Back in 2002, a woman named Margie Shoedinger, who had a history of mental illness, accused President Bush of attempting to drug, abduct, and rape both her
and her husband. Furthermore, she alledged she was beaten while pregnant with Bush's rape-child, resulting in a miscarriage-- the loss of the very evidence proving the crime! (Although, it should be said, for some odd reason no DNA tests were conducted on the purported Bush rape-foetus.)
She also alleged a pattern of harassment and threats by the FBI, which resulted in, inter alia, her husband losing his job.
These FBI agents may also have taken part in the various rape-sessions, according to her various complaints.
Finally, Shoedinger claimed that the President took time out of his busy illegal-warmongering schedule to personally seek her out and threaten to kill her unless she quieted down, ixne'd on the ape-re, as it were. Shoedinger believed the President ultimately decided not to kill her, but rather began instead a nefarious scheme to drive her and her husband insane.
Using his presidential powers to gaslight her.
For some reason, these poor victims of a vicious FBI & Presidential pansexual rape spree were unable to find any licensed attorney to press their claims in court, and had to represent themselves pro se.
Only the brave left-wing press -- for example, the
courageous conspiracy-theorists of counterpunch -- had the integrity to report this chilling tale of Presidential rape (both straight and homosexual). Sean Carter gets great use out of sneer quotes in deriding the media for failing to inform the public fully about these scandalous charges:
Apparently, this story does not meet its threshold of "responsible journalism."
Indeed! An insane woman claims she and her husband are raped by the President and a team of FBI-trained professional bisexual sodomizers, and the story goes unnoticed in the name of quote responsible journalism unquote.
At some point "sneer quotes" stop being "sneer quotes" and become full-on Paranoid Quotes -- throwing quotes around every third word to show you are now so fucking completely schizophrenic you are beginning to doubt the very contours of the reality surrounding you.
In "fact," this so-called "writer," "Mr." Sean "Carter," seems to have "caught" a "bad" case "of" the paranoid "quote" "syndrome."
Paranoid Quotes are, of course, the first stage in the well-known progressive mental disorder called the Lunatic Punctuation Syndrome.
First "come" the Paranoid "Quotes."
Next comes THE INTEMPERATE USE OF EXCLAMATION POINTS AND CAPITAL LETTERS!!!!
The disease, if unchecked, then proceeds to its penultimate phase: the Floridly Schizophrenic Interjection of Disturbing Non-Sequitor Parenthetical Asides (I CAUGHT MY "SISTER" TOUCHING HERSELF IN THE "WOODSHED"!!!!! MOTHERFUCKER!!!!)
After that, you just start writing "KKK MINDRAPE" on your walls with indelible red magic marker.
Perhaps "Mr." "Carter" can seek help from a therapist ("the-rapist!!!!") before his "disease" progresses further. (MOTHERFUCKER!!!!)
But we digress.
And we can't afford to, because there's even more to this story-- MORE that the right-wing media
doesn't want you to know.
Believe it or not, this mentally unstable woman, multiply raped and beaten by the President and his hand-selected G-Man rape squad, was found dead by gunshot wound to the head in September 2003--
and they would have you believe it was a "suicide."
How...
convenient. A sad, lunatic wretch making absurd accusations of gay rape against the President just "coincidentally" putting a bullet into her own head.
It's just a little too pat, isn't it?
Well, various first-rate journalists posting on left-wing sites sure think so. You can sample the fruits of one damn-the-consequences investigation at
the Portland Indymedia site.
This guy, named Simon Aronowitz (uh-huh-- sounds "made up" to us), can't believe such an explosive story is simply being ignored by the "mainstream" "media." (MY FATHER VIOLATED MY BRAIN WITH NANOTECH SPACE-RADIOS!!!)
But we think this guy from
Melbourne Indymedia is the most thorough.
Edited to the good parts, he writes:
To be sure, Schoedinger's accusations - which include being drugged and sexually assaulted numerous times by Bush and other men purporting to be FBI agents - are bizarre and hard for most people to believe.
Hard to believe for "most" people, that is. You know-- the
Sheeple. But the dauntless truth-seekers of the world are not, apparently, put off by the sheer lunacy of the charges.
The next sentence is one that needs to be read in its entirety first, then unpacked, lunacy by lunacy. First, the full version.
But her story fits in with those told by a growing number of people who say they were used as guinea pigs or whatever by members of the CIA or another U.S. agency who wanted to test out the latest mind-controlling drug or just have a strange form of release.
Okay. Got all that? Let's break it down.
But her story fits in with those told by a growing number of people
We call them "maniacs."
who say they were used as guinea pigs or whatever
"Or whatever." The telltale sign of a first-rate professional journalist.
"Today George Bush proposed the nation devote $1.5 billion to counselling poor citizens about the benefits of marriage. Or whatever. Something like that. I wasn't really paying attention. I was too busy trying to GET THESE FUCKING SILVER SPIDERS OUT OF MY FUCKING EARS!!!!"
by members of the CIA
Of course. It's always the CIA, or the FBI, or the Catholic Church. Or, actually, the Jews. Let's not forget the Jews.
NEVER FORGET THE JEWS!!!!
or another U.S. agency
Another "whatever" type comment. Either the CIA, or somebody else.
Way to nail the facts down.
Three days ago, we were given a cold and nasty Big Mac by either the CIA or some other organization, which may or may not have been the 71st Street McDonald's.
Either/or. It's a niggling point. One or the other.
who wanted to test out the latest mind-controlling drug
The latest? There are others?
We at Ace of Spades HQ have heard of psychotropic drugs and psychadelic drugs and such. We've heard of truth serums. We don't know of any drugs that could be called mind-
controlling.
But then, we're not experts. We're not tapped into the reservoir of pharmacological expertise that exists on Internet sites like Indymedia. Perhaps we just need to bone up on the subject.
or just have a strange form of release.
Or whatever.
And her death - let's just say government agents have made murders look like suicides before.
Let's just say that. Let's just try that on, see how we like it. Does it fit? It does indeed fit. It's quite lovely, now that we see ourselves in a "mirror." (MOTHERFUCKER!!!)
She filed a lawsuit against the Sugar Land department and said that in preparing its defense, Sugar Land police found out that she dated Bush as a minor.
Uh-huh. And we, as minors, were frequent attendees of the world-famous Georgetown gangbang parties hosted by beloved liberal journalist Linda Ellerbee.
I didn't get a chance to ask Schoedinger about that tie and didn't meet her in person, but her driver's license listed her as being 5-foot-8 and weighing 125 pounds, for what that's worth.
Oh, that's worth quite a bit. We're thinking that's the whole key to the case, right there. Now that we know her physical dimensions, everything begins to fall into place. (DO YOU EVER GET THE FEELING YOUR REFLECTION IN THE MIRROR IS BEING SUBTLY ALTERED BY GOVERNMENT REALITY-TRANSFORMING PSI-WAVES?!?!?!)
Just wait. This story gets stranger.
Do tell.
When I started asking Schoedinger about certain details of the case, such as alleged surveillance at her home and if she was still legally representing herself, she politely ended our conversation. "I need to see what has been written," Schoedinger said. "I feel like it's best for me to end our conversation."
Obviously, she had learned to be careful about what she said and to whom she said it. I could understand her being leery about talking about her situation with a stranger over the phone.
Yes, we've all been there. The Evil Ones are always watching. Watching, listening, absorbing our vital bodily plasma.
In all seriousness: The woman, whom a six-year-old could diagnose as a floridly-delusional paranoid schizophrenic at a range of 1000 meters, begins displaying her sadly-uncontrollable paranoia with the author of the piece.
Rather than wishing her well and coming to the all-but-inescapable conclusion that she's a bit batty, instead finds that he could "understand" her being so "leery" about talking about her charges. The author actually
joins the poor woman in her horrific paranoid delusions.
But I remember being puzzled by Schoedinger's attitude after hanging up the phone. I wondered that if she had made up such a wild story, why she didn't come up with something a little less outlandish, in which people couldn't necessarily dismiss her as a kook.
Hmmmmm... tough one. How about, "Because she
couldn't make up a less outlandish story, because she
is a kook?"
Nah, too obvious. That's just what the Plasma Drinkers would like us to believe.
Schizophrenics famously claim strange relationships with famous historical and political figures. They claim to be raped by President Bush; they claim to be Napoleon.
Why don't they make up more plausible stories?
Again: Because they
can't. If their minds were orderly enough to dream up plausible delusions, then they probably wouldn't be having delusions of any kind whatsoever, whether plausible or implausible.
I wondered why she didn't seek publicity to at least provide some form of protection.
We think most people would say that filing a lawsuit against a sitting President accusing him of raping you and your husband, then beating the rape-child out of you, probably qualifies as an attempt at "publicity."
Not all attempts at publicity are successful, or work out the way one intends. Witness Margaret Cho.
I've long learned that being as public as possible is one of your best defenses against rogue intelligence agents.
Errrrrr...
We find garlic wards away vampires. We eat a lot of garlic and, so far at least, no vamp-attacks. (Fingers-crossed!)
I remember thinking, "I hope she doesn't wind up on the wrong side of a gun." And sure enough, in late September, Schoedinger did.
Mmmmmm. Truly an unforeseeable turn of events. Surely no crazy-person would ever commit suicide.
The Houston Chronicle wrote a bare-bones obituary that stated only that Schoedinger "expired" on Sept. 22, 2003, and her burial was at Houston Memorial Gardens.
I called the Harris County Medical Examiner's office, and a clerk told me the cause of death: a "suicide" by a "gunshot wound to the head." I hung up amid bombs going off in my mind.
Ahem. "Bombs going off in my mind" is as good a way to say it as any other, we suppose. But perhaps we could suggest instead: "Schizophrenic break?"
No?
Very well. "Bombs going off in my mind" will do.
Besides Pravda and Internet ezines - one of whom referred to Schoedinger as "deranged" - I haven't seen stories on this strange death of a woman who filed a rape lawsuit against the U.S. president and wound up dead nine months later.
Bush forced them to call her "deranged," you know. Certainly, there is no evidence to suggest such "derangement." (Sometimes my fingers sprout strangely angular insect-legs and detach from my hands and then march away like little pink centipededs to finger-fuck my landlady while she hexes me. But only when it rains. MOTHERFUCKER!!!!)
Then since 1997, Margie Schoedinger had filed for at least five assumed business names for various ventures - including a communications firm, health and beauty business, travel agency and publishing company. Could a "deranged" person start all those businesses or even know how to file a lawsuit?
Errr, actually,
yeah. Deranged persons are known to do all sorts of things.
Sometimes they design architecturally-unsound fantasy urban planning proposals and present them to City Hall, wrapped in the skins of butchered cats.
Sometimes they submit patent-claims for Perpetual Motion Machines and Anti-Gravity Belts. Their paperwork is all in order, except that it is lunatic gibberish.
Sometimes they even -- if you can believe this -- post "investigative journalism" pieces on the Internet. But for the telltale signs of their lunacy -- obsession with rape by authority figures, odd quotation marks, etc. -- you could even mistake them for sane.
For the record, I contacted Bush's media office about Schoedinger and have yet to hear back.
We're sure they're right on top of it.
But seriously, you contacted the wrong office. The Media Office handles the Media. Bisexual rapes & gaslighting are handled by the Joint FBI-Presidential Mind-Rape Task Force.
Now that I live in the Washington, D.C., area, I can go down to the White House in person and try to get someone to speak to me about this case.
Errrrr... we think Secret Service agents are feeling all sorts of "bombs going off in their minds" at that plan. Or should we say, "desperate scheme."
For all I know, maybe Schoedinger did kill herself.
A ray of lucid light breaks through the darkening clouds of lunacy...
Maybe she dreamed up a lot of this stuff.
The sun! The life-giving, sanity-healing sun!
But I don't know, am I "deranged" to think it's weird that in this mass-media, detailed-information age, so few people are even asking any questions about how a woman who filed a rape lawsuit against the president could be dead less than a year later?
The lunatic storm blows again. The sun is lost, lost, lost forever in the boiling purple spaceman mechanical-vagina talking-insect sky.
MOTHERFUCKER!!!!
.............................................
Everything about this is sad. Margie Schoedinger's wretched psyche was sad. This author, who it would seem could use a couple of good hours on the couch himself, is somewhat pathetic in his earnestly lunatic plaints.
And there is, actually, a story of media suppression here. A tiny one. Just not the one Counterpunch and Indymedia suspect.
Throughout the nineties, there were those on the rightwing who postulated theories and made accusations against Clinton approaching this level of febrile insanity.
The media could not help but remark upon such claims. The media called them what they were -- insane -- and tut-tutted over the crazy rightwingers. The media further used such nutty charges to discredit other charges against Clinton. "Why look," they would chuckle, "they're accusing Clinton of running coke through an Arkansas airport and personally murdering fifty-plus people! Surely, then, their claims that he's negligent on national security issues must be, ipso facto, likewise insane!"
Well, they didn't
say that. But that was the drift.
But times change, don't they? The media was once quite vigilant about patrolling the political extremes -- or perhaps that doesn't say it quite right; let's say the intersection of high political passion and low psychological stability -- for battiness.
But that was when the lunacy could be used to discredit the conservative-side of the aisle. From 1996 to 2000, and especially in 1998-99, the media was always asking the Big Question: "Has the entire Republican Party gone batshit-crazy?"
Now that it's the leftwing extremists succumbing to these sad psychoses, the media just doesn't seem all that interested in publicizing Krazy Konspiracy Kabals anymore.
Why They Hate Us
Steven den Beste, certainly the best essayist in the blogworld, writes a dispiriting essay upon the utter failure and learned futility of Muslim (especially Arab Muslim) culture.
It's long, but it can't be missed.
Our statement of his conclusion: Why do they hate us? Because they hate first and foremost themselves.
They are infected with a sort of culturally-reinforced cognitive dissonance, wherein what they need in their souls to believe (Arab/Muslim superiority) is so at odds with what their eyes and ears tell them (Arab/Muslim failure and incompetence) that their cultures, as a whole, have simply suffered a schizophrenic break with tangible reality.
Other cultures -- the Japanese, for example -- have used the searing experience of a humiliating defeat to spur them to better themselves, to beat the Americans at their own game. (And, of course, they largely succeeded at that.)
But this is simply impossible for Muslims and especially Arabs to even contemplate. The Japanese could envision the possibility of one day whipping the Americans in terms of technology and economic growth and cultural exports; sadly, this is an utterly laughable proposition for the Arab Muslim world, and they are not yet so far gone so as to fail to realize this.
Since they cannot possibly defeat the West by buidling themselves up as the Japanese did, the only option left on the table is to simply engage in mass-murder and wanton destruction against the West. They cannot beat the West by elevating their own cultures; so they attempt to beat the West by reducing it to ash and gore.
Engineering and math and working and building and making and trading are hard; killing is, comparatively, quite easy. Killers are, by and large, a stupid, venal, lazy lot; and throughout history, they always have been. Killers kill not because killing is their first choice of gainful employment, but because they are simply unqualified for any other line of work.
Taking a human life is not an especially challenging ambition. American death-rows have a good sampling of killers diagnosed as mentally challenged, borderline retarded.
And yet, for some, this nasty and petty little ambition is all-consuming.
And so it goes.
Philly Fed: Mid-Atlantic Factories Booming
Yahoo/Reuters:
Manufacturing in the U.S. mid-Atlantic region surged to a two-decade high in January in the latest sign of robust growth in factories nationwide.
The Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank said on Thursday its monthly gauge of regional industry jumped to 38.8 in January from a revised 30.3 in December, far above economists' forecasts for a slight fall to 29.5. It was the highest level since January 1984.
Any reading above zero points to expanding activity.
January marked the eighth month of growth for the mid-Atlantic region's manufacturers, as factories continue their gradual recovery from a three-year slump.
"Something significant is happening to the manufacturing sector in United States. That is going to be the story for 2004: manufacturing will well outpace expectations," said Ken Mayland, president of ClearView Economics.
There was a slight dip in employment. (That dreaded two-edged-sword of productivity gains.) Nonetheless, the December and January activity readings are the highest since
October 1988.
The New York Fed, meanwhile, reports a
record high in manufacturing activity in January.
But wait, there's more:
And a national survey from the Manufacturers Alliance/MAPI said its business outlook index reached a record in the fourth quarter.
Now, does this mean that the lingering recession is definitely over?
Well, yes: Yes it does. No caveats, no "to be sure's." It's over. The economy is growing, the fuse is lighted. There will be no one-quarter wonder this time. The growth is now self-sustaining and will continue apace for at least the normal duration of expansions.
Hiring remains annoying anemic. Businesses remain skittish and skeptical.
But we've been down this road before-- during Clinton's expansion (which, of course, was already three quarters old by the time Clinton was sworn into office). For the first several years of the last administration, the numbers showed growth, but newspaper headlines frequently asked if the recession was genuinely over -- even headlines in liberal papers, like the New York Times. In many parts of the country, the growth hadn't been felt yet at a personal level.
Job creation is especially slow-coming this time around; there's no question about that. But the resistance is not absolute; it is conditional. And as the economy continues posting good numbers -- yes, "mere" numbers as liberal critics point out; but the same "mere" numbers that presaged Clinton's eventual employment expansion -- resistance will lessen.
"Coach Carol" Drops Out of Race
Well, this is just huge. Carol Moseley-Brown -- perhaps the most exciting and influential candidate for high office since, gee, well we'd have to go to Ernest Hollings 1988 for that one-- is dropping out of the hunt for the Democratic Presidential nomination.
This is bigger than Lyndon Johnson's pre-emptive "I will not seek, I will not accept" drop-out decision.
The ramifications of all this cannot be overstated. Right now there are literally trios of Moseley-Braun supporters up for grabs.
Who will win the all-important Moseley-Braun primary, the crucial contest for this tyrant-coddler's endorsement? Well, the decision's already in: She will throw all forty-six of her supporters to Howard Dean's camp.
And her magic is already working its wonders: Howard Dean now trails John Kerry in Iowa.
British Journos Tut-Tut Apache Gun-Camera Footage
"It's very uncomfortable to watch because it's so calculated," a British freelance camera-clicker whines. "It's quite pornographic actually."
Could this
insufferable pantywaist be speaking of French reporters being tipped off as to an upcoming terrorist attack and gleefully congregating at the ambush point to insure that pictures of dead Americans could be broadcast to the more bloodthirsty elements of the Muslim world?
Of course not. That's just good journalism.
The whine here is about the helo gun-camera footage posted here last week. If it's the bodies of dead Americans being used by Islamists for propaganda value, that's just an important news-story that needs to be told.
If it's Americans killing jihadists or B'aathists, it's "calculated" and "quite pornographic."
You be the judge. To annoy further the delicate sensibilities of Niles the Shutterbug, here's a new link to the gun-camera footage. [Hopefully this will work better for everyone; we know that the last mpeg was buggy for many viewers.]
Warning: Real-Life War Footage. Violent. Not recommended for children or British metrosexual lensers.
Hoo boy
Poll: Three-Way Tie for Top Democratic Spot in Iowa
Jan 15, 7:01 AM (ET)
By John Whitesides, Political Correspondent
DES MOINES, Iowa (Reuters) - The Democratic presidential race in Iowa is a virtual three-way tie between John Kerry, Howard Dean and Richard Gephardt four days before the state's caucuses, according to a Reuters/MSNBC/Zogby poll released on Thursday.
In the latest rolling three-day poll, Kerry registered 21.6 percent with Dean and Gephardt both at 20.9 percent. North Carolina Sen. John Edwards gained two percentage points to 17.1 percent, well within the poll's margin of error, putting all four top contenders in a statistical tie.
So. We make a bold prediction, the next day Kerry decides to get all feisty and move into first place.
We knew we hated this guy for a good reason.
Still, the Bold Prediction stands.
Kerry in Political Death-Spiral; We Make Bold Prediction
City of Lakes, a blog brought to our attention by Kausfiles, reports that John Kerry has entered a "death-spiral." There is momentum in Iowa, but not much of it for Kerry.
Here's our very first political prediction: John Kerry will go down to humiliating defeat in Iowa, then New Hampshire, and then South Carolina. That's too easy, you say; even Kerry's press flacks are predicting that.
Soon after he will drop out of the race.
Again, you say: Too easy. Tell me something I
don't know.
Okay, here's the prediction: Kerry announces his resignation from the Senate in 2005.
This self-regarding patrician has been running for President since he tossed his buddy's medals over the wall. The Senate is not his goal and it never has been. When he is told by the voters in no uncertain terms that there will never be a President John "Kid Irish" Kerry, he will drop out of elective politics to head up a ngo or a university or a charity.
Or maybe his wife will give him a job.
Like an aging quarterback who
could keep playing at a diminished level but chooses to retire, Kerry will decide that politics are just not fun anymore after January 2005.
Bank on it: That's the Ace of Spades HQ Guarantee. That's gold-standard.
Khamenei Blinks
Via Free Republic,
from VOA News:
Iran's supreme leader has ordered the hard-line conservative Guardian Council to reconsider its decision to ban thousands of candidates from next month's parliamentary elections.
"Reconsider"? Hee, hee, hee.
Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is attempting to put an end to a political crisis that erupted in Iran after thousands of mostly reformist parliamentary candidates were barred from running in next month's elections.
The supreme leader ordered the conservative constitutional watchdog Guardian Council to reconsider its decision to bar almost half of the 8,000 candidates seeking election in next month's vote.
...
A political science professor at Cairo University and expert on Iran, Pakinam el-Shakarwy, says that while the Iranian government has experienced political turmoil in the past, this time it is serious. Ms. El-Shakarwy says she thinks the Guardian Council disqualified the candidates in an effort to test political waters.
The protestors will continue their parliamentary sit-in, because they do not trust the "Guardian Council" to actually reinstate the candidates.
Michael Kinsely describes feeling bad about good news for the United States, because good news hurts his prefered party's political fortunes.
We here have the same mixed-feelings about this possible resolution in Iran. We would have liked to have seen the crisis percolate to a violent boil, and result in the overthrow of the Mad Mullahs.
Of course, that might entail violence.
The difference is, of course, that we save our hopes for bad outcomes for
foreign countries. Unlike Mr. Kinsley, who, without a hint of shame, admits to wishing ill on America itself.
Will this lead to further reform in Iran? We don't know. We imagine there was a reason the hardliners chose this time to ban so many reformist candidates.
Transcript: Mansoor Ijaz Claims Impending Terrorist Attack on Baghdad
Yesterday, we quickly digested the contents of a chilling Mansoor Ijaz interview on FoxNews.
FoxNews has now posted the full transcript.
Kick ass.
From a concept by RDBrewer.
Stop Us If You've Heard These Before...
Well, the response to our rebuttal to Ms. Margaret Cho has been overwhelming.
It turns out that a lot of people have positively loathed this not-funny Fatkins diet devotee for years; they just never realized it before, because they were so affirmatively indifferent to her career.
The servers in our Accounts Payable department have been clogged up by Margaret Cho jokes being traded by our number-crunchers. Some of these are good; others are the sort of jokes you'd expect from accountants ("And then I said, 'Debit? I told you that was a Credit!!!'").
But, for your perusal, here are the Margaret Cho jokes we've been seeing for the past 24 hours. We like them. We think you'll like them too.
"Knock, Knock."
-- "Who's there?"
"Margaret."
--"Margaret Who?"
"Margaret Cho."
--"We're sorry, but we don't think you're right for us. You've got no charisma, and we're looking for a completely different body-type.
Next."
"But this isn't an audition. This is a frozen-yogurt stand."
--"Precisely. Move along, Dumpy."
***
Two hunters are in a forest. Suddenly, a snake strikes one, biting him right on the wiener.
The hunter falls to the ground. His friend tries to dial 9-1-1 on his cellphone, but he can't get any reception. So he runs off to a clearing and connects with poison control.
He describes the snake to Poison Control. They tell him the snake is a deadly coral snake, with venom powerful enough to kill a man in ten minutes. But the snake's venom can be sucked out from the wound, saving the victim from otherwise-certain death.
The man returns to his fallen friend. "I have some bad news and some good news," he says.
"Tell it to me straight," says the snake-bitten hunter, venom coursing through his veins.
"The bad news is that that snake's venom is lethal."
"That's terrible," the man says. "But you said there was good news...?"
"Yes," the other hunter says. "Margaret Cho has a guest-shot in an upcoming
Eight Simple Rules. You'll be missing it."
***
Margaret Cho walks into a fashionable Hollywood bar, walking a shit-covered, fly-clouded pig on a leash.
"Hey!" the bartender exclaims. "You can't bring that fat, stinking, shitty sack of pork-lard into this bar."
Margaret Cho and the pig exit the bar.
Ten minutes later, the pig returns to the Hollywood bar, this time without Margaret Cho. The pig jumps up on a barstool and orders a beer. The bartender pours him a tall one.
"Thanks for being so understanding," the bartender says.
"Oh, I get that all the time," the pig says. "I can't go anywhere in this town with her. Margaret Cho is absolute
poison within the industry."
***
A Rabbi, an Imam, and Margaret Cho approach the Pearly Gates. Saint Peter halts them.
"To enter the Kingdom of Heaven," St Pete says, "you will have to each answer an important question:
Who is the One True God of the Universe?"
The Rabbi, the Imam, and Margaret Cho are all surprised by the directness of the question. Nevertheless, the Rabbi clears his throat, and answers first:
"The One True God of the Universe is Jehovah," he says, "because the Torah of the Jews was written first, and is therefore correct."
"You may enter God's Country," St Pete says, and opens the gate for the Rabbi.
The Imam speaks next. He thinks about responding as the Rabbi did, but he cannot deny his own faith. So, bravely, he says, "The One True God of the Universe is Allah. For the prophet Mohammed wrote his book
last, and therefore his word is the right one."
The Imam is suprised when St Pete throws open the gates again. "You too may pass." The Imam enters Heaven.
Finally, St Pete gets to Margaret Cho. She was raised as a Christian, so she answers the way she was taught to in Sunday School. "The One True God of the Universe is Jesus Christ," she says, "because he was given to us to grant us salvation."
"Sorry," St Pete says, "But that is the wrong answer." The clouds part beneath Margaret Cho's feet, and she plunges into Hell, to burn in the fires of Perdition for eternity.
St Pete now goes back through the gate, where he finds the Rabbi and Imam waiting. "We have a question," the Rabbi says. "We don't understand how God can be both Jehovah of the Hebrew's Torah, and also Allah of Mohammad's prophecy."
"Oh," St Pete says wryly. "
That. Well,
of course God is Jesus Christ. Duh. That's a no-brainer."
"Then why," the Imam asks, "did you send Margaret Cho to Hell?"
Saint Peter smiles sagely. "Have you ever caught her act? She sucks. Jesus forgives, but there's no forgiving
Attack of the Five Foot Woman."
***
A man sits down in a confessional. "Father," the man says, "Last night I watched a movie starring Catherine Zeta-Jones. I had impure thoughts, and then, God forgive me, I committed impure acts on myself as well."
"Six Hail Mary's," the Father says. "Go and sin no more."
Next week, the same man returns to the confessional. "Father," he begins, "Last night I watched a Jennifer Connelly movie. I had impure thoughts, and then, God forgive me, I committed some of the most impure acts of self-abuse imagineable."
"Eight Hail Mary's," the Father says. "Learn from this transgression, and go and sin no more."
Finally, the next week, the same man enters the confessional again. "Father," he says, "Last night I watched a re-run of the Margaret Cho show. In one scene, she wore a skimpy bikini, showing off her ample flesh."
The man ends his confession there.
Curious, the Father inquires, "Did you have impure thoughts?"
"Good Heavens, no," the man says.
"Did you commit any... impure acts?"
"Certainly not!" the man exclaims.
"Well, then," the Father says. "You have not sinned. You owe no pennance, but you should give prayers of thanks to Jesus for liberating you from sin."
"Excellent," the man says. "Hypothetically, Father, what's the penalty for suddenly turning stone-cold homo?"
***
A man sits before a doctor, racked with worry.
"Well," the doctor says, "The problem with your eyes can be one of only two things. One, you could have Margaret Cho Deficiency Syndrome. To cure that, you'd have to watch Margaret Cho comedy specials eight hours a day for three months. After that, you'd be completely cured.
"Two," the doctor continued, "You might have cancer of the eyeballs. In which case, we'd have to first completely remove your eyeballs, blinding you permanently. And then we'd have to stab into your eyesockets with long needles loaded with chemotherapy treatement for up to two years, in order to keep the cancer from spreading to your brain. Even with that aggressive and painful treatment, you'd only have a ten percent chance of surviving six to 12 months."
A nurse walks into the room and hands the doctor a manilla folder. The doctor reads through the folder.
"Well," the doctor says, "Your biopsy's back. You've got cancer."
The man buries his face into his hands and begins sobbing. "Oh, thank God," he cries in relief. "You had me so worried it was the Margaret Cho thing."
***
A teacher is instructing her class on the alphabet. She's asking her students for words that begin with each letter of the alphabet, starting with A, ending with Z.
Dirty Johnny raises his hand for each letter. But the teacher can't call on him-- he's Dirty Johnny, and the teacher knows he'll say something filthy. For A, he'll say "Ass," so the teacher calls on Little Susie instead."
"Apple," Little Susie says.
"Good," the teacher says. "And now 'B'."
Dirty Johnny raises his hand eagerly, but the teacher knows he'll say "Balls." So she calls on Sweet Stevie.
"Butterfly," Sweet Stevie says.
"Very good, Stevie," the teacher says.
This goes on for the whole alphabet. The teacher avoids calling Dirty Johnny for each letter, knowing he'll say Cunt, Dick, Ejaculate, Fuckface, etc.
Finally the teacher comes to the letter "Z." The teacher can't think of a single dirty word that begins with "Z," so she finally decides to call on Dirty Johnny. She braces herself for the worst.
"Zebra," Dirty Johnny says.
The teacher sighs with relief. "Very good, Dirty Johnny."
"Thank you, teacher," Dirty Johnny says, grinning like a maniac. "And, oh, by the way: CBS is planning to give Margaret Cho a 13-episode commitment for a new family sitcom. The show is slated to co-star John Leguizamo."
The teacher excuses herself from the classroom, locks herself in the Janitor's Closet, and then hangs herself.
***
Good work, Accounts Payable. Keep the Big Funny coming!
Dean Urged "Unilateral" Action-- In Bosnia
You know, Bosnia-- that nation just bristling with weapons of mass destruction, terrorist connections, and a sworn hatred of the US.
In that case, sure,
of course one should act unilaterally. But in
Iraq?!!
Please. One must have a sense of priority.
Via the indespensible Drudge, from USAToday, emerges a portrait of a "leader" quite willing to use unilateral force to achieve important US national security objectives, like...
Well...
Weren't people being hurt or having stones thrown at them or
something in Bosnia?
On the stationery of the Vermont Governor, in Dean's own handwriting, these words of a dedicated multilateralist:
"I have reluctantly concluded that the efforts of the United States and NATO in Bosnia are a complete failure... If we ignore these behaviors ... our moral fiber as a people becomes weakened. ... We must take unilateral action."
Dean felt we
had to take unilateral action, or else suffer a grievous injury to our national security in the form of
lessened credibility:
"As the Catholic Church and others lost credibility during the Holocaust for not speaking out, so will the United States lose credibility."
Well! We can't have that, certainly!
So, we shouldn't act unilaterally to remove a man who once tried to kill a US president, who provided safe haven to the bomb-maker in the first WTC bombing.
But we should act unilaterally in Bosnia to avoid losing...
credibility.
USAToday explains further:
Dean told Clinton that America had to intervene alone because the United Nations and NATO were unable to act effectively.
Imagine that! Imagine such a daffy idea! Having to act
unilaterally because
multilateral action is ineffectual.
It sounds positively... well,
Hitlerian, to be honest with you.
And Speaking of Not Funny...
If you want run-of-the-mill not funny, you go to a Margaret Cho, a Judy Gold, a Jeneane Garofalo.
If you want top-drawer not funny -- the kind of not funny you share with your very best friends over cognac and cigars -- you turn to
Oliver Fucking Willis. The
Cadillac of Not Funny.
Instapundit made this shamu-looking troll. And yet this jackass is gettin' all feisty with Instapundit, accusing him of "smears."
Instapundit claims that Oliver Willis would be "perfect" for TV. We suppose that's a backhanded way of saying he can't think or write for shit.
But he's also unfit even for TV. He's got the proverbial face made for blogging. (He just doesn't have the keyboard chops for it.)
So what's he qualified to do on TV, precisely? Eat Filet-O-Fish sandwiches double-fisted? What are the demographics for
that concept?
Sure, we'd watch, at least for a while. But by the thirtieth Filet-O-Fish, we figure we'd flip back over to
The O.C.
Pounding down McDonald's fish-sandwiches is cute for a while, but where is the
narrative arc?
UPDATE: Wait, wait, wait. Strike all that.
We just had a vision-- a one-set, three-camera family-oriented sitcom, with Oliver Willis as the curmudgeonly, unemployed, overopinionated cousin sacking out on the couch. Sort of like Urkel, but arrogant, juvenile, and dangerously overweight. And also unlike Urkel, he wouldn't be funny.
At all.
We figure three or four times per episode he can quote the favorable reviews he's garnered from left-wing Boston college dailies. Like, "Back off, Jack! The Northeastern Register calls me 'a powerful new voice of the Michael Moore Generation!'"
And we've come up with a
dynamite catchphrase--
"Hey, who's been getting into my Filet-O-Fish?!" And variations thereupon:
"You eyein' my Filet-O-Fish?" Or:
"That's my
Filet-O-Fish you're messin' with now!!!"
You can fill in the details yourselves. We're not writers; we envision ourselves more as idea men, show-runners, executive producers. The guys who get paid for not really doing anything.
Now we begin to see what Instapundit was getting at. Now we're cooking with gas.
Now She's Funny-- Oliver Willis Funny
They say it's just too easy to get laughs doing tired stereotypical impressions of the way first-generation immigrants speak.
So how come this cow has never been funny?
Seriously. You do the "flied lice" schtick that is the mainstay of Margaret Cho's act, you can't
avoid getting laughs from people who are either 1) drunk 2) retarded or 3) in sixth grade.
And yet this no-talent fat-ass has avoided garnering a single genuine laugh-- and we don't count politically correct courtesy laughs -- for her entire career.
We've wanted to say that for a while. But our Hook of Topical Relevance is this idiotic rant, delivered by Madame Cho at the MoveOn propaganda-spot award show, also called the "Stallies":
Despite all of this stupid bullshit that the Republican National Committee, or whatever the fuck they call them--
Hold the tape. Wait a minute-- you
wrote this fucking piece, Chubbsy McHeartdisease. You couldn't have taken the time to confirm that "they" are called the Republican National Committee?
No wonder the likes of Judy Tenuta are still out-drawing you.
--that they were saying that they're all angry about how two of these ads were comparing Bush to Hitler? I mean, out of thousands of submissions, they find two.
Ah. "Only two." Color us relieved.
We thought this was (as Cho would say) like, you know, a frequently-occurring meme among the Stalinist Left.
They're like fucking looking for Hitler in a haystack.
Maggie McCholesterolcount, maybe it's the people comparing every Republican politician -- Guiliani, Bush, Reagan, etc. -- to Hitler who are guilty of "looking for Hitler in a haystack."
You know? I mean, George Bush is not Hitler. He would be if he fucking applied himself. (big, extended applause)
Well! Color us embarassed for suggesting that the Stalinist Left is fixated on comparing Bush to Hitler! Now we understand-- you think that he's far
worse than Hitler! Bush is Hitler, but without the intellect and drive!
Thank you for the clarification.
I mean he just isn't.
I mean, one would, like, expect someone who makes, I mean,
once made, long ago, a living at, like, public speaking might be more, you know, articulate.
I think this last year has just proven how stupid Republicans are.
It's proved
something, definitely. Maybe about the Democratic National Committe, or, like, whatever the fuck they're called.
By the way, nice dress. Is that one of Kirstie Alley's cast-offs? Or did you just strip the couch?
For example, Judge Roy Moore, or Jay Moore or whatever,
"Judge Roy Moore" was actually correct, idiot. Once again, you might have invested the three seconds necessary to run a google-search.
"Jay Mohr" is the very funny comic who wouldn't give you the time of day when you wanted to try out for his
Last Comics Standing series. Remember? He's the one who thought that the show needed younger, fresher, edgier comics than you, comics like Alan King, Slappy White, and the dessicated corpse of Sid Caesar.
in Alabama. [inaudible] ...
We're sure there is a great deal of wisdom lost forever within the confines of that "inaudible." The future of humanity will be the poorer in its absence.
Ten Commandments statue stay in the lobby of a courthouse. 'You can't move the Word of God! You cannot remove the Franklin Mint edition of the Word of God!' [said in Southern accent]
Ah. A Southern Accent now. Good. This is progress for Margaret Cho. Last time we heard of her (wait a minute-- we
never heard of her), she was doing nothing but Mister Miyagi-style imitations of her mother.
"You want to go out wit da gay
boyyyys?!"
"Yes, Mother. They're my friends."
"But Mahgalet, Mahgalet. Dey are da gay
boyyyys!!!"
"Mother, please. They are 'gay men.'" (big applause from politically correct crowd, who is very happy to clap at any vaguely pro-gay sentiment)
"But Mahgalet. I do not da understand. Dey are da gay
boyyyys!!! How you gonna get you'self a hubband if you only hang out wit da gay
boyyys?!!?"
This was Margaret Cho's act. This went on -- just like this;
exactly like this -- for around nine and a half hours.
It was like the court transcript of the Oscar Wilde indecency trial, being read aloud by the "Me So Horny" hooker from
Full Metal Jacket.
The only reason we've even heard that act is because we used to subscribe to HBO, back when they were giving comedy specials out to every third customer at the HBO commissary. Margaret Cho just happened to be buying one or six orders of tapioca one day, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Bad history. The stuff you want to forget.
People are protesting there and like, I think it could have been solved so much easier if they had just placed a golden calf next to the statue and then people would have started worshipping that.
"But Mahgalet-- what about da gay boyyyys?!"
Couldn't resist. The line
just never fucking gets old. It's like Instant Comedy in a Bottle.
And then they could have moved the Ten Commandments to Bush's office -- which he needs them, desperately. Or maybe he needs a new version of the Ten Commandments – George W. Bush's Ten Commandments: Thou shalt not steal ... votes. (big applause)
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's ... country. (big applause)
Thou shalt not kill ... for oil. (big applause)
Thou shalt not take grammar ... in vain. (big applause)
ABC Announces Cancellation of Margaret Cho Show. (HUGE applause)
But all of this was just too easy. No one talks about Margaret Cho; no one thinks about Margaret Cho. Margaret Cho doesn't even follow Margaret Cho's career.
"Career"?
Perhaps we use our words too loosely. Andrew Ridgely-- the
other dude from Wham! -- looks at Margaret Cho's career and sees a cautionary tale.
Shelley Long looks at Margaret Cho's career trajectory and thinks, "Oooh, now that's what I call a rough patch."
The transexual serial killer in
Silence of the Lambs has a higher Q-Rating than Margaret Cho-- and we mean the actual serial-killer, not the actor playing him.
Certainly no one in Hollywood thinks of Margaret Cho for any reason, for any part. Not even Margaret Cho herself. Even when Margaret Cho somehow gets a script sent to her (by accident; addressed to "Occupant") and sees a part for a "Fat, Not-Funny Asian Woman," she immediately thinks, "You know who'd be just perfect for this?
Delta Burke. Delta Burke can play Asian."
Even her own
mother puts her on hold before taking her calls.
And then greets her by saying, "I
told you to stop hanging out wit da gay
boyyyys!!!"
See? It's hilarious. Pure-spun comedy gold. We told you so.
There's nothing to say about Margaret Cho, and people have been saying exactly that -- nothing -- about Margaret Cho for the past ten years. Which is the way it should be.
We had nothing to say about Margaret Cho before this desperate grab at publicity; we shall have nothing more to say about her again.
What more is there not to say about Margaret Cho that hasn't already not been said a thousand times before?
Rosie O'Donnell/Boy George Supershow "Taboo" to Close
|
The day... the music... died.
|
From Yahoo News.
Yes, it's a very, very sad day here at the Ace of Spades Theater Appreciation Society. Two of our most favoritest persons in the whole wide world, Rosie O'Donnell and Boy George, are losing both their show and the $10 million they (and other lovely people) invested in this marvtastic production.
If you know anything about the collective entity we call Ace of Spades, then you know 1) that we have what you might call a long-time love affair with spats and 2) that the bouncy, flirtatiously gay music of Culture Club truly forms "the very soundtrack of our lives."
We have no idea how such an amazing show could have lost so much money. We personally have seen the show eight hundred thirty four times, and it just keeps getting better every Gee-darn time.
Why, we can hardly keep ourselves from crying at the poignant internal-monologue-slash-showstopping-production-number "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?"
Blogging will be light here for the rest of the evening. Obviously.
It's like a funeral here at our luxurious 103rd floor corporate offices. It's like the day Kennedy was shot, except it's worse, because at least when Kennedy was shot they didn't take away your daily Broadway fix of "I'll Tumble 4 Ya." When Kennedy went down, they immediately swore in Johnson. But is there, say, a Dead Or Alive Broadway production ready to be sworn in?
Where have you gone, Shalomar? Whither Kajagoogoo? Where are the Wang Chung's of yesteryear?
Some of us are wondering how the hell we can possibly go on.
Be strong. Be brave. Rosie and Boy would want it that way.
As Dan Rather closed his show during especially trying times,
"Courage."
And Now Iran's President...
From the BBC via Lucianne.com, now Iran's supposedly "reformist" President is
also threatening to resign if the Guardian Council does not allow reformist candidates to stand for office.
He says his entire administration will resign en masse along with him unless the religious students running the country relent.
FoxNews: Massive Baghdad Attack Planned; Iran implicated
Mansoor Ijaz claims that a convoy of thirty trucks, each armed with a large and sophisticated plastic-explosive warhead,
possibly supplemented with a chemwar charge, crossed from Iran to Northern Iraq this weekend.
One truck was caught by the Kurdish Peshmurga forces. The driver admitted under interrogation that there were 29 other trucks.
The plan seems to be to simultaneously launch 30 powerful warheads on Baghdad, using rockets already located in Iraq and in the possession of jihadist forces, possibly carrying chem-weapon munitions, to kill 3-5000 persons in one attack.
CAUTIONARY NOTE: Mansoor Ijaz has of late reported sources telling him some extraordinarily interesting things... things that have as of yet not been proven accurate, nor been especially hinted at by other sources. He's said that the US has in its custody an Iraqi family which helped move Saddam's uranium; he's said that his sources tell him Osama is in Eastern Iran.
Those are a couple of very big markers Mr. Ijaz has out there, both of which remaining outstanding.
So this story, while certainly attention-grabbing, comes from someone whose credibility lately is open to question.
Events Unfolding Even as We Blog...
Via Instapundit, posted on Blog-Iran, the announcement of a "Plan for the peaceful removal of the Islamic Regime," a six-hour live to be broadcast on "many" Iranian stations.
There will be fund-raising involved.
A Failure of Imagination
There's obviously a good deal of news coming out of Iran-- much of it potentially positive from the American perspective (and also from the perspective of general humanity).
Why is this news chiefly disseminated on the Internet? Why does Aaron Brown so seldom see fit to report on the possible powderkeg of Iran?
It is a function of political bias creating a failure of imagination.
The liberal news media does not believe that Bush's ambitious foreign policy could possibly work. We here at Ace of Spades do not believe with great certainty that it
will work, but we are certainly open to (and hopeful for) the possibility that it
could.
Not so the establishment print and broadcast news media. They are openly hostile to Bush's policy. Furthermore, in their heart of hearts, they don't
want his policy to work. Were the Iraq War to cause a reverse-domino toppling of enemy regimes, it could only be called a victory for Bush (try as the media might to do the opposite). Good news for Bush is bad news for liberals and the media, as freely, and with an unseemly absence of shame, admitted by the ever-diminishing
Michael Kinsely. (Poor Mr. Kinsley has "mixed emotions" about good news for the country, like an improving economy and the capture of Saddam Hussein.)
This political bias leads, in turn, to an utter failure of imagination as to the range of possibilites of what
could happen. The recent news from Iran does not mean that a violent overthrow of the theocrats is imminent. We would be guilty of the precise opposite bias of the news media were we to suggest such a thing.
But events in Iran do suggest,
possibly, that a crisis point is
nearing.
The media is ever-alert for the possibility that Bush will be proven to be guilty of impeachment-level offenses; they actively follow all leads in that arena and breathlessly report of possible indications of presidential or vice-presidential felonies. The imagination of the media definitely does embrace the possibility of a public and legal repudiation of Bush. They are therefore quite thorough when it comes to such stories.
But their outright hostility to Bush, and especially to the Iraq war, prevents them from imagining that tangible positives might emerge from it. To the press, it is simply inconceivable that Iran could ever implode.
Thus, the constant barrage of Halliburton stories, and the peculiar dearth of stories about Iran. It's not that the mainstream media actively promotes Halliburton stories as potentially leading to impeachment or political repudiation; they don't. But they do seem
open to such an eventuality, and therefore deem it important to keep the public appraised on the developing storyline.
But they plainly do not see the reports from Iran as possibly leading anywhere important. And thus, they don't deem these stories as particularly newsworthy.
Compare this situation to the media's utter lack of preparedness for the capture of Saddam Hussein. To the media, it was all but inconceivable that Saddam Hussein would ever be captured. In reality, Saddam's capture was near-inevitable; it was more a question of "when" not "if." And a fairly short-term "when" to boot. The shock and anguish on the faces of the liberal newsmen charged with the distasteful duty of reporting Saddam's capture to the American public spoke volumes. It was grim news, and furthermore it was utterly surprising news-- a "political UFO," as Tom Brokaw called it, a fantastically strange visitation from a bizarre alternate universe where black is white and Bush is occassionally competent.
Right now the American public has little comprehension that the political situation in Iran is deterioriating. They have not been so informed because the media simply cannot imagine that unfolding events in Iran could lead anywhere.
It could be that in three or six months, the media will once again stunned and dismayed by events that were both perfectly foreseeable and yet perfectly unforeseen. Once again, they could be ashen-complexion and grim-mouthed as they report on "breaking news" that in fact had been breaking for months and years without their notice.
The next "UFO" might be buzzing the minarets in Teheran.
New York Sun: Two Iranian Revolutionaries Defect to US
From the
New York Sun (requires subscription):
Two "senior" figures in Iran's Revolutionary Guard have defected to America this weekend, American intelligence officers tell the New York Sun.
Lower-level officers have defected previously. But the recent defections may be especially valuable because they come from the ranks of Iran's KGB-analogue, the organization charged with supporting and exporting Islamic fundamentalism, as well as for monitoring the Iranian army for disloyalty and protecting Iran's clerical tyrants against military coup.
The defectors may have a "treasure trove" of intelligence about Iran's covert activities, including the widely-suspected Iranian role in promoting and funding car-bombings and other acts of violence against American soldiers and Iraqi civilians in Iraq.
Patrick Clawson, deputy director for the Washington Institute for Near East policy, tells the Sun that the motivation for the defections is especially "intriguing." The Revolutionary Guard is selected for loyalty and high morale, and it is could be telling that two senior members have elected to defect.
Iran Candidate-Disqualification Dispute Simmers
A half-dozen high ranking government officials -- including four of the six vice presidents -- will resign unless the hardline "Guardian Council"
reverses its decision to disqualify around half of all candidates standing for office as "unIslamic."
"The Unholy Axis": The President's claim of Iraq's linkage to terrorists
The President told the nation, without equivocation, that Iraq possessed chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons.
He further told the nation that rogue states such as Iraq formed an "unholy axis" with terrorists, drug traffickers, and international criminals.
The President lied.
We were unwilling to reach this conclusion before. But based upon the indefensible lies in the following speech, we must finally, as an act of intellectual honesty, admit the President deceived the nation into supporting unilateral military action:
But for all our promise, all our opportunity, people in this room know very well that this is not a time free from peril, especially as a result of reckless acts of outlaw nations and an unholy axis of terrorists, drug traffickers and organized international criminals.
We have to defend our future from these predators of the 21st century. They feed on the free flow of information and technology. They actually take advantage of the freer movement of people, information and ideas.
And they will be all the more lethal if we allow them to build arsenals of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and the missiles to deliver them. We simply cannot allow that to happen.
There is no more clear example of this threat than Saddam Hussein's Iraq. His regime threatens the safety of his people, the stability of his region and the security of all the rest of us.
I want the American people to understand first the past how did this crisis come about?
And I want them to understand what we must do to protect the national interest, and indeed the interest of all freedom-loving people in the world.
Remember, as a condition of the cease-fire after the Gulf War, the United Nations demanded not the United States the United Nations demanded, and Saddam Hussein agreed to declare within 15 days this is way back in 1991 within 15 days his nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and the missiles to deliver them, to make a total declaration. That's what he promised to do.
The United Nations set up a special commission of highly trained international experts called UNSCOM, to make sure that Iraq made good on that commitment. We had every good reason to insist that Iraq disarm. Saddam had built up a terrible arsenal, and he had used it not once, but many times, in a decade-long war with Iran, he used chemical weapons, against combatants, against civilians, against a foreign adversary, and even against his own people.
And during the Gulf War, Saddam launched Scuds against Saudi Arabia, Israel and Bahrain.
Now, instead of playing by the very rules he agreed to at the end of the Gulf War, Saddam has spent the better part of the past decade trying to cheat on this solemn commitment. Consider just some of the facts:
Iraq repeatedly made false declarations about the weapons that it had left in its possession after the Gulf War. When UNSCOM would then uncover evidence that gave lie to those declarations, Iraq would simply amend the reports.
For example, Iraq revised its nuclear declarations four times within just 14 months and it has submitted six different biological warfare declarations, each of which has been rejected by UNSCOM.
In 1995, Hussein Kamal, Saddam's son-in-law, and the chief organizer of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program, defected to Jordan. He revealed that Iraq was continuing to conceal weapons and missiles and the capacity to build many more.
Then and only then did Iraq admit to developing numbers of weapons in significant quantities and weapon stocks. Previously, it had vehemently denied the very thing it just simply admitted once Saddam Hussein's son-in-law defected to Jordan and told the truth. Now listen to this, what did it admit?
It admitted, among other things, an offensive biological warfare capability notably 5,000 gallons of botulinum, which causes botulism; 2,000 gallons of anthrax; 25 biological-filled Scud warheads; and 157 aerial bombs.
And I might say UNSCOM inspectors believe that Iraq has actually greatly understated its production.
As if we needed further confirmation, you all know what happened to his son-in-law when he made the untimely decision to go back to Iraq.
Next, throughout this entire process, Iraqi agents have undermined and undercut UNSCOM. They've harassed the inspectors, lied to them, disabled monitoring cameras, literally spirited evidence out of the back doors of suspect facilities as inspectors walked through the front door. And our people were there observing it and had the pictures to prove it.
...
It is obvious that there is an attempt here, based on the whole history of this operation since 1991, to protect whatever remains of his capacity to produce weapons of mass destruction, the missiles to deliver them, and the feed stocks necessary to produce them.
The UNSCOM inspectors believe that Iraq still has stockpiles of chemical and biological munitions, a small force of Scud-type missiles, and the capacity to restart quickly its production program and build many, many more weapons.
Now, against that background, let us remember the past here. It is against that background that we have repeatedly and unambiguously made clear our preference for a diplomatic solution.
...
Now, let's imagine the future. What if he fails to comply, and we fail to act, or we take some ambiguous third route which gives him yet more opportunities to develop this program of weapons of mass destruction and continue to press for the release of the sanctions and continue to ignore the solemn commitments that he made?
Well, he will conclude that the international community has lost its will. He will then conclude that he can go right on and do more to rebuild an arsenal of devastating destruction.
And some day, some way, I guarantee you, he'll use the arsenal. And I think every one of you who's really worked on this for any length of time believes that, too.
Now we have spent several weeks building up our forces in the Gulf, and building a coalition of like-minded nations. Our force posture would not be possible without the support of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, the GCC states and Turkey. Other friends and allies have agreed to provide forces, bases or logistical support, including the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain and Portugal, Denmark and the Netherlands, Hungary and Poland and the Czech Republic, Argentina, Iceland, Australia and New Zealand and our friends and neighbors in Canada.
...
Let me be clear: A military operation cannot destroy all the weapons of mass destruction capacity. But it can and will leave him significantly worse off than he is now in terms of the ability to threaten the world with these weapons or to attack his neighbors.
...
Saddam Hussein's Iraq reminds us of what we learned in the 20th century and warns us of what we must know about the 21st. In this century, we learned through harsh experience that the only answer to aggression and illegal behavior is firmness, determination, and when necessary action.
In the next century, the community of nations may see more and more the very kind of threat Iraq poses now a rogue state with weapons of mass destruction ready to use them or provide them to terrorists, drug traffickers or organized criminals who travel the world among us unnoticed.
If we fail to respond today, Saddam and all those who would follow in his footsteps will be emboldened tomorrow by the knowledge that they can act with impunity, even in the face of a clear message from the United Nations Security Council and clear evidence of a weapons of mass destruction program.
But if we act as one, we can safeguard our interests and send a clear message to every would-be tyrant and terrorist that the international community does have the wisdom and the will and the way to protect peace and security in a new era. That is the future I ask you all to imagine. That is the future I ask our allies to imagine.
Emphasis added.
The President claimed, in the above-cited speech, that Saddam possessed nuclear, biological, and chemical capabilities. The he resisted inspections in order to preserve those capabilities. That among his weapons was
anthrax.
You will of course note that the list of "allies" the President lists as taking part in his heedless rush to military conflict omits our most important allies, like France, Russia, China, Belgium and Luxembourg. His "allies" for his military action are a mere "Coalition of the Bought," a clutch of second-raters, like Britain and Australia and the Czech Republic and Poland and Hungary and Turkey and Spain.
Furthermore, he inflamed the Arab street by couching the struggle in a needless invocation of Christian religious metaphor, using the word "unholy" to describe the threats facing us in the 21st century. He further described their alliance as an "axis," dishonestly comparing this collection of thugs -- who are better dealt with as a law-enforcement problem -- as an "axis," recalling the Central Powers in WWII.
He insisted that Saddam posed a clear threat to "freedom-loving peoples" of the world. Not only is this quite plainly
false as an empirical matter, but his choice of language indicates a fundamental unseriousness. This is the "baby-talk" style of rhetoric that Chris Matthews and other liberal commentators so abhor. It is childish, simplistic, and dishonest to claim that Saddam posed a threat to "freedom-loving people" -- Saddam did not hate our "freedom," and neither does Al Qaeda. Only a simple-minded, Mannichean jingoist of the worst sort would imply that the Muslim world's dispute from us enmity towards us is somehow due to our "freedom."
Finally, and most importantly, he made it quite clear that Saddam would, without doubt, one day use that arsenal. And that, one day, Saddam could well deliver this arsenal to terrorists.
There is no walking back that particular cat. The President's words were clear and direct and without ambiguity.
In two short words that we hesitate to use about a President of the United States:
He lied.
So what are we waiting for? Why don't we impeach this lying, unilateralist, unserious, messianic, childishly simplistic warmonger?
For a simple reason: because, as you have probably guessed, we already have impeached him.
For it was not President Bush delivering the above-quoted speech.
The President delivering this address was William Jefferson Clinton, 42d President of the United States, impeached in late 1998 (on different grounds, of course).
The speech was delivered February 17, 1998, at the Pentagon.
Read the full speech at
the CNN archives.
Dems Deem Dim Dean Doomed?-- Deux
Drudge Tease: Dean's supporters "distressed" by his performance of late.
Sigh.
If you want to become a better chess player, you have to always anticpate your opponent making his best possible move and then defend against that. You just can't count on your opponent making unforced errors. He
may make an unforced error, but you always have to play him as if he is the best possible chess player that you have the skill to imagine.
For some time, we at the Ace of Spades Washington Bureau have been praying for the Democrats to make a disasterous blunder in the late opening of the match. We dearly wished for our opponents to play the reckless and ruinous Dean Gambit.
Even as we doubted that any opponent could be so stupid.
And perhaps our opponents
aren't so stupid.
Dean is imploding (us talking, not Drudge or the NYT). He is simply making one gaffe after another, and, according to
reports, he turned in a confidence-shaking performance at the most recent Democratic debate. Al Sharpton slapped that donkey hard, and the donkey was left stunned and stuttering, dazed and confused.
Alas.
Couldn't this bonehead have bothered planning a comeback to Sharpton in advance? It wasn't precisely
unforeseeable that the race-baiting reverend might eventually notice the glaring lack of skin pigment among Dean's cabinet choices.
Sure, the media was perfectly willing to give him a pass (has anyone ever heard this fact before Sharpton was kind enough to point it out?), but liberals err again and again in trusting that the in-their-pocket media can completely prevent such embarassments from coming to light.
Note to the media: Forget everything we just said about reporting Dirty Dean's push-polling in New Hampshire!
Bury that story! Don't kick a good patsy when he's down!
Channeling Colonel Kurtz
Fade up:
Shrouded in inky shadow, megalomaniacal rogue military officer General Clark lectures you while occasionally washing his skull with a sopping cloth.
"Have you ever been to Iowa? It looks as if the world had exploded with gardenias...
(washes head)
"The human animal is the only one that has bloodlust.... Killing without purpose, killing for pleasure....
(eats nuts)
"I swallowed a bug."
Meanwhile, an unkempt liberal toady and hero-worshipper, played by Dennis Hopper, dances around in background calling General Clark a visionary and the messiah of the new dialectic.
And...
scene.
The pic's been posted in numerous places, but most recently at
Lucianne.
We been had. We been bamboozled.
A week ago, we linked to a funny little website concerning a
missing gnome.
We were delighted that amateur bloggers were producing such professional-quality work.
Well, the video looked like it was done by media professionals for a simple reason: It
was done by media professionals.
Reader J.G. dropped us a line to let us know we'd badly erred. The site is
part of a national advertising campaign for an on-line travel company.
We goofed, and we're sorry. We'll tune our skepticism dials up to 11 in the future. And thanks to J.G. for letting us know we'd screwed up.
A Tale of Two Push-Polls
It used to be that the media would whitewash any story that they felt harmed their favorite candidates for office. They would report the story, but with plenty of apologism for the Democrat (and it was always a Democrat) whose political fortunes were harmed by the story, with numerous mitigating quotes from allegedly "non-partisan" Washington think-tanks and greybeards.
But the media is quite beyond that now. Somewhere over the course of the past ten years the media figured out they could simply cut out the whitewash middle-man altogether. If they simply
refused to print a story altogether, they could eschew the need to provide one-sided "context" to explain away the transgression. The news whitewash has been replaced by the far more effective tactic of news blackout.
Case in point: The recent revelations about an unknown campaign, most likely the Dean campaign (based upon the admittedly thin evidence at this point),
push-polling New Hampshire Independent voters and telling them,
dishonestly, that they are not permitted to vote in the upcoming Democratic primary.
As of yet, no one in the mainstream media (and we certainly do not count feverish and flaky Josh Marshall in this category) has yet seen fit to report the story.
Is this the common media practice? Does the media typically ignore such juicy telephonic skullduggery during political primaries?
Let's check the record. Let's go back to
South Carolina, 2000, when a feisty, media-beloved upstart named John McCain was battling the media-loathed George W. Bush for the Republican presidential nomination.
In South Carolina, one (1) woman claimed that her 14-year-old son had received a "push-polling" phone call, in the course of which the caller had branded McCain "a cheat, a fraud, and a liar."
The news that a single woman had received a single phone call imputing John McCain's character caused the media to spring in to full frenzy mode. Again and again, the "nasty" and "vicious" and "underhanded" tactic of push-polling was decried.
Why, the tactic was
so repulsive that liberal commentators are
still talking about it nearly four years later-- right now. Over the past month, we here at the Ace of Spades Media Monitoring Project have read and heard at least a half-dozen references to the alleged Carolina push-polling scandal, or the Shame of Spartanburg, as the media likes to think of it. Whenever the media needs an example of how truly
despicable intraparty campaigning can get, their go-to anecdote is the heart-rending tale of the one (1) woman who claimed that her fourteen (14) year old son had received one (1) phone call saying bad things about one (1) John McCain.
One (1) hopes that poor boy has by now recovered from his telephonic trauma.
That's the media model for reporting on underhanded push-polling. Or at least that's the model for reporting on underhanded push-polling
by a front-running Republican candidate.
Does the media employ the same model when it comes to underhanded push-polling by a front-running
Democrat?
We now have a report -- from a well-known polling company, not from an unknown woman at a political rally -- that an unknown campaign is calling prospective New Hampshire voters and claiming,
flat-out dishonestly, that Independents are not allowed to vote in the Democratic primary.
According to a caveat appended to the most recent ARG poll press release:
Over the past 2 days of calling, a number of older respondents registered as undeclared voters have reported that they have received telephone calls from a campaign informing them that they will not be allowed to vote in the Democratic primary because they missed the deadline to switch parties. A respondent discovered, however, that when she told the caller that she was thinking about voting for Howard Dean, the caller told her that she would be eligible to vote.
The general charge comes from not one (1) unknown woman but from "numerous" respondents. One (1) woman makes a more specific charge: that she was first told that, as an Independent, she was not allowed to take part in the primary; but, after sharing with the caller that she supported Howard Dean, she was then told that she was allowed to vote after all.
Has this story generated one (1) major media story yet? One (1) question posed on a nationally-broadcast morning chit-chat show? One (1) reference on a Sunday morning interview show?
If not: Why not?
Paul O'Neill's Scoop
Brilliant. The first & last word on this phony "scandal," from the New York Sun.
Gephardt Admits to Attending Picnic Sponsored by KKK-Affiliated Group
FoxNews proves its bias by reporting that a Democratic Presidential candidate attended picnics sponsored by an organization called the "Metro-South Citizens' Council." Which...
was initially called the "White Citizens Council" and was created in the 1960s throughout the South to oppose integration. They were known to be anti-black and anti-Semitic but non-violent. Democrats and Republicans alike have been vilified over the years for attending events by the Citizens Council -- which many say was formed by former members of the Ku Klux Klan.
"I make no excuses," Mr. Gephardt says, deftly launching into an excuse. "If I had known this group, I thought it was a local group that was concerned about busing. I regret being there, that's not what's in my heart, never has been in my heart."
Obviously this is not a story. A politician pandering to white interests in racially-charged issues -- even when those white interests are tinged with racism -- is not a story when it involves a Democrat.
And by reporting this as a "story," FoxNews once again demonstrates its innate amateurism.
Now, give us Trent Lott flattering a six-thousand-year-old man-vegetable at a birthday party--
that's a story.
Wesley Clark 2002: "Certainly" a connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda
The New York Times reports the existence of a tape documenting Clark's remarks during his endorsement of a New Hampshire congressional candidate 2002.
On tape, Wesley Clark says:
"Certainly there's a connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda. It doesn't surprise me at all that they would be talking to Al Qaeda, that there would be some Al Qaeda there or that Saddam Hussein might even be, you know, discussing gee, I wonder since I don't have any scuds and since the Americans are coming at me, I wonder if I could take advantage of Al Qaeda? How would I do it? Is it worth the risk? What could they do for me?"
The Times contrasts this remark with Clark of more recent vintage:
"There was no imminent threat from Iraq, nor was Iraq connected with Al Qaeda."
Clark, who has accused the administration of employing a "bait and switch" con to justify an Iraq action, employs his
own bait and switch in attempting to square his floridly inconsistent statement. Wesley Clark says:
"I never thought there would be any evidence linking Sept. 11 and Saddam Hussein," General Clark said. "Everything I had learned about Saddam Hussein told me that he would be the last person Al Qaeda would trust or that he would trust them."
"All I was saying is that it would be naive to say that there weren't any contacts," he said. "But that's a far cry from saying there was any connection between the events of 9/11 and Saddam Hussein."
Ah, but Mr. Clark, the subject under discussion was Iraq's connection to Al Qaeda, not necessarily Iraq's connection to the specific attack which took place on 9-11.
We just don't understand our dithering Democrats. Are they really claiming that, sure, Saddam had "connections" to Al Qaeda, but not provable connections to 9-11 itself, and therefore was no threat at all?
If the Democrats really wish to run on this platform -- "We will leave unmolested all enemy nations that cooperate with Al Qaeda, so long as they did not directly take part in 9-11" -- we think they ought to say so.
And then let us have an election based upon the public's satisfaction with
that formulation.
But they refuse to be clear about this, because they understand that it is 1) politically untenable and 2) substantively ludicrous as a national security position.
Bear in mind that Al Qaeda did not suddenly burst on to the scene in 2001. Bin Ladin had declared "war" against America in the mid-nineties, and Al Qaeda had previously massacred our troops in Mogadishu, blown up the Khobar Towers where American servicemen where based, killed nearly 300 people in the twin African embassy bombings, and blown up a US warship. They are also implicated in the original WTC bombing, through their connections with Sheik Abdel Rahman.
And they planned to kill the Pope;
and they had intended to simultaneously hijack 10 or more airplanes in the late 1990's.
And one of their agents was caught trying to smuggle explosives into the country just in time for New Year's Eve 2000.
So we are a little bit flummoxed that men claiming to be qualified to protect this nation's citizens and soldiers from foreign aggressors would believe that it's
okely-dokely that Iraq had contacts with Al Qaeda all through the nineties,
so long as Iraq had no provable connection to one particular attack.
We would think that any nation which cooperated or merely "had contacts" with such an evil organization, committed in deed, word, and thought to massacring Americans for political purposes
or sometimes no purposes at all, would be a nation just asking for an invasion.
But not according to General Clark. No, for General Clark, ethnic cleansing in a backwater nation that could not possibly threaten the US is a cause for war; but Saddam Hussein's murderous regime, actively liaising with Al Qaeda for a decade, is not to have its collective hair mussed.
Oh, and by the way: Saddam tried to kill a US President when it was "contained" in 1993. If
that little attempted assassination means anything at all.
We suppose the Democratic Party doesn't consider that an act of war, either.
(It also occurs to us that liberals in general seem to have a curious definition of "containment.")
So the Democrats continue to play the game where they
all but make this odd promise -- "If you 'merely' cooperate with Al Qaeda, fine by us; we will only take action against you if you were directly involved in the most murderous of Al Qaeda's attacks; anything less than that gets a pass" -- but refuse to announce it with the degree of clarity necessary for people to understand their position.
The game is that, when confronted with the overwhelming evidence of
at least high level (if not Presidential-level) contacts between Saddam and Al Qaeda going back at least a decade, they simply demure that that does not establish that Saddam had anything to do with 9-11.
That is possibly true, but it is also a dodge. The media never asks the obvious follow-up question: "All right, suppose that what you say is true-- that this decade-long pattern of high level contacts does not, in fact, prove an actual 'operational relationship' between Saddam and Al Qaeda, or Saddam's direct role in 9-11. Are you saying that a decade of high-level 'contacts' between an enemy regime and Al Qaeda is
not a cause for war?"
The media
never asks this question. And for good reason. Because the media agrees with the Democrats on the answer -- and their answer is "No, such a pattern of contacts is
not a justification for war, at least when a Republican is in the White House" -- but they know with perfect confidence that the public, overwhelming, disagrees.
And so the media is all too happy to allow Clark his evasion of the central question of this election, as well as the central question confronting the American military/security establishment for the next ten or twenty years.
Let us demand that the question be put to General Clark:
You, by your own admission, recognize that Iraq had at least "low-level" contacts with Al Qaeda. Is it your position that "mere" low-level contacts between a rogue state and Al Qaeda is not cause for war?
We here at Ace of Spades HQ would really like to know. What does General Clark imagine that Al Qaeda and Iraq were discussing in these "low-level contacts" he admits were going on through the nineties? Were they working out who would take which month in their time-share in Boca Raton? Were they arguing about the right
theme for the joint Iraq-Al Qaeda Rose Bowl float? Were they simply discussing
Deep Space Nine and
Moesha? Or perhaps planning the opening of one of those famous Al Qaeda Day Care Centers that Senator Patty Murray (D-- as if you couldn't have guessed) celebrates?
We admit we're not the sophisticates that General Clark's European friends are. We are, as Dominique De Villipain says,
simplissime. But we believe that if Iraq did have "low-level" contacts with a terrorist organization that had killed hundreds of Americans
even before the attacks of 9-11, then we had just cause for invading Iraq.
Not merely just cause-- but a solemn national-security obligation.
But what does General Clark think?
Don't count on Chris Matthews, Katie Couric, or Charlie Gibson taking the trouble of asking him.
UPDATE: We originally gave the Times credit for having the integrity to actually publish this story, rather than simply bury it, as is their custom and habit.
We withdraw that credit. The article states that tape was passed to them by a rival Democratic campaign. Why, one could even hazard a guess as to which Democrat in which campaign did so; but we are hesitant to risk libel suits.
The New York Times would not have reported this had it come from the Bush campaign. But since it came from a Democratic campaign, they are obliged to. Yes, this is inconvenient for the Democratic Party as a whole, and Clark in particular; but they can't just start
not typing up the press releases of liberals and releasing them as front-page "news analysis" pieces. That's their time-tested business model, after all.
And because they merely did what they were obliged to do, as the daily news letter of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, we give them no credit on this score.
Body searching the candidates
BostonIrish frisks the Dems and discovers some weapons-grade funny.
This Seems Like It Should Be News to Someone
According to the
Persian Journal -- a news organization which we confess we know nothing about, and can't vouch for in terms of credibility -- all of Iran's governors have threatened to resign unless hardline clerics reverse their decision to strike from the ballots the names of a large number of candidates for office.
The governors' threat supports a previous declaration by the Ministry of the Interior, which earlier ruled the clerics' attempt to disqualify candidates was unlawful and without effect.
Found linked at
Free Republic.
True Patriot Watch
Code of Conduct of the True Patriot, Number 22:
A True American Patriot likens his nation's citizen soldiers to Nazi stormtroopers.
Via Andrew Sullivan.
Light Blogging Today...
The flu has swept through the 103rd floor corporate offices at Ace of Spades HQ, resulting in company-wide absenteeism.
Plus, we're all watching football. All of us -- all 644 owners, officers, managers, and employees at Ace of Spades HQ -- are rooting for Brett Favre.
Check back tomorrow.
Beginning this week...
The Clue of the Bloody Shirt
A Michael Moore Mystery (TM)
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