This is old by now. When I first heard this, I heard part of the Drudge clip, and I didn't see what the big deal was. The parts I heard had only a minor attempt at a Southern drawl.

So when I read Jim Geraghty writing "Wow. Wow." about it, and calling it "Worse Than You Could Imagine," I figure he's just kind of being a hack.

Nope. Not so much.

I don't feel noways tired, I come too far...

Yeah, in the first part, she's reciting a poem, but it's no poetry when she's talking about the "May-ah" of "Tren'n, New Jersah."

Meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi shows us the fine art of diplomatin' by sending Turkey into a maelstrom of anti-American hatred.

Thanks, Nancy!

Posted by: Ace at 05:27 AM | Comments (40)
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I'm very sick and in a generally awful mood and then I remember, "Wait, I can ban little trolly douche-things, can't I?"

It brightens up my day so much. It's like a new pair of cute shoes. It makes me feel pretty.

Also... Gil, Tits McGee, and Katherine Anne Porter, who really decided to piss me off by instructing what I was permitted to write here.

Hopefully the bannings will take.

What can I say? The shoes looked so nice I needed a whole outfit to go with them.

Posted by: Ace at 09:33 PM | Comments (276)
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And, just to add to the damages, sideswipes a car driven by a seven-month-pregnant woman to boot.

Yesterday one eye-witness told the Daily Mail: "The rain was lashing down when the accident happened and the car spun three times before clipping the Astra.

"One motorist who stopped told the police he thought the car had passed him at around 100 mph and it made him flinch as the car threw up spray from the road as it roared past him.

Before:

After:

Sorry, but the class envy in me enjoys this. Such a pretty toy, and no regard for it at all.

Thanks to dri.

Posted by: Ace at 09:15 PM | Comments (46)
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Patriotism!

"We are nonviolent!"

It's a shame the police involved were nonviolent as well.

Posted by: Ace at 03:59 PM | Comments (137)
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Not bad:

Wall Street rebounded Tuesday as investors were encouraged by a recovery on world markets and moved to recoup some of the big losses suffered in last week's sharp pullback. The Dow Jones industrials rose more than 150 points.

Investors came off the sidelines to buy stocks that have languished in five turbulent sessions. The Dow made back about 26 percent of the ground it lost over the past week, and scored its highest one-day point gain since July 24.

Many analysts are still worried, though, that the worldwide correction isn't quite done correction.

Still, the current consensus seems to be: storm weathered. Need to re-reroof the barn.

...

According to preliminary calculations, the Dow rose 157.18, or 1.30 percent, to 12,207.59, after dropping 581 points over the past week. The Standard & Poor's 500 index was up 21.29, or 1.55 percent, at 1,395.41 in its biggest advance since July.

The Nasdaq composite index rose 44.46, or 1.90 percent, to 2,385.14. The tech-dominated index, which includes many companies consider young and risky compared to S&P 500 stocks, was particularly hard-hit in last week's slide. It was the best one-day advance since Oct. 4.

The Russell 2000 index of smaller companies was up 18.82, or 2.48 percent, at 778.88.

Posted by: Ace at 01:46 PM | Comments (40)
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An Arab paper is claiming that, which wouldn't count for much, but they did have the one of the earlier stories on the fact he was missing at all.

Does he know about Iran's nukes? Maybe.

Does he know about Iran's arming/control of Hezbollah? Almost certainly.

Does he bring a submarine with a catepillar drive with him? Well, no, but if he's defected, one can imagine he's brought a couple of armfulls of dirty little documents along with him.

Posted by: Ace at 12:28 PM | Comments (29)
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Those sound a bit repetitive, but it's what the article says.

...

Guilty on at least one count is my guess.

Although much of this can be chalked up to misremembering, the one thing that's hard to buy as a the product of a poor memory is his insistence that he thought he heard this first from Russert, because the Russert conversation occurred two weeks after he heard it from Dick Cheney.

He squares this circle by saying he first heard it from Cheney, but forgot it, so when he heard it two weeks later from Russert (supposedly), he honestly believed he was hearing it for the first time.

He may have claimed that because he realized he'd made a mistake as to the timing, and didn't want to change his story, because he knew he was dealing with a prosecutor looking to convict him. But whatever his reasons -- I'm sorry, that's just not plausible.

And yes, I still think there was no pretext for Fitzgerald's investigation, that he knew there was no possible crime to be investigated here from day one (forcing him to invent the crime of "conspiracy to violate the Wilsons' civil rights," though he couldn't quite say which rights had been violated), which makes this all a travesty and Libby's lies immaterial as a matter of law.

But the jury will almost certainly hang him on that one implausible statement. They're inclined to convict him, being liberal DC Democrats and all, and I don't see why they'd avoid doing so when even *I* can't explain that one away.

Actually... I guess it is easily explained -- when trying to remember what people told you a year or two ago, it's hard to pin the order down when they're separated by a couple of weeks.

I keep having people mention posts I've written that I have no recollection of, for example. Archaelogist/slut? I had no idea I'd ever written anything like that. Joy McCann of Little Miss Atilla mentioned the photo of "me" naked with a cat that I posted last time I begged people for money; I kept thinking she must be thinking of someone else, as I had never, ever posted such a picture.

But I had.

So: first the appeal, I guess, fighting over whether or not Fitzgerald had the right to impanel a grand jury to investigate a non-crime in the first place; and when that fails (which it will), the sentencing.

As others have suggested; Sandy Berger lied to investigators and destroyed national security documents to prevent them from being seen by the 9/11 Commission. He paid a $50,000 fine, had to do 100 hours of community service or thereabouts, and lost his security clearance for two years or so.

I'd say that should be the maximum sentence for Libby. Maybe about half that.

From The Comments: Figured I'd just paste this into the post.

>>>Libby's crime wasn't in outing Plame, it was in lying to the grand jury.

True. But here Libby was put under oath and forced to testify when NO CRIME HAD CONCEIVABLY BEEN COMMITTED.

Look at it this way: It sure would be nice to put Hillary Clinton under oath, or Dan Rather, or any other figure on the left, and compel them to answer politically embarrassing questions honestly or else face jail time, but prosecutors aren't allowed to just put someone under oath and question them for shits and grins. there has to be an actual crime being investigated. There was none here, and Fitzgerald knew that from the start.

Hence, his claim that he was investigating "a possible conspiracy to violate civil rights," which rights, again, he could not name specifically, because all of the specific laws that could possibly imply a violated civil right were inapplicable.

Whistlelblower law? Doesn't apply. Espionage Act? Doesn't apply. Covert agent protection act? Doesn't apply.

So WHICH civil rights? Apparently none named in the constitution or any statute.

There's no such thing as a general, nonspecific catch-all "civil right." You either have the right from the constittuion, from previous court opinions, or from statutes (either explicitly giving you a civil rights cause of action or, more frequently, "implied" by such a law).

Fitzie couldn't name what law gave Wilson and Plame created this "civil right" to be named later whose violation he was supposedly investigating -- because no such law existed.

Not that this reasoning will persuade an appeals court. But I think it's accurate.

Posted by: Ace at 09:05 AM | Comments (606)
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Damnit, this plan is working too well!

Don't you have a back-up plan you can offer demoralized Democrats that might work less well?

Or, dare to dream -- finally lose this war on terms acceptable to the media?

Posted by: Ace at 08:58 AM | Comments (23)
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So, so hhhhottt:

Will have to control myself when I see you, first the urge will be to rip your clothes off, throw you on the ground, and love the hell out of you.

Number of ejaculations: Four

That email is from the new girlfriend, not Lisa Nowak, by the way. Nowak discovered it, and that's partly what sent her off.

Posted by: Ace at 08:43 AM | Comments (46)
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Liberal trolls believe, apparently, I should simply copy and paste the front page of Firedoglake and Talking Points and Daily Kos and that I'm required, as all readers are required, to discuss precisely what the liberals think we should be discussing today.

Wrong.

I'm tired of seeing off-topic baiting about the Libby trial we're avoiding (newsflash: it's been covered, but there's no verdict yet) and now, of course, the new issue we're all avoiding, the subpar treatment of wounded fighters at Walter Reed.

Does anyone believe the liberal trolls really "support the troops," by the way? If that's the case, it's odd how their first priority is making partisan hay, rather than actually trying to, you know, increase awareness of the issue.

This is my blog, and I get some degree of input as to what's covered here. If Mureigo wants to influence the public discussion, I suggest he start his own blog and start doing so, rather than hijacking my blog and trying to mau-mau me into writing the blog he'd like to read.

Further attempts by liberal trolls to spam threads with the crap they read on liberal blogs will be met by banning.

That's the way I roll.

That's not to say that people can't discuss whatever they like, generally, in the threads. Hey, have fun.

But I'm sick to death of lefty trolls attempting to dictate that this become, essentially, a leftwing blog, and their determination to spam any thread they think isn't sufficiently catering to their partisan needs.

Do it again, you get banned. That simple.

Posted by: Ace at 07:36 AM | Comments (127)
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