In one of the longest "About Us" sections of a website ever, an owner of several professional "mobile washing" companies informs us of his Warrior Genes and Patrician Extraction from the Mayflower crowd as well as his all-around athleticism, noting, for example, he played soccer in youth leagues for seven years.

This goes on for, just guessing here, around 2 or 3,000 words. Several of these accomplishments are actually notable. Others are... sort of notable, kinda, but we usually don't talk about them past age 20 (like being voted Most Likely to Succeed in high school). Some are just... him telling us what he did at his various jobs and are entirely unremarkable.

Lance Winslow's relentless enthusiasm for the myriad accomplishments of Lance Winslow just isn't as infectious as he might hope.

Emphases added. There's so much awesome in Lance Winslow's bio I have to highlight the super-awesome ones.

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Posted by: Ace at 08:18 AM | Comments (161)
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Rusty concedes that the first war in Iraq -- the one to depose Saddam Hussein (not the Gulf War, we're not talking about that) -- may have been ill advised.

But we won that war, he argues. The war against the Baathists was successful.

The new war -- a consequence of the first, but nevertheless distinguishable from it -- is against Al Qaeda and sympathetic Pan-Arabist zealots.

The first war may or may not have been wisely undertaken. But that is irrelevant as that war is over and has been for some time. The current war is against Al Qaeda and other terrorists, enemies that Barack Obama conceds himself we should fight if they're in Iraq.

Well, that conditional is actually not a conditional; they are in Iraq and doing what Al Qaeda and terrorists always do. So it seems even the radical lefty Barack Obama concedes the pressing need to fight and win the current war.

We must begin to speak of two Iraq wars. The two wars conception is more precise. It describes what has happened and what is happening in Iraq more fully than speaking of the war. It clarifies many of the debates surrounding the present war as well as allows us to conceptually think more clearly.

Further, the only way to convince war skeptics that winning the present war in Iraq is in our national interests is to give them the linguistic tools for being able to conceive of it as separate from the first war, even if it flows from it.

The First Iraq War may have been "optional", as many of the critics say; but the Second Iraq war is not. We must win it. The price of victory may be high, but the price of defeat is higher.

Again, I'm proudly an Obamaite on this question: If Al Qaeda terrorists are present in Iraq and seeking to hurt American interests by creating a terrorist state in Iraq, we must fight and kill them, and send the rest back to their home countries humiliated, disillusioned, and hopefully missing eyes and limbs and hope, to provide a living object lesson in the perils of confronting the US.

I agree with him wholehearted. If this is the case, we must win the war.

This is the case, so let's get this thing won and then bring our boys home in victory.

Interesting take from Rusty; much recommended.

Posted by: Ace at 08:02 AM | Comments (44)
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Via Instapundit, I came across this short post entitled "Moral Relativism?" from Eric at Classical Values in which he questions, after seeing Larry King's polygamist ranch episode last night, whether Muslims and renegade Mormons receive the same treatment on TV. He writes:

I just had this uneasy feeling that if the same sort of thing had been going on in a polygamous Muslim compound, there might not be the same outcry.

And they might not be describing women as having "escaped from polygamy."

Next thing you know, certain activists will seize upon this case as an argument for the "one man, one woman" ballot initiatives, with the usual unholy alliances.

It's all a little too predictable for comfort.

What's too predictable for comfort is the fact that if it had been a Muslim polygamist ranch, people (mostly liberals) would be coming out of the woodwork to say "what about them Mormons." That it turns out the reverse is true--thank you Eric--is disappointing. That it happens to be coming from what I usually think of as "our side" is downright shameful.

Yes, there's moral relativism going on here, but it's not coming from Larry King. Eric--and the commenters in my earlier post who mentioned it too--should be asking themselves why its necessary to demonstrate some equivalence between renegade Mormon polygamists and Muslim polygamists. Is Eric's argument that we shouldn't be describing women as "escaped from polygamy" or is he merely saying that Muslims get kid glove treatment when it happens?

That's a strange case to make when we've got a renegade Mormon polygamist ranch right in front of us. It's not like CNN had a choice between doing a story on Muslims or one on Mormons. In this case, CNN didn't even have the chance to give Muslim polygamists a tongue-bath before folks swooped in to accuse them of treating the FLDS polygamists too harshly.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 07:54 AM | Comments (29)
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People trust them to make decisions.

They're experts at what they do.

When they have strong feelings on something, they have an obligation to share those feelings with the public, even if their claims are fundamentally dishonest and intellectually shoddy, caroming from one claim to its polar opposite within a matter of months with nary an apology or explanation nor even a grudging admission of error.

Posted by: Ace at 07:54 AM | Comments (8)
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Likely culprit? Global Warming.

The earth gets really hot, see, and it expands, you know, like plastic.

UPDATE [Dave in Texas]: Here's an odd coincidence, today is the anniversary of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

So there's some kinda, schedule I guess.

Posted by: Ace at 07:29 AM | Comments (23)
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Supposedly, which means "definitely," at least frequently.

This is where I'm supposed to say "I can think of something I can do with that pose."

But the fact is I can't, and neither can you, buddy. Admit it.

Posted by: Ace at 07:25 AM | Comments (55)
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Some images over at Jules Crittendon. And a video below the fold.
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Posted by: Ace at 07:20 AM | Comments (32)
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Though, as Bob Owens says, the AP is heavily invested in portraying him as an innocent man wrongly accused.

Bullshit, as usual. What's bad isn't that AP has an opinion on the matter. What's corrupt is that they will not inform their readers that there is a difference of opinion on the matter, but will instead, as usual, spin its opinion as objective fact.

They're experts at what they do, after all. People trust them to make decisions.

Decisions like what we all ought to think. Honestly, that's such a bother. I'm glad that our Media Betters have finally disburdened us of the necessity of examining objective facts and drawing our own conclusions from them.

I have so much more free time now. An informed, thoughtful populace may be the best guarantor of freedom and good government, but it's so much better that the "experts" in thinking about this stuff do all the heavy critical thinking. As they are smarter and better informed anyway, taking this responsibility from us can only result in a stronger nation.

Thanks to CJ.

Posted by: Ace at 06:59 AM | Comments (3)
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From a Michelle Malkin piece about Time appropriating the flag-raising at Iwo Jima to push its editorial issue on Global Warming.

A little admission in the linked article that jumped out at me [emphasis added]:

[Time Managing Editor] Stengel also appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on April 17 and had no difficulty admitting the magazine needed to have a “point of view.”

“I think since I’ve been back at the magazine, I have felt that one of the things that’s needed in journalism is that you have to have a point of view about things,” Stengel said. “You can’t always just say ‘on the one hand, on the other’ and you decide. People trust us to make decisions. We’re experts in what we do. So I thought, you know what, if we really feel strongly about something let's just say so.”

They are experts -- on what exactly? Feeling strongly about things? So the operating rule at TIME appears to now be: When the journalist is an expert on something, it is permissible to abandon objectivity for the teaching moment at hand.

Meh. As Ace keeps saying, it is refreshing for the MSM to finally start being open about their advocacy.

But Stengel's remarks can't help but remind me of Bea Arthur's response to Mel Brooks's character Comicus, after he explains to her what his job entails.

Dole Office Clerk: Occupation?
Comicus: Stand-up philosopher.
Dole Office Clerk: What?
Comicus: Stand-up philosopher. I coalesce the vapors of human existence into a viable and meaningful comprehension.
Dole Office Clerk: Oh, a bullshit artist!

Indeed.

"We're Experts At What We Do:" [ace]: Oh, give me a g-darn break already. To the extent you are experts at all, assholes, you are experts at gathering information and writing it up. You are not experts on any of the fields you actually cover. (Exceptions for those few journalists who actually are legitimately experts in the substantive fields they report on-- but they are rare.)

Reporters are scientific illiterates, and in fact illiterates on most subjects.

This idea that a reporter is a general universal ad-hoc expert without portfolio in any damn subject he writes upon is an absurd one, fostered primarily by reporters themselves. It's ridiculous that glorified typists go on talking heads shows to wax authoritatively on constitutional law, "climate change," diplomacy, war strategy, etc. They ought to be embarrassed at the ridiculous pretense of it.

But they're not.

I've likened them to the Roman nomenclatura, the petty courtiers who would walk with Senators and inform their bosses of everyone's name. Yes, reporters know everyone's name and where everyone works. They have a glib understanding of who the players are and where they stand on various issues.

But how such a penny-ante "skill" translates to general expertise on any subject they (superficially and ill-informedly) report on escapes me entirely.

Reporters like Stengel hate the idea that they're just stenographers to people who actually know what the hell they're talking about (and whose opinions actually matter). But that is, ultimately, all they are. They are limited to "on the one hand, this guy says this, on the other hand, this other guy says that" reportage because they're reporters.

Look it up. "Report" means "write up what some other guy says." Seriously, look it up. I'll wait.

If you wanted actually be a scientist, tough shit, you should have taken the labwork in college instead of dicking around in communications.

You don't get to play scientist just because you're dissatisfied with the rather lowly trade of reporting the words of other, better informed, more important people.

Posted by: Open Blog at 06:12 AM | Comments (40)
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They seem pretty much like tightass buzzkill narcs, as "Christmas Ape," now self-revealed as writer Michael Tunison, says. Apparently (though I don't know for sure) they were shocked, shocked to find a young-ish man getting wasted in his off hours and posing with sports mascots.

Evidence of the crime

Caution: Some not-safe-for-work language after the jump.
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Posted by: Ace at 05:41 AM | Comments (29)
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