possibly the most misleading depiction of an unfamiliar way of life since Margaret Mead returned breathless and babbling from Samoa. The reason that such a smart writer has chosen to take such a strange tack is, alas, all too obvious. He's more interested in fighting the culture wars at home than confronting the global ideological challenge posed by Islamic extremism. In "The Enemy at Home," Osama Bin Laden is reduced to little more than another stick with which Mr. D'Souza can beat those he considers to be our naughtier, more godless citizens: so not only is same-sex marriage a bad idea, but it will also bring the wrath of Al Qaeda crashing down upon our heads, and as for that pesky separation of church and state, well Â…

To say this line of reasoning is somewhat unconvincing is to be very polite, but even worse is the way it leads Mr. D'Souza to suggest that America should somehow attempt to keep "traditional" Muslims out of the extremist camp by doing what it can to stress this country's own more socially conservative side. As propaganda distributed internationally, that might perhaps have some value. Sadly, Mr. D'Souza goes further than that, effectively arguing that the need to cultivate that traditional Muslim constituency of his is in itself a good reason for Americans to clean up their act at home. There's a word to describe that type of logic. It begins with an "a," ends with a "t" and is usually associated with a British prime minister named Neville.

The last paragraph is a killer, but I won't quote it out of respect for fair-use rules.

Again, the word everyone is looking for is "overdetermined." They hate us for ten or twelve major reasons (topping the list: their religion compels them to and their own backwardness creates in them a powerful psychological need for scapegoating and laying low those who humiliate them by their successes), so focusing in like a laser on Reason Number Eleven seems pure jackassery.

And, look: What the fuck should it matter to Khalid in Khartoum whether or not Lindsey Lohan is running about without her panties? If you're scrutinizing a society for its faults in this way, your problem is not that society's failings. Plainly, you have a driving psychological need to scapegoat that far-away place that has very little effect on your life, and if you weren't slamming the West's sexual permissiveness, you'd just find something else -- anything else -- you could critique. The point of this game is, after all, to reassure yourself of your own worthiness by denigrating the worthiness of the hated other; were every woman in America wearing six petticoats and every homosexual closeted and afraid, they'd just find some other reason to despise us ("Look at the Infidels, with their depraved and polytheistic chicken-and-steak combo Gorditos...").

The need to hate comes first. The reason for the hate is whatever point of differentiation is easiest to make out. Hell, they could just list their reasons to hate the Crusaders and Jews as "TBA;" it really doesn't fucking matter.

When the entire raison d'etre of an ideology and religion is to reassure its pathologically-insecure adherents of their fundamental superiority, don't expect a particularly rigorous analysis of the merits of one culture versus another.

It's not as if the KKK suddenly renounced its views upon learning that blacks were more athletically gifted than whites with a long apologia entitled, "Sorry, We Just Had No Idea. Guess We Booted This Whole 'Master Race' Thing Pretty Good, Huh?"

They do hate us for our "decadance," but only because a culture, in order to decline into decadance, must have at first achieved a peak of progress, prominence, and prosperity. What they hate is that the West can still remember its peak (and, at least in America and Australia, that peak may yet continue), whereas they simply never had one at all -- or, at best, they had it for 100 years around 1000 AD.

* Granted, the distinction between "British" and "homo" is often a subtle and evanscent one.

Posted by: Ace at 05:04 PM | Comments (66)
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for methamphetamine.

In what is perhaps the most revolting story I have read today, it seems that methamphetamine users are drinking other people's urine in order to get high.

Johnny Coldcuts says I ought not knock it until I've tried it, but I think this is one instance where I can pretty much rule something out straightaway.

Anyway, here are the juicy (probably not the right word) details:

Some hard-core methamphetamine addicts will do anything to get high, including collecting and drinking the urine of other users.

Police in New Mexico recently discovered meth users running "urine extraction" labs, reported Minnesota's news station WCCO.

The first indication of the new trend came when deputies opened up a smelly rented storage locker where they found 50 1-gallon jugs of urine. Police told the owners to throw away the contents, which made them physically ill.

Anyone got an idea for what the expiration date on a one gallon jug of a meth users urine is? Because I hate when Johnny sticks stuff in the refrigerator that turns bad before it can be used. The bastard just refuses to label his stuff, no matter how often I ask.

A week later, Narcotics Sgt. Becky Howell received the report on the incident.

"I said, 'Oh my gosh, this is a meth lab. This is a urine extraction lab,'" Howell told WCCO.

It's the newest way to access meth. Some users drink the meth-tainted urine to get high while others use the cooking process to filter the drug back out.

"I'm not 100 percent sure what this guy was doing," Howell said. "Five years ago, I probably would have been surprised at that. But now, knowing and understanding methamphetamine and an addict's addiction to it, it doesn't surprise me."

Let's see. What could the guy have been doing? Maybe, like Howard Hughes, he just can't stand to let his bodily essences disappear into the abyss. Or perhaps, he had a bunch of drug tests coming up, and wanted to make sure he had access to a clean sample or two. Then again, maybe he finally decided to make that new Piss and Vinegar salad dressing he's heard so much about.

I really don't know what to make of this except that: 1) hoarding urine should be illegal just for being excessively gross and 2) I'm sure my new friend Radley Balko will drop by to tell us why we should legalize this practice. Or to complain about the police having made this guy dump his collection.

Posted by: Jack M. at 04:18 PM | Comments (30)
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The amateur leftist webzine Slate thinks we should all take this, and that, even for nice liberal Democrats, the results can be "humbling." (Even for? Or especially for?)

I wouldn't bother linking this, but for the Blade Runner connection. The longer it takes you to pick positive responses to images of blacks, the more racist you are. Subconsciously, perhaps. But definitely racist.

The guy suggesting we all take this says that even deliberately delaying your white faces = positive responses won't affect the test "much," which I doubt, but I they say even Nexus-6's can't beat the V-K.

Took It... And am only moderately suprised to be told I have a "strong automatic preference" for European Americans over African Americans.

Well, look: Brown people scare me. Duh.

That said, there's something that's slightly hinky about this test. When you take it, you'll see what I mean. The first thing they throw at you is the blacks/positive example, and the whole format is pretty confusing at first. You'll see what I mean.

By the time they give you the whites/positive version of the test, you've figured out how the thing actually works, and your answers are faster -- partly just because you understand what the hell you're being asked to do.

It's an interesting experiment, and I don't deny that I have a subconscious verging on conscious positive association for those who look most like me (I imagine most do), but I do wonder what would happen if they reversed the order of the tests so that the learning curve happened with the whites/positive part of the test.

And I should say the test informed me, quite correctly, Your first nocturnal emission occurred during a dream about 70's "Hoochy-coochy" girl Charo spanking Kristy MacNichol from Family.

How the hell it knew that I have no idea, but I admit, pretty impressive.

Posted by: Ace at 03:33 PM | Comments (49)
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Ghastly:

Last Halloween in the Bixby Knolls neighborhood of Long Beach, where neighbors put on a lavish fright fest each year, three young women left a haunted house and found themselves caught in a street brawl with a crowd of teenagers. By meleeÂ’s end, one womanÂ’s face was fractured in 12 spots, her teeth were broken and sheÂ’d suffered partial loss of sight in one eye. Two of the women suffered brain concussions and assorted broken bones after being kicked, punched and even struck by a skateboard wielded as a weapon.

The story broke on November 3, when local Web site editor William Pearl scooped other media on LBReport.com, quoting Long Beach police spokeswoman Jacqueline Bezart as saying a crowd of black attackers hurled racial taunts (“White bitches!” “We hate whites!”) at the young women, and the police were pursuing it as a hate crime.

At the Press-Telegram in Long Beach, reporter Tracy Manzer quickly landed an exclusive interview with the victims, introducing awkward issues of race and culture rarely seen in California media. Said one victim, identified as Laura: “They asked us, ‘Are you down with it?’ We had no idea what that meant so we didn’t say anything and just walked by them up to the haunted house. They were grabbing their crotches — we didn’t know if it was a gang thing or what.”

Suddenly, newspaper editors, TV-news directors and other media faced an unsettling prospect of their own: If white-on-black hate crime is covered with an apologetic tone and references to the legacy of slavery, whatÂ’s the tone for covering black-on-white hate crime? Can a minority be a racist? And how can we, the media, get out of this?

They've gotten out of it, by and large, by their preferred method: burying the story, sanitizing it, failing to cover the trial. Even while many black writers rail against the disturbing double-standard at work here...

The piece prompted a fiery response by David Mills, a black former Washington Post reporter turned Emmy-winning screenwriter. In a letter to the popular Romenesko media blog, the Glendale-based Mills wrote: “You don’t have to be a card-carrying Klansman to point out that the L.A. Times surely would be treating this story differently if three black women had been attacked by 30 white teenagers hurling words like ‘F--- black people.’ ”

... the media has seemed blithely unconcerned about this particularly vicious example of one of their favorite subjects -- racial hatred.

Even the fact that a good samaritan witness who attempted to rescue the girls from the savage beating has been intimidated by gang members and no longer is willing to identify the thugs can't quite provoke the media into any particular interest in the story.

Borrowing from Matthew McConnaughey in A Time To Kill: Now imagine that good samaritan forced to flee his home by black gang members is black -- which he is. Still, even that isn't enough of an angle to interest the media.

I do to some extent sympathize with the media's self-made plight here. It's hard to write about racially charged issues without 1) riling up racists who just need an excuse to sound off or 2) failing to "balance" onself to the point of bloodlessness in order to avoid any possible charge of racism. ("Defensive writing," just as doctors are often prompted to perform "defensive medicine" due to the ominipresent threat of malpractice lawsuits. And like OBGYN's who bail out of the high-risk profession of delivering babies, more often than not one finds it's simply easier and less risky to avoid writing about racially-charged issues altogether.)

But if the media so worries that reporting on this story will inflame white thugs into an orgy of counter-thuggery, why is it they seem so eager to sensationalize white-on-black racial violence? Do they not have similar fears that their wholly unbalanced coverage -- portraying racial violence is a nearly uniquely white phenomenon -- won't have the effect of provoking monsters such as these?

It would be facile to claim "the media" caused these clearly dysfunctional monsters to engage in this repellent mayhem. And it it would be equally facile to suggest that negative portrayals of blacks in the media caused the dragging death of James Byrd. And yet the media does seem to buy into one of these theories and not the other.

If the media is so worried that portraying black -- or Muslim -- violence will set off thousands of white racists into racial marauding, why so little concern when the roles are reversed? And why no worry at all that constantly sending out the message that whites like to beat and stomp minorities might -- just might -- give some blacks the idea that maybe stomping in the faces of "white bitches" is a perfectly valid form of racial payback?

I always credit liberals for pushing, for forty some years, the virtue of racial tolerance, while also pushing for social scorn for those who are not racially tolerant. True enough, liberals have frequently gone too far, attempting to use charges of "racial insensitivity" to shut up their opponents in legitimiate political discussions in which race is an issue; but still, on the whole, they should be lauded for their efforts.

And true enough-- many conservatives are heroes in this cause, but I think it would be hackery of the highest order to claim that conservatives, as they've identified themselves through the decades, have been the primary proponents of racial tolerance. Yes, it was Northeastern Republicans who passed the Civil Rights Act and such over the strenuous objections of Southern Dixiecrat Democrats; but it seems to me the Republicans were on the "liberal" side of things in this respect, and the Dixiecrats on the "conservative" side. (Again-- as the labels were applied at the time.)

But liberals shy away from using the same tactics of moral suasion and social scorn to preach tolerance to minorities -- which is why black racism (and Muslim corelgionist soldiarity bordering on KKK-level xenophobia) remains more or less tolerated in this country.

Is it hate liberals oppose, or merely white hate? And if they're proud of their legacy of greatly reducing white racism in this country -- something I will unstintingly credit them for -- why are they so damnably cowardly in calling out racism when it comes from anyone who's not safely pale?

I do buy into a very soft version of racist-apologist blacks' claims that blacks simply can't be racist, because Racism = Power. True enough, white racism can cause a great deal more misery for blacks than black racism can cause for whites; there are a lot more whites, after all, and whites disproportionately control the levers of economic power.

But just because black racism has less potential for widespread harm does not mean it's not also evil. And it's hardly a victimless crime. Just ask those three women who had the "power" that night as they were pummeled to the point of maiming for committing the greivous sin of Walking While White.

Via Kaus, who wonders wheter hate-crime laws ameliorate racial tensions, as is usually claimed, or exacerbate them, by turning simple, vicious evil into competitive sport of racial greivance "can you top this."

I'm not terribly curious about the question, because I think hate-crime laws are jackass on a fundamental level. I think those poor women are rather more traumatized that they were beaten to the point of permanent physical disability than the fact the crowd shouted "We hate white bitches." And the monsters who did this evil should be severely punished for their actions, not their motivations.

Bonus! Four of the Perpetrators Given Merely Probation: ...and sentenced to time served (95 days), probation, and "anger management and racial tolerance programs."

Jesus. When I read they were up on hate-crimes charges, I imagined those charges would be used to increase their sentencing, not reduce their sentences to a few dozen hours of Racial Tolerance Puppet Theater.

Beating victim Laura Schneider, 19, cried at the judge's decision.

When the young man's twin sister was to be sentenced, Deputy District Attorney Andrea Bouas returned to court wiping tears from her eyes and argued for a stronger penalty on grounds that the young woman was responsible for causing an injury that forced a victim to have surgery.

"Punishment is part of rehabilitation," the prosecutor said. "To allow a human being to do that and go home is an abomination to the justice system."

...

The prosecution had asked that the three siblings get nine months of detention in a youth camp. Instead they were credited with 95 days already spent in custody.

Justice is served, huh? Well at least we can take solace in the fact that our liberal judges are very concerned about black-on-white racial violence, even if our liberal media aren't.

Thanks to the Feisty One.

Posted by: Ace at 01:26 PM | Comments (90)
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