You have to give the devil his due. I wish Republicans would have acted this way when these freaks first started showing up.

As he was answering one on Iraq, one of the Paul backers interrupted and shouted that the Sept. 11 attacks were an inside job, and that the U.S. didn’t need to be in Iraq and Afghanistan.

When he dropped an F-bomb, the crowd booed. Clinton, who had tried to talk over the man, gave up.

"You wanna know what I think?” Clinton said. “You guys who think 9/11 was an inside job are crazy as hell. My wife was the senator from New York when that happened. I was down at Ground Zero. I saw the victims' families. You're nuts."

These Troofers shouldn’t be reasoned with but rather treated like the scum they are.

Sadly, they aren’t anything new. I caught the great post WWII move “The Best Years of Our Lives” recently and have been looking for an excuse to post this scene.

Ideally, that’s how you deal with a Troofer. And if you haven’t seen the movie, you owe it to yourself to do so.

UPDATE [Dave in Texas]: Goddammit, I have nothing to contribute here anymore.

DrewM hit upon one of my favorite films, The Best Years of Our Lives. The title is bittersweet enough, but the performances by Frederic March, Dana Andrews, and Harold Russell, a non-actor veteran who won the Academy Award for best supporting actor in 1946 for his portrayal as Homer Parrish, well, they were magnificent.

If you haven't watched it, you should. If you have, I'm preaching to the choir. It's a very good film.

Harold Russell lost his hands in a training accident in 1944. Doing the job. Getting men ready for combat. It is a very good reminder to us all that these magnificent men and women who serve in harm's way, do not always take the hit under fire in anger.

It is a difficult, dangerous job. God bless them.

Posted by: DrewM. at 03:23 PM | Comments (28)
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Alert the press. This idiot did.

Posted by: Ace at 02:37 PM | Comments (28)
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And higher IQ of babies, too?

Universities of Pittsburgh and California (Santa Barbara) researchers found that women with “hourglass” figures are more intelligent than women with round or straight bodies, and tend to give birth to children who are more intelligent.

The hourglass-shaped woman is defined as one whose shape consists of a smaller waist than hips.
These hourglass-shaped women were found to also produce more intelligent children, which the study concludes is due to having more omega-3 fatty acids stored in their hips, which is not found as much in other shaped women.

Omega-3, which is found in oily fish, is a substance that is necessary for the proper growth of the fetusÂ’ brain during pregnancy.

Women with larger waists, more rounded bodies, have more omega-6 stored in their waists, which was found to be less suited to brain growth, and less omega-3 stored in their hips, which is also less desirable for brain growth. Slender women, with smaller waists and hips, were found to have less omega-3 and omega-6, overall, in both hips and waists. This combination would have less affect on intelligence of the baby.

Thanks to PetiteDov.

Obligatory: The uncensored version. Not sure how bad this is, but observe a content warning.

Posted by: Ace at 01:47 PM | Comments (30)
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They just can't calculate the angles:

Women and gay men are likely to be the worst drivers, a new study has shown.

Research has revealed that both perform poorly in tasks involving navigation and spatial awareness when compared to heterosexual men.

Psychologists at Queen Mary, University of London, who conducted the study, believe the findings mean driving in a strange environment would be more difficult for gay men and women than for straight male motorists.

Both tend to rely on local landmarks to get around, and are also slower to take in spatial information.

...

The results back earlier studies supporting the stereotype that women are poor navigators.

...

Dr Rahman said: "Men are good at using distal, or geometrical cues, to decide if theyÂ’re going north or south, for instance. They have a better basic sense of direction, but they can use local land marks as well.

"Driving in a novel environment which is poor in cues is where these differences are likely to show up most.

"Women are going to take a lot longer to reach their destination, making more errors, taking wrong turns etc. They need more rich local landmarks."

...

"Gay people appear to show a ‘mosaic’ of performance, parts of which are male-like and other parts of which are female-like," he said.

Funny picture caption over at the Telegraph: Be afraid: Women and gays could be behind the wheel of any car.

No American paper would ever dream of running a silly bit of snark like that.

Posted by: Ace at 01:11 PM | Comments (41)
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Not sure if this snippet was mentioned in Dave's post.

he standoff between three U.S. Navy ships and five Iranian speedboats in the Strait of Hormuz Sunday was one step away from turning violent.

"They were a heartbeat from being blown up," a Pentagon official, speaking of the Iranians, told ABC News.

According to the Navy intelligence report on the incident, the Iranians radioed, "I am coming at you. You will blow up in a couple of minutes."

The Navy ships radioed back, presumably transmitting a warning. All three ships also engaged in "evasive action," and according to senior Pentagon officials, the "prepare-to-fire" order had been given and the gun stations manned.

Pentagon officials today expressed surprise the Navy ships allowed at least one of the Iranian speedboats to get so close -- just 200 yards away -- without firing.

From dri, Iran's swarming tactics explained. A bit obvious, mostly decent reading.

Revolutionary Shiite values such as stoic endurance and devotion to the cause are granted equal, if not superior, status to the traditional military principles of mission accomplishment and the achievement of a military objective. According to this doctrine, the mere act of fighting, exerting maximum effort, and fulfilling one’s religious (and national) duty to the fullest is an end in itself. The result or outcome is of secondary importance. For adherents, martyrdom is a welcome prospect. A readiness to die, however, is not considered a substitute for lethality and effectiveness. On the contrary, the Iranian concept of Alavi/Ashurai warfare relies not just on spiritual commitment, but also on high-tech weaponry and innovative tactics—a combination employed to great effect on the ground in southern Lebanon by Iran’s protege, the Lebanese Shiite Hizballah, in its war with Israel this summer.

The most prominent expression of this doctrine was a series of naval battles with the U.S. Navy in April 1988. These took place during the final phases of the Iran-Iraq War, when hopelessly outclassed Iranian forces battled U.S. naval units in the Persian Gulf. Iran incurred heavy losses in the process. The experience taught Iran that large naval vessels are vulnerable to air and missile attacks, confirmed the efficacy of small boat operations, and spurred interest in missile-armed fast-attack craft. It also allowed Iran to expand the use of swarming tactics that form the foundation of its current approach to asymmetric naval warfare.

Naval Swarming Tactics

Swarming tactics are not new; they have been practiced by land armies for thousands of years. Such tactics require light, mobile forces with substantial striking power, capable of rapidly concentrating to attack an enemy from multiple directions and then rapidly dispersing.

Iranian naval swarming tactics focus on surprising and isolating the enemyÂ’s forces and preventing their reinforcement or resupply, thereby shattering the enemyÂ’s morale and will to fight. Iran has practiced both mass and dispersed swarming tactics. The former employs mass formations of hundreds of lightly armed and agile small boats that set off from different bases, then converge from different directions to attack a target or group of targets. The latter uses a small number of highly agile missile or torpedo attack craft that set off on their own, from geographically dispersed and concealed locations, and then converge to attack a single target or set of targets (such as a tanker convoy). The dispersed swarming tactic is much more difficult to detect and repel because the attacker never operates in mass formations.

...

In wartime, Iranian naval forces would seek to close the Strait of Hormuz and destroy enemy forces bottled up in the Persian Gulf; therefore speed and surprise would be key. Iranian naval forces would seek to identify and attack the enemyÂ’s centers of gravity as quickly as possible and inflict maximum losses before contact with subordinate units were lost as a result of enemy counterattacks. Geography is IranÂ’s ally. Because of the proximity of major shipping routes to the countryÂ’s largely mountainous 2,000-kilometer coastline, Iranian naval elements can sortie from their bases and attack enemy ships with little advance warning. Meanwhile, shore-based antiship missiles can engage targets almost anywhere in the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman.

Posted by: Ace at 01:05 PM | Comments (38)
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So claimeth News of the World, a UK tabloid. I don't know how reliable it is.

Thanks to RobG.

Posted by: Ace at 12:53 PM | Comments (10)
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Not very important, but we've been following this guy's saga for over a year now.

A Wisconsin man convicted of having sexual contact with a dead deer has been sentenced to nine more months in jail.

Bryan James Hathaway, 21, of Superior had his probation revoked last month for using alcohol and marijuana, lying to his probation agent, and having unapproved contact with a minor child and sexual relations with another adult.

A judge sentenced Hathaway to nine more months in jail during a hearing on Friday.

...

He was found guilty in April 2005 of felony mistreatment of an animal after he killed a horse with the intention of having sex with it....

Hathaway had just been released from prison for killing the horse when the deer incident happened. He is appealing his conviction on the deer charge.

IIRC, that appeal has to do with whether the law forbidding sex with an animal includes a dead animal, which he contends is not an "animal" but merely a "carcass."

Posted by: Ace at 12:26 PM | Comments (45)
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Rasmussen: McCain 32, Romney 31.

FoxNews: McCain 34, Romney 27.

I don't know who to root for here. I don't like McCain, but I think he'll play better in the general election.

I suppose it's better that Romney wins, to give Fred Thompson room to grow as the consensus conservative choice.

Posted by: Ace at 12:02 PM | Comments (29)
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It's real, baby.

Posted by: Ace at 11:44 AM | Comments (61)
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Crusader:

On the January 4 edition of the NBC show “Late Night with Conan O’Brien,” Bill Maher commented on a remark about religion that was allegedly made by presidential contender Mitt Romney. In the course of his comments, Maher said the following:

“You can’t be a rational person six days of the week and put on a suit and make rational decisions and go to work and, on one day of the week, go to a building and think you’re drinking the blood of a 2,000-year-old space god. That doesn’t make you a person of faith…That makes you a schizophrenic.”

O’Brien, looking a bit uneasy, then asked Maher whether anyone who is religious is schizophrenic. To which Maher replied, “Well, yes, sort of, because they have walled off a part of their mind.”

Maher thinks he's good looking and picks up chicks on his looks and charm and sex appeal rather than his money and connections. Seems to me that's a bit more absurd than believing in God.

Posted by: Ace at 11:06 AM | Comments (64)
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