Why do we bother? We know Putin had Litvenenko killed and we know the drooling imbeclie Bashar Assad had Hariri killed.

Well, we don't know that. He's such a buffoon his supposed-inferiors probably gave the order themselves, as they do with most matters of state. But the Syrian government, as a whole, ordered the hit.

At least we can get these guys:

Lebanese authorities are currently holding eight people over the Hariri killing. They are four pro-Syrian generals who headed Lebanese security departments at the time and four members of a small Syrian-backed Sunni Muslim group alleged to have played a role in monitoring HaririÂ’s movements.

Syria has responded, of course, with a threat to put their owned-and-operated terrorist group Hezbollah into action:

Syria: UN Tribunal May Destabilize Lebanon

That's pretty much as subtle as their last statement:

Syria: Hariri's Defiance May Destabilize His Heart-rate, Brain Activity

And we all know how prescient that "warning" turned out to be.

Posted by: Ace at 01:19 PM | Comments (8)
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And we're losing a war! Yayyyy! Beta males rule!!!

Women in journalism really ought to avoid dopey articles like this if they don't want to be stuck in the Fluff Ghetto and News You Can Use Slum.

On the other hand, maybe Jennie was forced to write this silly little queef of a "story" by a patriarchal editor. In which case, Newsweek is disgustingly sexist and should be subject to an immediate, wide-ranging examination by outside experts.

I'll buy that.

... the new movie star looks less like Colin Farrell than Will Ferrell. Or Steve Carell. Or Jon Heder. Or, if he's animated, Shrek or Homer Simpson. The testosterone-pumped, muscle-bound Hollywood hero is rapidly deflating—this summer, Bruce Willis is the last he-man standing. Taking his place is a new kind of leading man, the kind who's just as happy following as leading, or never getting off the sofa. "He's a guy who isn't concerned with status," says Justin Spitzer, a writer for TV's "The Office." "He's more concerned with getting through the day and not engaging in a pissing contest with the alpha males around him." It makes sense that our culture is embracing the mojo-free man right now. As America comes to terms with our diminished omnipotence in the wake of 9/11, the Iraq War and President Bush's international unpopularity, we're growing weary of Teflon-coated John Wayne stereotypes of masculinity. Donald Rumsfeld, Ken Lay, Mel Gibson, Don Imus—all chest-beating, leader-of-the-pack men, and look what happened to them. The alpha dog doesn't hunt anymore. The new role model is a beta male.

Her evidence for all of this is, need I remind you, TV shows and movies. Furthermore, they're comedies, where absurdity and unlikely triumphs are the coin of the realm.

But, as Otter (a definite alpha male) said, "Never mind, [she's] rolling."

Let's skip a bit as she digests the past two seasons of The Office, claiming Jim "turned down" a corporate promotion. (He didn't -- or at least that wasn't in the episode. What seems to have happened is that he was discombobulated during his interview by a note from his eternal crush, Pam, which wound up tanking him.)

Also, let's not notice that on the real -- British, original -- Office, the "Jim" character is a real beta who turns down even minor promotions which pay more money just because they don't want him. In the American version, Jim is much, much more alpha, who both takes promotions and is one of the firm's best salesmen -- apparently the Office's producers figured American viewers would never take to an honest-to-goodness schlub and slacker.

Stephen Colbert's puffed-up pundit character on "The Colbert Report" also lampoons self-important blowhards. The show takes the joke a step further in a biting segment called "alpha dog of the week"....

The obligatory genuflecting at the altar of Colbert. Let's see if we can get one more liberal cliche in and work Al Gore into this.

Then there's Al Gore. During the 2000 election, the press seized on the conceit that Gore was too eager to please, too deferential, too indecisive. Today Gore is still the proto beta male—the on-again-off-again beard, the belly, the deference to Tipper—but he's also having the last laugh as a movie star, an ecosavant, a best-selling author and a potential dark-horse presidential contender....

There you go.

So, now that alpha-ness has been diminished in importance, that means we can all start eating Funions and playing XBOX all day, right?

Alas, no. For one half of the population -- as usual -- a woman's work is never done:

Still, alphas aren't totally over. Women still have to prove their alphaness—look at Hillary Clinton, Condoleezza Rice and Nancy Pelosi—even though the guys have given it a bad name.

Uh-huh.

Anyone think that Newsweek reporterette Jennie Yarbroff is herself a fan of beta males, by the way?

Or is she more like Maureen Dowd?

Thanks to Sinistar.

A Newsweek Specialty: Newsweek's male editors seem to delight in assinging female reporters to "I can't believe this twaddle got published" non-stories. Like this ridiculous piece finding out that real criminal forensics is only slightly similar to that portrayed on CSI.

Posted by: Ace at 12:55 PM | Comments (48)
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I don't know; I thought the old version was still working out okay. So now there's going to be some big roll out for VaginaXP, and you just know the thing is going to be loaded with bugs for the next ten years...

But seriously, it's a big deal for those afflicted.

An Italian doctor has reconstructed vaginas for two women born with a rare congenital deformation, using their own cells to build vaginal tissue in the lab for the first time.

Dr. Cinzia Marchese of Rome's Policlinico Umberto I hospital, giving details of the operations on Wednesday, told Reuters a 28-year-old woman who underwent the first such operation a year ago now has a healthy vagina.

"She has got married and is living a normal life," said Marchese, whose study has been published in the journal Human Reproduction.

The second operation was carried out on a 17-year-old girl on Tuesday and the first signs are that the cells taken by biopsy from the area where her vagina should grow and provide mucosal tissue.

...

The two women had a condition called Mayer-Von Rokitansky-Kuster-Hauser Syndrome, or MRKHS for short, which affects an estimated one in 4,000 to 5,000 female infants.

Girls with the syndrome are born with no vagina. The patient often has a normal uterus, ovaries and external secondary sexual organs such as breasts, but cannot have sexual intercourse or give birth.

"Usually the syndrome is diagnosed when they are young and they try to have sexual intercourse for the first time and it hurts," said Marchese.

Wait, I think I might have that.

Thanks to Jim.

The Black Dahlia... incidentally had a not-fully-formed vagina, many say, which interfered in her relationships with men and, who knows, may have led to a sexually frustrated psychopath murdering her.

I don't know if she had the full syndrome mentioned in the article, but she had something along those lines.

Content warning, of course, on anything having to do with the Black Dahlia/Elizabeth Short murder.

Posted by: Ace at 12:20 PM | Comments (41)
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You know how it is. You're sitting around with your cousin, shootin' the shit, partaking of a beverage or two, and suddenly someone gets stabbed with a pitchfork.

All three men were drinking in their mobile home in the 1200 block of Paseo Derecho around 10 p.m. Sunday, when the two cousins began arguing over who was older.

One of the cousins grabbed a pitchfork, and when the uncle stepped between his nephews, he was stabbed in the arm.

Emphasis mine.
Look, I've seen a lot of family squabbles. I just can't quite figure out how this one could have turned into a full-blown fight. Even in Texas.
One asshole just isn't enough. You really need two complete assholes to take this one to the physical level.

"Naaaww...bitch, I don't care what that driver'sh lishense saysh...bullshit, you don't remember when I was born, I 'amember whe YOU were born...you were, you were, real small, an' wrapped in a blan-(hic), blan-(hic), blanket...oh, sure, CALL AUNT CATHY. FINE. FINE. CALL AUNT CATHY, she alwaysh takes your fuckin' side, doeshen't she, bitch. BRAAAAPPP. PUT DOWN THE PHONE (SCUFFLE ENSUES)"

Thanks to eddiebear.

Posted by: LauraW. at 12:19 PM | Comments (13)
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Underage here (she's now a year older), but undeniably gorgeous:

Gone from a track phenom to an internet phenom. And she was much happier being the former.

By the way, lest anyone think I'm contributing to the unwanted attention Allison Stokke's getting, this article is in the Washington Post. The secret's pretty much out.

In her high school track and field career, Stokke had won a 2004 California state pole vaulting title, broken five national records and earned a scholarship to the University of California, yet only track devotees had noticed. Then, in early May, she received e-mails from friends who warned that a year-old picture of Stokke idly adjusting her hair at a track meet in New York had been plastered across the Internet. She had more than 1,000 new messages on her MySpace page. A three-minute video of Stokke standing against a wall and analyzing her performance at another meet had been posted on YouTube and viewed 150,000 times.

"I just want to find some way to get this all under control," Stokke told her coach.

Three weeks later, Stokke has decided that control is essentially beyond her grasp. Instead, she said, she has learned a distressing lesson in the unruly momentum of the Internet.

...

From her computer at home, Stokke tracked the spread of her image with dismay and disbelief. She had dealt with this once before, when a track fan posted a lewd comment and a picture of her on a message board two years earlier. Stokke had contacted the poster through e-mail and, a few days later, the image had disappeared. But what could she do now, when a search for her name in Yahoo! revealed almost 310,000 hits? "It's not like I could e-mail everybody on the Internet," Stokke said.

For the first week, Stokke tried to ignore the Internet attention. She kept it from her parents. She focused on graduating with a grade-point average above 4.0, on overcoming a knee injury and winning her second state title. But at track meets, twice as many photographers showed up to take her picture. The main office at Newport Harbor High School received dozens of requests for Stokke photo shoots, including one from a risqué magazine in Brazil.

...

"Even if none of it is illegal, it just all feels really demeaning," Allison Stokke said. "I worked so hard for pole vaulting and all this other stuff, and it's almost like that doesn't matter. Nobody sees that. Nobody really sees me."

...

A former gymnast, Stokke had tried pole vaulting as a lark as a freshman in high school. Two months later, she set a school record. She won the 2004 state championship three months after that. Stokke had augmented her natural, pole-vaulting disposition -- speed, upper-body strength and courage -- by lifting weights three times each week. College programs including Harvard, Stanford and UCLA also recruited her.

...

She loved pole vaulting because it was a sport built on intricacies. Each motion required calculation and precision. A well-executed vault blended a dancer's timing, a sprinter's speed and a gymnast's grace. "There's so much that happens in a vault below the surface," Stokke said.

Summing up:

4.0 GPA (or at least in striking distance of that) on full ride at U of California, champion athlete, ex-gymnast, dancer, looks like this:

It's as if Wonder Woman has been battling Nazis and counterfeiters for five years and we're only hearing about her now.

Although I'm sympathetic that Stokke's lost something important, I'm pretty sure she has the gifts to endure.

See, if that memo had had her picture as the State Department logo, I woud have had no problem with it. I just would have said, "Yeah, perfect logo -- this is what our country is fighting for."

Stokke in Action:

Oh, by the way, I forgot to mention: as she hails from Newport Beach, presumably, on top of everything else, she's loaded.

She Ain't All That: I just got this email--

I would defnitely not hit that. Her knees are too sharp and she is well beneath my standards.

That's from some dude signing his email "A. Kournakova."

Posted by: Ace at 12:03 PM | Comments (106)
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A snippet from the History Channel.

The pictures of the damage at the end of the video are just unreal.

Posted by: LauraW. at 09:16 AM | Comments (30)
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It's tempting to call this breaking news, but it's really not all that surprising.

Fred Dalton Thompson is planning to enter the presidential race over the Fourth of July holiday, announcing that week that he has already raised several million dollars and is being backed by insiders from the past three Republican administrations, Thompson advisers told The Politico.

Thompson, the "Law and Order" star and former U.S. senator from Tennessee, has been publicly coy, even as people close to him have been furiously preparing for a late entry into the wide-open contest. But the advisers said Thompson dropped all pretenses on Tuesday afternoon during a conference call with more than 100 potential donors, each of whom was urged to raise about $50,000.

In a recent interview, Newt Gingrich said the 2008 campaign will come down to a choice between "them" and "not them." Being Gingrich, he of course put himself in the "not them" category, but I think Thompson's entry into the race changes that. If Thompson can prove himself a viable candidate, he would become the "not them" a lot of conservatives have been waiting to see in the race.

So which candidates will lose if Thompson runs? My gut says Rudy Giuliani. The race could eventually come down to a Romney-Thompson showdown, since Giuliani has too much political and personal baggage (*sob*) and McCain's campaign is on its last legs, thanks to his spirited support of immigration reform.

So take your guesses. How much can Thompson raise in a short time? Is he a contender, or a flash in the pan? And how much will everyone's campaign be hurt by the white-hot lightning of Mike Bloomberg?

UPDATE - Not so fast? Bottom line: still looks like he's in, but Politico got the announcement date wrong.

UPDATE TO THE UPDATE - Okay, I give up. No one knows when Fred will announce, I guess. (H/t: Allah)

Posted by: Slublog at 05:26 AM | Comments (202)
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Pardon to those who've sent me this link earlier. This has been going 'round the 'nets for a little bit, and, while few (if any) are calling this a proven fake, one does have to wonder about what sort of shutter speed one would need to catch a descending, screamingly-fast missile in flight.

In video (which has a much slower speed that cameras), even insects move too fast to be clearly caught, appearing instead as strange "rods" (which credulous people claim are alien visitors or something).

Only very high-speed cameras can catch the images of bullets in flight. While I don't think missiles are moving at the speed of a bullet, they are moving quite fast indeed, and I'm rather doubtful that a missile would appear as a missile at all even if caught on a film, rather than metallic streak.

This is by no means proven yet. (And for those idiots on the left: No one is claiming that a missile didn't hit; they're only questioning if this is a genuine photo.)

I'd like to hear from professional photographers about the shutter speed required to capture an image of a streaking missile in flight. There is no blur here whatsoever.

Notice what happens when we zoom in on the suspicious "missile:"

Eh, nevermind. It's obviously real. That's what missiles look like. The feathers and flag make them more aerodynamic.

Posted by: Ace at 02:10 PM | Comments (187)
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They don't call it joy juice for nothin'.

I'll tuck the filthy quotes beyond the jump.

Here's the title, though:

You've been warned.
more...

Posted by: Ace at 01:43 PM | Comments (53)
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The leader of an offshoot terrorist organization of the Al-Asqa brigades is sent to Zion within 12 hours of assuming his duties as mass-murderer.

The International Jew-Banker Conspiracy

Resistance is futile.

Although, if you really must have some resistance, we can get it for you wholesale from our cousin Moishe.

Posted by: Ace at 12:27 PM | Comments (30)
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