Umm... no, actually, you don't.

That's the problem. You keep insisting you have a more important, more influential job than the rest of us have agreed to give you. You jerkoffs keep describing the dream job that you wish you had, wished we would allow you to have. You simply refuse to accept that we do not give such important jobs out willy-nilly, and we especially don't hand them out to smugly incompetent morons like yourself who crave that sort of power just because they petulantly demand it.

We control the horizontal...
We control the vertical...

You shouldn't wear so much make-up. It makes you look like a whore.

You're not the gatekeeper, "Decider." Even when the MSM was the gatekeeper, a lame middle-management hack at a backwater piece of shit rag like you was never the gatekeeper. You have gatekeeper envy, and that's all.

If you see these fine folks whom the Seattle P-I will not lower itself to depict, call the FBI.

Posted by: Ace at 03:21 PM | Comments (83)
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I know we've spun wheels on this before but it's getting kinda close. Sooo-- if you've got an idea where to hold this thing, let me know. I can do some legwork to find out which place may be best.

I guess we're looking for:

-- Not a really loud nightclub type place where the only thing you can hear is Justin Timberlake singing about how much he wants to put his sexy in your back.

-- Kind of an empty, non-hopping joint. I mean, ideally we'll show up with enough people to fill a small bar, so a place that actually gets crap business would be cool.

-- Someplace away from the Fenway area.

-- Someplace with decent parking or someplace convenient to a T. A suburb is always a possibility.

I realize I'm not profiling a hip sort of place, but then, it's a blog party. "Hip" is relatively low on the checklist.

See? Like this. Except without the hot, drunk college chicks, who'll just ruin everything with their squealing and giggling and blowjobs.

Or Are My Assumptions Wrong? I'm okay with a hipper, noisier place; I just thought that sort of defeats the purpose of going someplace to meet people and talk. But if most want that sort of thing, I can deal with it. I deal with it all the time, so that's fine.

I don't want to push a lame place on you. I'm just thinking of the last blog party I went to, which was in this noisy joint in NYC, and it was kind of hard to talk to anyone.

Let LauraW Know If You Know You're Coming Or Not Coming, Please. I think she's at laurawtips, then the little a in the circle, gmail dot com.

Posted by: Ace at 01:40 PM | Comments (158)
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The State Department's point by point refutation to moonbat claims of "we created OBL". Deploy as necessary.

The CIA's response to "Legacy of Ashes". They take factual issue with a number of claims in the book.

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 01:18 PM | Comments (13)
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This AP summary isn't completely imbalanced, and does include a mix of upside and downside quotes, but it does on balance tend to focus on the downside.

For the full NIE on Iraq -- with more of that nuance the MSM usually enjoys except when it finds it inconvenient to its agenda -- see Bill Roggio and Operation Altair.

Posted by: Ace at 12:14 PM | Comments (2)
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Intercepted by Customers Customs and Border Control and the Coast Guard, a four man "self-propelled submersible" carrying $352 million dollars worth of cocaine.

Actually it says "semi-submersible", which explains why surveillance planes could spot it, and they knew they had been spotted. They tried to scuttle it but failed.

I'm not quite getting the whole "almost submarine=super stealthy advantage" thing.

Thanks to James

"customers". sheesh. Can't tell what I've been doing all day, can you?

Posted by: Dave In Texas at 12:02 PM | Comments (23)
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Teh Fred's blog post:

Anybody who knows me knows IÂ’ve always cared deeply about the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. So IÂ’ve always felt sort of relieved when I flew back home to where that particular civil liberty gets as much respect as the rest of the Bill of Rights.

Unfortunately, New York is trying, again, to force its ways on the rest of us, this time through the courts. First, they went after U.S. gun manufacturers, seeking through a lawsuit not only money but injunctive control over the entire industry. An act of congress in 2005 blocked, but did not end, that effort.

Now, the same activist federal judge from Brooklyn who provided Mayor GiulianiÂ’s administration with the legal ruling it sought to sue gun makers, has done it again. Last week, he created a bizarre justification to allow New York City to sue out-of-state gun stores that sold guns that somehow ended up in criminal hands in the Big Apple.

The lawsuit has been a lesson in out-of-control government from the get-go. Mayor Bloomberg sent private investigators to make “straw” purchases – illegally buying guns for somebody else. According to the ATF, NY’s illegal “stings” interfered with ongoing investigations of real gun traffickers.

...

While this attack by New York City on the Second Amendment reinforces the importance of appointing judges who apply the law as written, there is another important legal point. Federalism, though usually seen as a protection of the states from the federal government, actually grew out of the need to protect states from other states that interfered in free commerce beyond their borders – as New York is doing today. In this case, we need Federalism to protect states from a big bully in New York City.

Not really sure it's fair to knock Giuliani for Nurse Bloomberg's stupidities, but certainly Giuliani hasn't insulated himself by embracing the Second Amendment.

The NYP blares GIULIANI RIPS UNDECLARED FRED THOMPSON, but if the NYP thinks this is a "rip," they really need to get out more:

A top ally to Republican front-runner Rudy Giuliani yesterday blasted Fred Thompson for attacking the former mayor -- and New York City -- before even declaring his candidacy for president.

"Run or keep your mouth shut!" snarled Guy Molinari, New York co-chairman for the Giuliani presidential campaign.

"If you want to bash people, jump into the pool. We're waiting for you," Molinari added.

..

"He's not just attacking Rudy. He's attacking every resident of New York City," Molinari charged.

So, so lame. I hope Molinari doesn't actually believe that "attacking every resident of New York City" is going to count against Thompson in the Republican Primary.

Reminds me of the Woody Allen line in Annie Hall: "Don't you see the rest of the country looks upon New York like we're left-wing, communist, Jewish, homosexual pornographers? I think of us that way sometimes and I live here. "

Yeah, me too.

More lame "rips:"

...

"I have a serious problem with this guy. Is he running? Is he not running? Now he's going into attack mode even though he's not an announced candidate," said Molinari, a former congressman and Staten Island borough president.

Thompson - who had criticized Giuliani, Bloomberg and Brooklyn federal Judge Jack Weinstein for going after out-of-state gun dealers - laughed off Molinari's tirade.

"I am tempted to say that was a good 'shot across our bow,' " a Thompson spokesman said yesterday, "but I'm afraid that same federal judge might go after those of us who manufacture out-of-state gun metaphors."

On to Romney:

Giuliani rival Mitt Romney also has ratcheted up his bashing of New York as a "sanctuary city" in recent weeks for providing services to illegal immigrants.

Bryan and people at The Corner say Giuliani's defense against this charge is somewhat convincing, but, even without listening to it, I rather doubt that. I've heard his schtick before and I imagine this is more of the same: when asked about illegal immigration, he responds, not entirely on-point, about NYC's well-known track record in reducing crime. That's not really an answer. The problem, as I grow weary of writing, is that Giuliani is trying to claim he hasn't changed his policies while assuring us all his policies (which haven't changed) are nevertheless now different.

Which part of that goofy formulation, if any of it, is true is hard to know. Is he telling the truth when he says his policies haven't changed? If so, he's not electable. Is he telling the truth when he says his policies (while having not changed) are now (though they haven't changed) exactly what the GOP base wants? I find it hard to believe that when he keeps talking up a "serious border enforcement program" that differs from the Bush/Reid/McCain shamnesty only on a few smallball points, and only arguably so, like a "highly technological fence" (exactly what the Shamnesties were selling) and "biometric ID cards" (also what the Shamsters were selling.

We need more than nuanced repositionings and emphases; we need a full repudiation of former policies, which were, indeed, fully supportive of sanctuary cities and encouraging illegal immigrants by a stealth repeal of the law through simple nonenforcement.

I'll give Giuliani's defense a listen, but I really doubt I'm going to hear anything different than I've heard before. He may be superficially persuasive in selling this twaddle, but well-sold or not, it's still twaddle.

Bandwidth Exceeded: With everyone linking it, the audio file is down at the moment. Guess I'll have to try listening later.

Posted by: Ace at 11:00 AM | Comments (33)
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Not a remake, but a sequel. Ferris at 40. (Note: Reading the actual link, I see this is just a spec script being shopped around Hollywood, which means it's.... nothing. Almost certainly not going to happen. Most scripts that are actually bought aren't ever made. Thanks to Dave from Garfield-Ridge for that.)

With all due respect, while the Tao of Ferris was funny when he was a kid, that sort of thinking would be disastrous to him beyond age 18. Will this movie have the balls to admit that? Of course not. And it wouldn't be charming or endearing. I just imagine a script of everyone around the middle-aged Ferris saying, "Grow up already, man. It's just not cute anymore."

A guy I know -- and a complete leftist, incidentally -- thought FBDO destroyed our generation by suggesting that a bit of irresponsibility, dishonesty, and glibness was the key to success. (And of course, by being so enjoyably effective at communicating this message.)

I don't know if I'd go that far, but the movie, for all its virtues, has at its heart a pretty bad set of ideas. True, it was a comedy, and a somewhat fantastical one, so John Hughes gets a pass. I'm sure he thought part of the humor was how absurd it was that someone could luck through life like Ferris did. But dumb early teenagers, like me, took the movie as something of a manifesto.

I thought for a while it would be a pretty cool idea to emulate the Ferris Bueller Lifestyle ™, I can attest that it doesn't work. At least not unless you're born rich and possessed of a nearly superhuman level of confidence and glib charisma.

Posted by: Ace at 10:12 AM | Comments (121)
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The two aren't really related except they're in the same post.

Can anyone actually mount some sort of defensible argument as to why those picked up for fairly major crimes should not have their immigration status looked into? Even if you buy the whole "most immigrants are hardworking people who we owe our very existence to" line of argument, quite obviously chronic drunk drivers, killers, and rapists are not among those hardworking immigrants with good family values, so I'm a bit at a loss as to why it's so imperative we not "chill" their desire to come to America to kill people.

As for NJ's reversal: I doubt it. State troopers might abide by the new policy (which is doubt is a real policy anyway, and is mostly PR), but city police? Who depend upon the mayor's good graces? I'm not sure the state AG has the power to order cops employed by the city to do this or do that, but even assuming they do have that power, the mayor's policy will be the prevailing one, as the mayor and his hand-picked chief of police actually write the checks.

It's one thing to issue an order like this; it's a whole different thing to enforce it. Enforcing it would require suing mayors -- writs of mandamus, I think: judicial orders to actually do their jobs -- which I doubt that the cozy and corrupt Democratic machine politics of NJ will permit.

And how long would that take, even if anyone had the balls to do it? It would take several years of demonstrable, flagrant noncompliance by local cops to even have a basis for the suit, and then years of actual litigation. And further any local police department which didn't want to comply could just "comply" in a bullshit way, by simply asking people if they're legal or not and claiming that constitutes compliance with the order.

The sanctuary city policy is due to a loophole in federal law, and that loophole needs to be plugged. Immediately.

Meanwhile the Rosa Parks of Undocumented Americans is speaking out, which is actually a good thing, because she's an arrogant and entitled little cuss who thinks Americans are morally compelled to change their laws to suit her needs.

Posted by: Ace at 09:39 AM | Comments (29)
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Stranger yet, they spotted the same guy last year spying on them at the same campground.

The picture is pretty funny.

Richard Berkey, 63, was spotted, chased down and tackled by Jason Dugan, who then with a friend's help tied him to a tree and called the sheriff.

While waiting for the sheriff's deputies to arrive, Berkey admitted to the campers he had been spying on campers there for the past 15 years.

From eddiebear, who also loves the great outdoors, and hasn't been caught yet. As far as I know.

Posted by: Dave In Texas at 09:16 AM | Comments (19)
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Every Day Should Be Saturday noticed the, um, interesting responses to a Facebook quiz posted by Marques Slocum of the U Michigan football team.

I guess this might be a reason to discuss the aggressively anti-intellectual -- or more accurately, pro-ignorance -- "Cult of the Authentic" which is more responsible for black failure than all the racism in the world. One can understand a bit of white-culture rejectivism on the part of some ghettoized blacks, but how the hell did average intelligence become a uniquely white aspect of "culture"? (Incidentally, while rappers can be blamed for some elements of the debased "culture of authenticity" among some blacks -- the aggressive nihilism, the glorification of the "thug life" -- they can't be blamed for this particular aspect. Most rappers are quite comfortable letting people know they're pretty smart, and don't themselves seem to consider intelligence some white-man con which needs to be rejected. And yet, even with prominent, ahem, role-models championing, or at least not denigrating, smarts and articulateness, this idea that intelligence is a sell-out to The Man persists.)

I'll skip all that and just say I want to know where Slocum got his pet -- a "fuck lion" -- and whether or not it would make a good "apartment cat." more...

Posted by: Ace at 09:10 AM | Comments (32)
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