Happy Thursday all.

The 2010 World Cup Starts Tomorrow

Okay I know a lot of you aren't interested/hate soccer, but the World Cup is a once in four year thing. So if you could muster the fortitude to actually watch a curling match during the Olympics, well the least you can do is cheer on the US team which actually has a non-theoretical chance of advancing this go around.

Truthfully I don't love soccer as much as other sports, but I've warmed up to it in the last year or so. Mostly because I work with a lot of European types who don't know shit about baseball or football. So if I'm gonna talk sports with them and do a little trash talkin' about their faves, it going to have be in soccer. And if there's one thing I love more than seeing Boston fans disappointed, it's seeing Americans beat foreigners. So I've learned to like soccer enough to be able talk it up with them and slowly break their spirits with sport-appropriate insults.

And having started running recently, I've also come to respect the players' fitness levels as well as their ball handling skills. On average a pro soccer player runs about 7 miles each game while the referees run over 10 and a lot of that is sprinting. So as sissy as they can seem, soccer players are probably some of the fittest athletes in the world.

Oh and the US's first game in on Saturday at 2:30pm EST against England.

So here's some links for those who may not love soccer but are willing follow the US in the 2010 WC:
Bracket Chart For Following The Games
Where to watch the games live
ABC and ESPN will have the games on TV and ESPN3 should stream all the games online.

Cracked's World Cup Preview for (and by) People Who DonÂ’t Care
CNN: Want to sound like a World Cup expert?
How to fake it for the next few weeks.
10 Best Footballers in the FIFA World Cup 2010
Be sure and look out for Kaka.
Are You Catching World Cup Fever?
Yeah the World Cup probably is a backdoor way to get the US to accept the metric system. But I'm still willing to watch and cheer the US team.
The 55 Sexiest South African Women
Okay not strictly soccer-related but I think some these ladies might have dated a soccer player at some point more...

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:00 PM | Comments (681)
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Not to be flippant about this but Obama needs to find some asses to kick here and kick them hard.

The Army has stripped its top two managers overseeing Arlington National Cemetery of their authority and appointed a new executive director after an internal investigation found that potentially hundreds of remains have been misidentified to misplaced.

Army Secretary John McHugh, who released the results of the report Thursday, announced that the cemetery's superintendent, John Metzler, will be under supervision until he retires next month, and Metzler's deputy, Thurman Higgenbotham, has been placed on administrative leave.

McHugh, who ordered the investigation in November, called the report "deeply troubling" and "unacceptable."

"I deeply apologize to the families of the honored fallen resting in that hallowed ground who may now question the care afforded to their loved ones," McHugh told a Pentagon news conference.

What did the report uncover?

Army investigators at Arlington Cemetery have found what appear to be over 100 unmarked graves, scores of apparently empty graves marked with headstones, and at least four burial urns that had been inadvertently unearthed and dumped in the cemetery’s “spoils” area where excess grave dirt is stored.

They found a “dysfunctional” and chaotic management system, poisoned by bitterness between the superintendent and a top subordinate and hobbled by antiquated record keeping.

It seems most of the problems involve Iraq and Afghanistan casualties buried at Arlington.

In addition to the disservice done to the fallen and their families that have been identified, all other families must now be wondering if their loved ones were treated properly and their eternal place of honor and rest is as they have been told. They simply should not be put through this additional pain and stress.

I'm sure the overwhelming majority of men and women at Arlington and other national cemeteries do their very best to honor the fallen, but this is absolutely unacceptable. Simply retiring the leadership is not enough. Someone has to go to jail for dereliction of duty. Of course that won't be the charge but investigators can always find a misappropriated stapler or something. Identify it and prosecute them.

Most importantly, fix this system now and make sure it never happens again.

Posted by: DrewM at 04:12 PM | Comments (100)
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You know how everyone in the press is poo-pooing the Slestak Bribe story? Claiming that's shady but not illegal?

Can anyone explain to me what Rod Blagojevich is on trial for, then?

If "everyone does it"?

Posted by: Ace at 03:55 PM | Comments (91)
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Okay, that's not really the story I'm linking.

I am headlining this post with that to give you some context about the sorts of stories The Globe (UK) "breaks."

So that you have context -- indicia of reliability -- for the real story I'm linking:

Al Gore's gay affair doomed marriage.

I would love that to be true, but again, I direct you to Gary Coleman: IT WAS MURDER!

I'm linking it because 1, it's funny, and 2, until I link it I'm going to get a lot of tips about it, and 3, seriously, it's funny, and it's worth linking for the sockpuppeting alone.

Thanks to DougS.

Al Gore's "Partner"? Makes sense.

Correction: Not the Globe UK. I thought it was the British version of the Globe but it's just the one at your local supermarket. The one that does the Obama-is-Gay stories, too.

Posted by: Ace at 02:44 PM | Comments (259)
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Corrected: I got this story wrong in every way possible; I thought the Amendment would give the EPA power to regulate CO2, so I thought Murkowski was on the wrong side of it.

I got it all wrong. Murkowski's amendment was to forbid the EPA from "adjusting" the law as written to give itself non-delegated power to do this, so the amendment's defeat represents a defeat for progress.

Apologies.

The Senate defeated this 47 in favor to 53 opposed, with six Democrats joining the R's.

Posted by: Ace at 02:05 PM | Comments (151)
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See what I did there.

Thrill up the leg? You bet. In fact, if you're sitting in your dorm-room at night, he might just send you a picture of the thrill up his leg, if you know what I mean, and I know you do.

Alvin M. Greene never gave a speech during his quixotic campaign to become this state's Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate. The mystery man of South Carolina politics didn't launch a Web site or hire consultants or plant lawn signs. There's only $114 in his campaign bank account, he says, and the only check he ever wrote was to cover his filing fee.

Indeed, in the course of a rambling, repetitive and frequently inchoate three-hour interview, this jobless military veteran could not name a single specific thing he'd done to campaign for lofty political office. Yet, more than 100,000 South Carolina Democrats voted for Greene on Tuesday, handing him a resounding victory over a well-funded ex-judge who has served four terms in the state legislature.

"I'm the Democratic Party nominee," he says. "I mean, I mean, the people have spoken. The people of South Carolina have spoken. The people of South Carolina have spoken. We have to be pro-South Carolina. The people of South Carolina have spoken. We have to be pro-South Carolina."

Yes we can.

...

Greene leads a remarkably isolated existence at the home of his ailing 81-year-old father, James Greene, on a stretch of rural highway in central South Carolina. Greene has no cellphone and no computer, except the one at the public library.
..

Greene's life story is as vague as his campaign. He says he was born in Florence, S.C., went to high school in Manning (a town of 4,000 near his father's home) and graduated from the University of South Carolina in political science. He says he served in the military -- first in the Air Force and then in the Army -- from his college graduation in 2000 until nine months ago. "I was honorably discharged from the Army, but it was involuntary," he says. "Things weren't working. Same thing happened in the Air Force. . . . It's a long story in both services."

I love when people get kicked out of the military for vague reasons but just say "it's a long story."

Yeah... I'm sure it's long but I'm also sure that if you wanted to you could just sum up by mentioning the digits of which part of the code you violated.

Thanks to DrewM.

Alvin M. Greene for Senate

Sketchy ideas for a sketchy future.

Silver-Tongued Devil: I haven't seen a black orator like this since The Blindside.

No, seriously-- Blindside, right? Except instead of making the Baltimore Ravens he runs for Senate, and maybe sends Sandra Bullock's daughter a picture of his penis.

There's another video at Hot Air.

Oh, and still more: Mother Jones claims he's a political plant.

[UPDATE - PA]

An annon commenter at Mother Jones claims to have worked with the guy recently and says he was administratively discharged for general incompetence as a supply specialist. That could explain an honorable discharge and "things not working out" . Since general incompetence seems to be a job requirement for Democrats in congress these days, his military experience is looking like plus to me.

Posted by: Ace at 01:05 PM | Comments (306)
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Here I stand, chaste and faithful; I can do no other.

Via Allah, who writes:

The words “unlike some people” aren’t uttered but they’re clearly implied, just as they were implied when Huckabee pulled this same nasty trick on another conservative whose Christianity is suspect in the eyes of some.

I'ma gonna go ahead and disagree, here, a little? Since the outgoing governor is Mark "Blame it on the Bossanova" Sanford, there is a predicate for announcing one's sexual fidelity and lack of likelihood of embarrassing the state already extant, Nikki Haley or no Nikki Haley.

This is one of those circumstances, then, where there is both an objectionable and unobjectionable reason for a statement, and the only reason to avoid it, then, is to spare your opponent some agita. And doing that is what I'd term "political malpractice."

I would compare this to "racist dog whistle" ads about, say, crime. Hey, you know what? In the eighties, crime was out of control. (It's still bad, of course.) There was a perfectly good reason to make an issue of it. Yes, you know, some racists just use "crime" as a method of talking about black people, but their ill-use of the issue can't prevent me from talking about an issue I genuinely care about.

The media is always big on this, trying to think of new ways to claim that the Republicans are not allowed to discuss or even mention any issue that hurts the Democrats.

What, 10% of the country is racist and thinks "blacks" when we say "criminal"? Oh, I see then, so that's a good reason to outlaw all debate on an issue that affects 100% of us (and, for some, affects catastrophically).

So, I don't buy that. In this case, Barrett does have a good enough reason to mention that his little boat only has one slip.

Before anyone whines I'm giving aid and comfort to "the enemy," let me just say, I can afford a bit of principled honesty because Haley's going to win, easily.

Honestly, the only way she loses is if there is suddenly genuine evidence of an affair (and hence: serial lying), and in that case, trust me, you're a-gonna want a back-up like Barrett who can vouch for his penis' resoluteness and firmness of purpose.

I don't expect that to happen. Because Will Folks ain't a playa, and Larry Marchant plays for the wrong team.

Kidding! Of course I'm not saying he's gay. I'm just saying he's got an Ikea credit card and can tell the difference between a Hvorstaad chaise and a Kvornjak lounger.

I'm just saying if you're wearing a spring hat which could be characterized as "darling," he's likely to say so.

I'm just saying that he has trouble looking in a woman's eyes, because he's looking "down there," if you know what I mean, and by "down there," I mean shoes.

That's all I'm saying. And that's all I'm saying. Certainly I would never say anything else.

At the link, ruminations on the over-exaggerated racism of Southerners, and Haley's poll numbers.

One bit to munch on: Jakie "The Jokeman" Knotts may be asked to resign by the county committee.

What do we-all think of that? Kind of a how-the-worm-has-turned situation, ain't it? Suddenly "Political Correctness Gone Wild" has a little bit to recommend it, doesn't it?

Not baiting; I'm noticing that myself, in myself. Can't say I'm exactly shedding tears for Helen Thomas' embarrassment and retirement, nor by South Carolinians deciding Jakie "SNL Head Writer, 1994-1997" Knotts is too stupid and backwards and embarrassing to represent them any further.

Posted by: Ace at 12:53 PM | Comments (73)
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Well, they always lied when they said 'comprehensive reform' wasn't amnesty but now they are taking it to a whole new level.

Long pilloried for being soft on illegal immigration, top Democratic officials have concluded thereÂ’s only one way they can hope to pass a comprehensive immigration bill:

Talk more like Republicans.

...The 12 million people who unlawfully reside the country? Call them “illegal immigrants,” not “undocumented workers,” the pollsters say.

Strip out the empathy, too. Democrats used to offer immigrants “an earned path to citizenship” so hardworking people trying to support their families could “come out of the shadows.” To voters, that sounded like a gift, the operatives concluded.

Now, Democrats emphasize that it’s “unacceptable” to allow 12 million people to live in America illegally and that the government must “require” them to register and “get right with the law.” That means three things: “Obey our laws, learn our language and pay our taxes” — or face deportation.

...President Barack Obama uses the buzzwords. So does the congressional leadership. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), author of the Democratic immigration plan, scolds advocates who refer to illegal immigrants as “undocumented workers.”

Same policy, just a different bit of wrapping on it.

This is just another example of how liberals are so damn sure they have the right policy positions, voters are just to damn dumb to know it. If the idiots want tough talk and strong enforcement policies? The liberals will give them tough talk. Strong enforcement polices? No, not so much. They've got a base to motivate and illegals to convert into new voters.

Making their sales pitch a wee bit more difficult is the death of the talking point that 'enforcement only' doesn't work.

Arizona's tough new immigration enforcement law is fueling an exodus of Hispanics from the state seven weeks before it goes into effect, according to officials and residents in the state.

Though no one has precise figures, reports from school officials, businesses and individuals indicate worried Hispanics — both legal and illegal — are leaving the state in anticipation of the law, which will go into effect July 29.

Schools in Hispanic areas report unusual drops in enrollment. The Balsz Elementary School District is 75% Hispanic, and within a month of the law's passage, the parents of 70 students pulled them out of school, said District Superintendent Jeffrey Smith. The district lost seven students over the same one-month period last year, and parents tell Smith the Arizona law is the reason for leaving.

"They're leaving to another state where they feel more welcome," he said.

Imagine what might happen if there were no states where illegal aliens felt welcome. It isn't hard to do. Especially when a CBS News poll says 69% of people nationwide say Arizona's law is either 'just right' or 'doesn't go far enough'.

Given the mood of the country right now, Democrats aren't going to get much mileage out of their new lies. There's no chance that Congress will take up a bill before the elections. Each side has the issue on the radar and that's enough politically for both.

Thanks to Gabe for the Arizona story.

John "Finish The Dang'd Fence" McCain emails to say, "I've personally packed up and driven 30,000 illegals to the California border. You're welcome".

Posted by: DrewM at 11:54 AM | Comments (124)
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Pictured: White House Staffers engage in detailed
analysis of Dutch spill-containment capabilities,
and who should serve as anchorman in the MGD Boat Race

Offered help by a veritable Coalition of the Willing, but Captain Kickass decided it was time to "appear strong."

Or something. I am guessing at his motive.

Three days after the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico, the Dutch government offered to help.

It was willing to provide ships outfitted with oil-skimming booms, and it proposed a plan for building sand barriers to protect sensitive marshlands.

The response from the Obama administration and BP, which are coordinating the cleanup: “The embassy got a nice letter from the administration that said, ‘Thanks, but no thanks,'” said Geert Visser, consul general for the Netherlands in Houston.

Now, almost seven weeks later, as the oil spewing from the battered well spreads across the Gulf and soils pristine beaches and coastline, BP and our government have reconsidered.

U.S. ships are being outfitted this week with four pairs of the skimming booms airlifted from the Netherlands and should be deployed within days. Each pair can process 5 million gallons of water a day, removing 20,000 tons of oil and sludge.

At that rate, how much more oil could have been removed from the Gulf during the past month?

The uncoordinated response to an offer of assistance has become characteristic of this disaster's response. Too often, BP and the government don't seem to know what the other is doing, and the response has seemed too slow and too confused.

Federal law has also hampered the assistance. The Jones Act, the maritime law that requires all goods be carried in U.S. waters by U.S.-flagged ships, has prevented Dutch ships with spill-fighting equipment from entering U.S. coastal areas.

Ah, well, let's give Obama a break on that. After all, there was nothing a President could have done about federal red-tape. He's powerless in that arena.

To do anything about a law impeding a crisis response, he'd need a pen, and it's not like there's a bunch of pens just sitting around waiting to be used.

Come on. I'm partisan, but don't get all Star-Wars-y fantastical in your criticisms.

“What's wrong with accepting outside help?” Visser asked. “If there's a country that's experienced with building dikes and managing water, it's the Netherlands.”

Even if, three days after the rig exploded, it seemed as if the Dutch equipment and expertise wasn't needed, wouldn't it have been better to accept it, to err on the side of having too many resources available rather than not enough?

Nah. Obama had already been informed the leak would take weeks and weeks to fix, and it was better, I guess, to let it leak and destroy the coastlines if doing so would keep the story underreported and thus merely environmentally disastrous, but not politically disastrous.

Better to pretend there's not a problem, and let the problem destroy the Gulf, than to admit the problem and take action about it, which draws attention to it.

Carol Browner, director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy, told Obama at one of the earliest briefings in late April that the blowout would likely lead to an unprecedented environmental disaster, senior White House aides told The Daily Beast. Browner warned that capping a well at such depths had never been done before, and that they ought to expect an oil spill that would continue until a relief well was drilled in August, the aide said.

That early briefing on the scope of the spill—and enormous technical challenges involved in fixing it—might help explain the sense of fatalism that has infused Obama's team from the start.

Little that has happened since has changed their mind-set. Now six weeks later, the president’s top advisers expect the oil spill—and the negative stories—to continue through August.

The fact that Team Obama was warned of the extent of the disaster so early on suggests that White House officials were aware of the environmental challenge long before they decided to demonstrate concern via presidential visits to the Gulf.

Similarly, Costner's oil-separating centrifuges have only recently been ordered.

“We’re coming to this fight very late,” said Costner. “I think everybody would recognize that....”

“If we want to discuss the ‘what ifs’ looking back, I think you could fill in the blanks of understanding if these machines were already deployed, what we would be looking at,” said Costner. “I could scale this out for you and we would be chasing this oil out at the derrick itself. We couldn’t do anything about the size of the leak but we would be chasing that and we would be keeping that offshore.”

I am thinking now about how often Obama was praised for being "laid-back."

Kinda not really a good thing, huh?

You know who's laid back and casual about work? Me. You wanna put me in charge of the Gulf cleanup? I promise to be up at the crack of two every day.

Interesting: I omitted a bit of Costner's statement. What I omitted wasn't germane to the point I wanted to make, which was, of course, about tardiness.

But what I omitted was actually about what seems to be his goal of cleaning up the oil spill so that oil roughnecks can get back to work, and the country can have some assurance that these rigs can drill with only an acceptable level of risk.

Seems, I stress. I don't really know his politics or his mind.

Picture Gag... suggested by Dang Straights.

Posted by: Ace at 11:17 AM | Comments (196)
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He bitches that Allah didn't link him initially, but instead to Yid With Lid.

I have to say this again: Charles Johnson had a bad reputation, even when he was nominally on the right, for simply stealing other bloggers' finds. I really should contact one of the people ripped off by him to get him to write a post on this.

So now Charles Johnson is whining that someone else pushed his find, and Allah, not really giving a crap who found it, linked Yid With Lid.

Because, you see, that's the real story here -- Charles Johnson's passport to get treated like a somebody by CNN again.

Am I imagining things, or did LGF break a story about Reuters cropping photographs yesterday? DidnÂ’t Killgore Trout find the first photo and tip me off? WasnÂ’t LGF the first to publish this? And havenÂ’t we been credited for breaking the story by Haaretz, the Jerusalem Post, the Israeli government, the Weekly Standard, and Commentary Magazine, to name just a few?

Did I just imagine all that? No? It really happened?

So what kind of vindictive, unprofessional, unethical creep would write about this story and give all the credit to other people, knowing full well that the story originated at LGF?

This dishonest dirtbag goes by the name “Allahpundit,” and he writes for Hot Air.

UPDATE at 6/8/10 10:14:08 am:

Allahpundit has added a whiny update, complaining about being caught in unethical behavior, and pretending it was a mistake. Just like Reuters made a mistake cropping the photos.

IÂ’ll just point out that numerous sources had already credited LGF for the story when Allahpundit decided to ignore us. So the options are: 1) heÂ’s incompetent, or unwilling to spend time researching sources, or 2) heÂ’s a dishonest dirtbag who thought I wouldnÂ’t bust him publicly for it. Take your pick.

Am I imagining things or did this same Kilgore Trout, a moderator at LGF, go over to Hot Air late at night and vandalize the site by posting the word "Nigger" repeatedly to... um... prove that Hot Air was racist? And did Charles Johnson then not praise him for countenance and defend this stunt? And keep him on as a privileged moderator? (Zimriel writes I overstated initially.)

Did Charles Johnson himself not out the names of people who'd donated money to him in the past, thereby making everyone on the right skittish about donating to other bloggers, wondering who will be the next to turn? *

Was it not Charles Johnson who endlessly accepted, without correcting the falsheood, the media's claim that he had uncovered the RatherGate forgeries?

"BuckHead" just emailed me about stealing credit. He says, "Lot of that goin' 'round, Hoss."

You little, whiny, crazy-ass meglomaniacal-without-a-blessed-reason-to-justify-it bitch.

Allah's corrected to give LGF credit. I am going the other way: I am rewriting that post to deny LGF credit.

* Whoops! Sorry! The way I wrote that suggests that's the only thing wrong with outing private donors who wish to remain anonymous -- the effect on my bank account.

I'm sorry I wrote it that way -- of course it's offensive and unprecedentedly nasty in the first place.

I meant to write something like it was a two-fer, like not only did id it do x but then it further sabotaged the right by having effect y.

However, I'm a self-centered guy, so yeah, the effect on me I guess was a little too foremost in my mind.

Did Charles Johnson Refuse to Credit The Real Story Breaker? Elder of Ziyon had it first.

CJ credits "Kilgore Trout" with the "find." Okay, where did he find it?

Here's One Example... Dan Riehl became annoyed when LGF became, somehow, the one who broke the old Hezballah ambulance story. Or non-story.

As the originator of the Red Cross Ambulance story, I would urge the elements of the blogosphere still running with the story to at least slow down, if not back up. They are increasingly looking like the very drive by media against which we so often rant, running the risk of being exploited by propagandists on another side of an issue. And no matter how much many of us may support that side, propagandists on both sides do exist. For the record, I'm guilty, too.

The fact is ZombieTime's post does not do what it claims, proving the ambulance attack demonstrably false. And if they had operated the way bloggers should, by co-operating and communicating, instead of taking another's story and making it their own, perhaps they would have held back from making some of the unprovable claims they do. As I said, I am no innocent here. Most likely, being frustrated at how some have co-opted much of the work I did is certainly part of why I backed off and started to take a clearer view.

Sorry, but there is no excuse for lgf and Powerline to even be claiming a role in this story, or being cited by the Jerusalem Post as individuals actually in the know. And ZT's analysis really doesn't hold up. I doubt anyone related to those sites, excluding ZT, has done a fraction of the research which has been done. Much like a large media network relying on stringers, they are ultimately inflating their stature without having done the real work, or verifying the facts. And, frankly, it is time to end the show, which I intend to do right now.

Now, I sort of understand that the media doesn't care which blogger actually broke a story. They just call us all "bloggers" and don't really parse us out. I understand that; we're nobodies, after all.

And I understand why it should be the case that once Charles Johnson is on the media's rolodex they would just keep calling him over and over again for this story and that story; he'd become the only (or one of the only three) bloggers who exist at all, in the media's simplified telling.

Fine.

But actual credit does matter to the bloggers involved -- so why didn't/doesn't Charles Johnson ever correct the record and give the bloggers who broke a particular story the credit the media isn't interested (understandably) in giving them?

Why is he... oh, let us use the word "comfortable" about allowing the media to claim he broke this and broke that when he knows, better than almost anyone (except for the person who actually broke the story) that he didn't?

Not be all Hero of Will Folks-Level Integrity, but when Slublog dumped his big story into my lap -- the famous "Passion of the Toys" (well: blog-famous, anyways) -- I told him that I would LOVE to "break" that story, but since it was already all done and buttoned up, why the heck shouldn't he publish it himself and get the traffic and clear credit for it?

I don't believe Charles Johnson would have offered him the same advice.

Hey, Charles? You've been wrongly credited, and you've wrongly accepted credit, for most of the stories that made your still-no-one-knows-you "name."

How about you take that into account and let some of this slide, buddy?

Oh, and credit Elder of Ziyon, since that site seems to have had the Reuters Combat Knife Crop story first. Since you're so big on proper credit for scoops.

Posted by: Ace at 11:00 AM | Comments (150)
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