In an ongoing effort to "broaden brand appeal" Ace green-lighted a foray into health-care, with the predictable outcome.

A rattlesnake rancher who calls himself Bayou Bob found a new way to make money: Stick a rattler inside a bottle of vodka and market the concoction as an "ancient Asian elixir."

Posted by: Open Blog at 04:09 PM | Comments (48)
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At Ralph Nader's blog, which looks very twitter-like:

Senator Clinton:

Just read where Senator Patrick Leahy is calling on you to drop out of the Presidential race.

Believe me.

I know something about this.

HereÂ’s my advice:

DonÂ’t listen to people when they tell you not to run anymore.

ThatÂ’s just political bigotry.

Listen to your own inner citizen First Amendment voice.

I have an election law class this semester, in which we usually take a few minutes at the beginning of each class to discuss the presidential contests. When asked if they thought Clinton will win the nomination, half of the class astonishingly indicated that they did. These are folks who might not be as up-to-date on election information as your average AoS moron, but who probably have a better grasp of the situation than your average man on the street.

So what am I missing? Poll is below the fold.

more...

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:58 PM | Comments (86)
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I'm off. Keep it (fairly) clean, boys.

Posted by: Ace at 11:11 AM | Comments (105)
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This year's winner is If You Want Closure In Your Relationship, Start With Your Legs. Awesome title.

The book, described as a "self-help manual written by a man for the benefit of women," pipped "I Was Tortured By the Pygmy Love Queen" into second place, followed by "Cheese Problems Solved" in the poll for the Bookseller magazine.

"The winner .. makes redundant an entire genre of self-help tomes. So effective is the title that you don't even need to read the book itself," said Joel Rickett, deputy editor of the publishing industry weekly.

"But don't let that stop you," I'm sure the publisher is frantically emailing. Click through to see the results back to 1997. Some are "meh." But some are pure gold, like The Big Book of Lesbian Horse Stories and High Performance Stiffened Structures.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 11:05 AM | Comments (38)
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If Friday's box office numbers are any measure, the latest anti-war movie will flop just as badly as the others. Stop-loss came in 7th yesterday, and Hollywood execs keep kidding themselves about the reason:

"It's not looking good," a studio source told me before the weekend. "No one wants to see Iraq war movies. No matter what we put out there in terms of great cast or trailers, people were completely turned off. It's a function of the marketplace not being ready to address this conflict in a dramatic way because the war itself is something that's unresolved yet. It's a shame because it's a good movie that's just ahead of its time."

That's not it at all. We're more than ready to "address this conflict" if the absolutely voracious appetite for war-related news is any gauge. It's just that hardly anyone--not even liberals who aren't quite sure how they feel about our country--wants to sit through an hour-and-a-half exercise in public shaming.

More: DrewM. writes to point me to Libertas, a conservative film blog that I really should be reading. Their review (more of a takedown) is here. It begins:

What is possibly left to say about a poorly produced, poorly acted, poorly directed, and very poorly written anti-war film that defames our troopsÂ…?

Actually, they manage to say quite a bit.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 09:16 AM | Comments (70)
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Note the question mark, please. Also note the vague verb "linked." I don't want to cast aspersions on the innocent. Or even Washingtonienne.

But there is some sort of odd linkage here.

Kristen "Billie" Davis and Jessica "Brooke" Cutler.

And you thought you'd heard the last of Jessica Cutler, a.k.a. the blogger Washingtonienne! Not so, the New York Post reports; alleged photos of former Senate staffer Cutler, 29, have shown up on the alleged Web site of alleged N.Y.C. madam Kristin "Billie" Davis, 32, whose Manhattan-based Wicked Models call-girl ring was shut down Tuesday after a year-long investigation.

According to the Post, Cutler can be seen on Davis's MySpace page, posing above the caption "The Famous Jessica Cutler!" The same picture reportedly also appears on a Web site that advertises a photo shoot for Wicked Models, but in that photo Davis identifies Cutler as "Brooke." Cutler told the Post it was her face on the Web site but said the photos "were Photoshopped."

Asked if she had worked as an escort, Cutler told the Post, "I can't talk about that," but said reps of the Manhattan district attorney's office "are going to want to see me for questioning."

Cutler told the Post she first met Davis -- who is behind bars, with bail set at $2 million -- when her roommate was hired as Davis's personal assistant; Cutler said she partied with Davis and at one time lived in her New York apartment.

Attempts to reach Cutler for comment yesterday were unsuccessful.

Here's the NYPost link for Cutler's racy pictures. And when I say "racy," I mean... very meh. She knew she was featured on the website, she says, but that the pictures were photoshopped, which is... irrelevant.

It could be she was just a model. The organization is called Wicked Models, after all.

I guess.

Double Plus Undead suggests this may be the last time this old post is relevant.

It amuses me (in a flattering, but shameful way) that some blog poll put that as the second greatest blog post ever written, after LGF's Rathergate .gif. I guess that's my clumsy way of saying read that if you haven't before.

Via Hot Air's Headlines, DPUD tells me.

Posted by: Ace at 07:39 AM | Comments (25)
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Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch.

Posted by: Ace at 06:43 AM | Comments (54)
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I will put the Dollard link back up later. I was going to put it up now and say "No comments" but given the fact I asked people to ratchet it down and was generally ignored I don't imagine anyone will respect my wishes this time, either.

For everyone who vented at Muslims generally and didn't take my advice to ratchet it down -- thanks, you are officially responsible for the most complained-about thread in this site's history. Take a bow.

I am really, really getting fucking sick of saying the same basic thing over and over again.

To the same fucking people, by and large.

I should say this is a difficult call because there are legitimate discussions to be had about precisely how complicit most Muslims are in terrorism, and how much Islam itself is to blame.

But for the love of God, please understand that when you broach these concededly-legitimate topics you should do so as thoughtfully as possible, and not in the white heat of anger.

BTW, erg has been banned. I hope. To be honest, I've been "banning" him not realizing that my "bans" only applied to a commenting system that was no longer even use. I have written Pixy to put him on the real banned list, so we'll see if it takes this time.

I realize that that was part of the problem, and that he stirred some up by immediately (of course) claiming Christianity was the "real" problem.

But just because he's a terrorist symp is really not a license to write crap here that would get you fired at work were you to say it there.

This is a business. People do read this at work.

I am getting tired of having to remind people of these basic facts. You are threatening my very goddamned livelihood and no, your "right" to free expression is not going to trump my right to make a buck.

Here's a simple guideline: Before you spout off on a charged issue, ask yourself if someone reading this at work might be in trouble with Human Resources for reading the site if a coworker happened to read your commnent.

If the answer is "Yes," then do not hit publish. Take a breather, rethink, reconsider, rewrite. Or consider exiting the argument altogether if you find you're too angry to mind a respectful, respectable tone.

Either there's going to be some self-regulation here or there's going to be external regulation. Either way, there is going to be regulation.

That's just the way it fucking is.

Posted by: Ace at 06:17 AM | Comments (427)
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The sheer depth of arrogance in this statement takes my breath away.

I'm not really one of those whose vote can be had by McCain if only he chooses the right running mate.

But I'm in a distinct minority, even among the anti-establishment types that hang out around this blog.

That said, it seems absurdly egotistical and tone-deaf for a candidate struggling to gain the trust of the conservative wing of the GOP to start ruling out running-mates who would significantly strengthen the resolve of that faction to turn out for a vote.

But let's face it. It is John McCain (r - McCainland) we are talking about.

I have a hard time believing that McCain will tap anyone much further to the right of Joe Lieberman to be his running mate. After all, Joe already demonstrated in 2003 while waiting for an Al Gore non-event that he is more than willing to suck it up and support his team to the hilt, his dignity be damned.

McCain has his monumental ego, I have my inviolable principles, and never the twain shall meet.*

* (An ancient phrase that is remarkably on-target).

Posted by: Open Blog at 09:24 PM | Comments (182)
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Hillary's dodge was always to claim she couldn't talk about scandals, as they were under investigation, and then, after the investigation had been completed, and had by no means cleared her, simply failed to produce criminal charges, state "All these questions were answered long ago," apparently forgetting that she had always refused to answer any of these questions long ago.

For Obama, it's different. A true child of the Netroots, any topic which is politically disadvantageous to him is a distraction from what really matters, namely, any topic which is politically advantageous to him.

Via Hot Air's Headlines.

Posted by: Ace at 12:31 PM | Comments (49)
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