Wea Culpa

Recently, lefty pro-war (i.e., he's just "on the other side") agitator Micah Wright had the "courage" and "guts" to admit he'd perpetrated a "hoax" about being a combat-veteran Ranger in order to claim victim status when arguing against America's right to defend herself.

It is time to for us to follow Mr. Wright's example. We too have committed certain "hoaxes" in order to advance our positions.

First of all, it is not true, as we have long maintained, that we jumped the Snake River Canyon on a rocket-propelled "Sky-Cycle" in 1973.

This hoax began innocently enough. We were arguing with someone on-line about who had performed this stunt. Our opponent claimed it was Evil Kenevil: for some reason, we had it stuck in our heads that it was actually the actor Ken Berry of F-Troop. So we told our opponent he was a "jackass" for saying it was Evil Kenevil.

Well, within thrity seconds, our opponent presented us with ten yahoo search-matches proving that Mr. Kenevil had performed the stunt. But we of course didn't want to simply lose the argument, so we claimed "Yes, we knew of course that Evil Kenevil is credited as making the jump, but you big dummy, we're talking about his stunt double, the man who actually performed the stunt in Mr. Kenevil's famous red, white, and blue jumpsuit."

Our correspondent then told us that Mr. Kenevil didn't use a "stunt double," since stuntmen do not, in fact, themselves have stuntmen. At which point we said "Now who's being naive?"

We then claimed we knew for a fact he had used a stunt double, since we ourselves were that stunt double. You don't know what it's like soaring over the Snake Canyon at 200 mph, we raged against our opponent. Until you've been there, in the "shit," flying over a canyon in a kinda-gay jumpsuit that looks like the outfit Captain America would wear if his secret identity were Harvey Firestein, you have no right to question us on this.

As you can see, perfectly innocent and understandable. We began our "hoax" because someone, quite plainly a fascist of some variety, called bullshit on us.

We apologize profusely on behalf of that fascist.

Next, somewhere along the way our friends kinda got the notion stuck in their heads that, as younger men, we had lost our virginity to Queen Noor of Jordan. We're not sure how they got this idea.

As near as we can tell, it may be because we said we did.

The facts are these. No young man ever likes to admit he is still a virgin, especially when his buddies are telling hero-stories. So we claimed we'd already "done it." Our friends disputed this, and wanted the woman's name. So we just said, "You guys wouldn't know her. She lives far away." But still they pressed us for details. So we said, "Okay, fine. If you must know, she is a foreign princess who earned her education at Princeton University and then married into the Hashemite Dynasty."

We figured that was vague enough to avoid getting pinned down. But then one of our friends said, "You mean Queen Noor of Jordan?" and we were forced to say, "Well, gentlemen never tell, of course. But yeah, we nailed her. She's got nipples the size of circus-peanuts."

Again, a perfectly innocent "hoax." We attribute the hoax to immaturity and peer pressure. In Amerikkka today, it's hard for thirty-two-year-old men to admit they're still virgins.

We apologize for the uncouth peer pressure of our friends.

Finally, it is simply not true that our collective dicks are so big that movie-theaters have begun selling popcorn in the sizes Small, Medium, Large, and Our Dick. We really have no idea at all why we started saying this. It might have been because of some dispute we had with our Mother.

Furthermore, this isn't even our claim; it's actually Drew Carey's. And we suppose we should say right now that no, it isn't true that we were long-time "male companions" to Mr. Carey, or that we successfully sued him for $30 million in a palimony suit. We think we might have just been high when we said that.

Again, we apologize profusely for the media and fascists who are to blame for these hoaxes. We hope you admire our courage and guts for coming clean. And we promise that, from this point forward, we will be perfectly honest and candid with you, our dear readers.

Sincerely,

Ace of Spades HQ

President and Founder of Apple Computer Corporation

1993 NHL Rookie of the Year

1990 Oscar-Winning Best Actress for Driving Miss Daisy (deceased)

PS: We are a medical doctor working for a major UN relief agency in Niger. Please send us money so we can transfer $243 million in gold bullion out of the country.

Micah Wright Is a Fucking Liar

That's not just what Michele at ASV says, that's what this fucking douchebag tool now admits in a sad-sap Oprah confessional.

Who is Micah Wright, you ask? Good question -- he's a nobody.

But he's a nobody who got a book contract based on his anti-war agitation and his claim that he knew the horrors of combat, having served in war as an Army Ranger. Here's Our Ranger Hero Micah in typical form:

I've seen combat to "liberate" people before in Panama. Have you? Did you volunteer to fight for your country? I fucking doubt it. I especially doubt your leg ass ever made it through Airborne School and I KNOW for a fact that you wouldn't have survived one week of Ranger School.

Except he wasn't a Ranger. He wasn't in war. Heck, he wasn't even actually in the actual Army-- he spent some time in ROTC.

No matter how low you think the Hysterical Left has sunk, they've got this habit of consistently surprising you by sinking lower.

And guess what the response is to his confession -- which, in all likelihood, comes two days before he was about to be outed?

"I do know one thing. It took a lot, A LOT, of courage to come forward. "

"This confession, if true, doesn't affect my feelings about your talent either way."

"It took guts to confess. Good show."

Courage. Guts.

Well, it seems the fucking lying douchebag Micah Wright did learn something from all that time he didn't spend as an Army Ranger.

Michele has more-- including all the links you know you've got to click on.

Update! The lying douchebag says that all the stuff he claims in his foreward happened to him in the shit in Panama didn't actually happen to him... since he wasn't there. But he's proud to say all those things DID happen... to other people. Or so he's heard.

It Just Gets Fuckin' Better and Better! Jim Treacher, of Mother May I Sleep With Treacher?, deadpans:

I liked when the Washington Post reporter asked him if he'd ever killed anyone:

"'That's one of those questions that I really don't like to answer,' he says after an uncomfortable pause. 'You're shooting at people and other people are shooting and people fall down. Put it this way: I never shot at anybody who hadn't shot at me first.'"

None of which is technically untrue.

Nope. Not technically untrue at all!

Okay, enough of that! Pretty soon we'll just be reprinting everything on Michele's site.

And... We just guessed that his "confession" conveniently comes two days before his exposure by someone else, and it turns out, of course, that we were right.

REAL Rangers and Special Forces guys saw right through him, and were calling him a liar to his face (well, through email), and there were websites exposing him and even the press was getting hip to his lie.

So, there's the "courage" of a leftist shitbag for you.

It's Too Good To Stop Updating Now! In this Washington Post article profiling him as a world-weary warrior who's now waging peace, this nasty shit does his best Rambo impression:

"I was highly intelligent but emotionally isolated," he writes, "perfect, I found out later, for the Special Forces."

Yes! Perfect for the Special Forces!

These days he focuses on creating video games and writing a comic book called "StormWatch: Team Achilles," which harks back to his Special Forces experiences. "It's left-wing pastiche masquerading as right-wing military fiction," he says. "It's a team of humans working for the United Nations who kill superheroes when they go out of control. Because it's a U.N. team, I get to bring politics into the book."

Indeed! How thrilling it must be to read of his "Special Forces experiences," like getting a Vente moca frappachino at Starbucks, or "going behind enemy lines" to make color-copies at Kinko's!

Next up: Ranger Micah uses his deadly Special Forces training, and Shaolin-kung-fu expertise, to buy some fucking stamps at the Post Office!

The Fallujah Deal, Part II: We've Got Other Irons in the Fire

One of the cheapest but most enduring rhetorical moves is to deny that there's any downside to your advocated plan of action. Race-quota or race-preference advocates routinely argue that quotas help minorities get jobs they wouldn't have but for quotas, but simultaneously argue that quotas never result in a non-minority not getting a job he otherwise would have.

Errrm, how could this possibly be the case? How can helping a minority get a job not also simultaneously hurt the chances of a non-minority from getting the same job?

In the war on terror, leftists, who are anti-war (or at least anti- Republican-led war) claim that we can increase our security by doing nothing at all. There's no tradeoff, they claim, between pacifism and security; no tradeoff whatsoever between vigorous and sometimes intrusive internal security and protecting the nation against terrorism. Again and again, they claim that we can have, simultaneously, maximalist civli-liberties and minimalist police action while simultaneously enjoying maximum security.

That seems pretty dishonest to us. We can imagine an honest case being made for maximalist civil-liberites and minimalist police or military action, but we think that such an honest case would have to begin with the admission: More of us are going to lose our lives to terrorism due to this approach than would lose their lives under a different approach. But we think civil liberties and pacifism are more important that the marginal rate of additional deaths which will be suffered under this regime, and here's why.

Those of us on the right, however, are sometimes prone to the opposite impulse. We've read -- and we've thought and written, ourselves -- that there is almost no tradeoff between killing bad guys and security, either. Killing bad guys, as efficiently and ruthlessly as possible, is always, under all circumstances, a good thing and only leads to increased security, because the bad guys get the message that you're serious.

That's probably more accurate that inaccurate, but we sort of doubt it's an iron-clad rule, always correct under all situations. Simply because we doubt there are many such iron-clad rules in life at all.

Which brings us around to Fallujah.

On the right, there is an impulse -- shared by us -- to say that the best way to deal with these bastards is just to go in there and kill every goddamned last one of them, damn the consequences, and damn the bleatings from Imam Sistani.

Maybe that's true. But it also may be true that by doing so, we would sacrifice the likelihood of success for another important priority, to wit, making Iraq into a somewhat-stable sort of place, the sort of place we can leave to govern itself, and then get the hell out of there.

It is almost too tempting to say that just blowing the living hell out of Fallujah would actually work to increase the stability and security out of Iraq. It's almost too tempting, because it promises us the possibility of doing both what we desperately want to do (kill the bastards) and the result we desperately want to achieve (a stable Iraq that we can leave without regret).

Again, it's possible that going in there and killing everyone is the right move. We don't know. But we also can't dismiss the possibility that doing so would actually lead to a bigger mess than we currently have, and which would then jeopardize the June 30 transfer-of-power date.

It's not that we trust Bush's judgment on this, or the judgment of the Marine commanders negotiating this deal. It's more that there are so many unknowns in the situation that it's difficult to say, with a straight face, that we know Option X is wrong and we know Option Y is right. We don't trust Bush so much as we have too little information upon which to vigorously contradict him.

We think it's important that we transfer power on June 30th.

We think, for one thing, we're sick of Americans dying in order to secure a decent future for these ingrate bastards.

We think, as we said below, that people will behave irresponsibly until they are given responsibility and are forced to confront the consequences of their irresponsibility.

We think our forces are now tied down in Iraq, which undermines the seriousness of threats we may wish to make against North Korea and Iran and Syria; one can't threaten a thug when one is already grappling with a different thug. We want to be done with these thugs, if only to draw back our fist and let the other thugs know we're ready to hit again.

Some will say that letting the terrorists off the hook here undermines the "moral clarity" and absoluteness of the Bush Doctrine.

But the doctrine isn't absolute; no doctrine ever is. There are, of course, a lot of terrorists operating in Yemen, for example, but we're not invading to catch them. Instead, we're working with the Yemenis, pressuring their government and providing military assistance and covert operators, so that we can get, say, 30% of the total possible terrorist-fighting bang for only 1% of the terrorist-fighting buck. We could invade Yemen and catch 70% of the terrorists, but that would obviously entail a very steep price; we've decided, as a nation, it's better to reap a modestly-sized reward which is nevertheless outsized in comparison to our smallish investment.

Will there be terrorists who escape Fallujah do this deal? Of course there will be; probably quite a few. But in world in which resources are simply not infinite, it is sometimes a wise military decision to take a modest gain (reduced, but not eliminated, terrorism eminating from Fallujah) if one can incur a smaller cost (fewer troops actually fighting in Fallujah) doing so.

The Bush Doctrine isn't absolute, either, in Pakistan. Yes, we could simply send 100,000 American troops into the Pakistani tribal areas, violating their sovereignty. We'd have a good (or better, at least) chance of killing Osama bin Ladin, but we would, of course, provoke an immediate coup d'etat which places Pakistan's nuclear weapons in the hands of Islamist maniacs.

We always find it amusing to listen to cheap, moronic partisans like Oliver Willis scream that we should just invade Pakistan. Apparently the rule that "fighting terrorists only makes more terrorists" doesn't apply in the Pakistani tribal areas. And it's always funny that tough-talking liberals always claim they're all gung-ho willing to go to war against the bad guys... just in a different country than the one currently being discussed.

At any rate, Pakistan is once again an example of a situation in which the strong-form of the Bush Doctrine -- wipe the bad guys out, no matter what the consequences, and damn the torpedoes -- is shown to be inoperative. We don't want to radicalize Pakistan.

And neither do we want to radicalize Iraq.

We plan to transfer power on June 30th. After June 30th, many of these problems will be less our problem and more the problems of Iraqis themselves. It's out mission to create a stable and decent Iraq; it's not our mission to create for them a paradisical New Eden on the Euphrates.

The Fallujah Deal: Selling Out Iraq's Future to Terrorists, and Why That's a Good Thing

So, we've done what Sistani and all the other "moderate" Iraqi clerics wanted: we negotiated a truce that essentially lets the terrorists continue terrorizing.

It's not necessarily all bad.

It's been angering us for some time that the Iraqis are engaging in an irresponsible-verging-on-childish politics for some time. One one hand, they do nothing but complain that their security is poor, and that they're being killed by Baathists and foreign fighters.

On the other hand, they rage against their American "occupiers" and demand piously that we not touch a hair on one of the precious heads of their murderous Muslim brethren.

These two demands are plainly irreconcilable. Their complaints are incoherent; we could not satisfy both demands simultaneously, no matter how hard we endeavored to do so, because the more one is satisfied, the less the other is. And that's unavoidable.

This is what makes their complaints irresponsible, incoherent, altogether worthless. And that's sort of what separates a critique from a mere childish complaint. A critique is a coherent criticism which offers a new suggested course of action. A mere complaint is a childish temper-tantrum of someone whining, "I don't like things the way they are, and I want you to make all of my troubles go away, but I will continue complaining no matter what course of action you choose."

We've got a whole essay about this phenemenon, and how universal it is -- the Democratic Party is currently past-masters of childish complaining -- but leave that aside for now. It's not necessary to make the instant point.

The Iraqis have thusfar been permitted to be irresponsible and utterly incoherent in their complaining because we have shielded them from the consequences of their own inconsistencies by simply ignoring them and doing what is, more than likely, the right thing. But that has earned us no goodwill; indeed, it only sets them complaining all the louder.

It's time, we think, to actually do some of the things the complaining Iraqis claim they want us to do, and do them the favor -- it's a favor in the long-term -- of letting the suffer the consequences of their own childish tantrums. Perhaps they will soon learn the often brutal relationship between cause and effect, a relationship which has thusfar been obscured from their eyes by the presence of an all-purpose scapegoat, the "occupier" Crusader armies.

You want us to negotiate, Imam Sistani? Very well. Here's what happens in a negotiation, bub: We negotiate with the former killers and thugs who kept you down for forty years, and we grant them concessions and political power. Political power that would otherwise reside in your hands; but hey, you wanted a negotiation, right? Well enjoy the fruits of your ingrate complaining. One of Saddam's generals is now in control of Fallujah; isn't negotiating grand?

At some point -- and usually this point is reached extremely early -- attempting to protect people from their own self-destructive stupidity becomes counter-productive. They don't thank you for your kindness, and indeed they only blame you for everything that goes wrong in their miserable lives.

That's one of the tenets of conservatism: Everyone has the right to be stupid. Everyone has the right to engage in self-destructive behavior. And it is wisest to allow people to do so, if their minds are so set, because you just can't dictate that people smarten up.

Either people will ultimately kill themselves or they will wise up right before doing so and learn a lesson, a lesson which a government or liberating army is incapable of instilling in them. They have to learn themselves.

There is only one tonic for such irresponsiblity: Give them the responsibility and let them learn to swim or else drown in their own juvenile incoherence. They will almost certainly make the wrong decisions at first, but hopefully they will learn.

The Iraqis will have to put up with these people, long after our troops have retreated into their bases and concern themselves chiefly with force-protection and border security.

If they want to keep these people around, fine (up to a point). When the Iraqis themselves have primary responsibility for their own internal security, they can deal with the problem. Their will be more bloodshed, of course, especially more blood shed from Iraqis loyal to the new government, but that is the consequence of "negotiating" with people who want to kill you.

If the Iraqis wish to die by the score learning that lesson, it's fine by us.

Rather they who volunteered for such mayhem than our American heroes who are doing the jobs of ingrates -- ingrates whose scapegoating and incoherence and cowardice in making even the most basic decisions about their own futures make them mere spectators in their own fates.

Hey Now... This Looks Kinda Familiar

We know we should probably do a different look. But we've kinda gotten accustomed to this design.

You have no idea how proud we are that we were able to cobble this thing together. Problems arose, and we surmounted them. Dopey stuff, stuff that's probably obvious to most people, but still. When a retard colors inside the lines, you say, "Hey, nice going there, Retard."

Still on the to-do list:

Adding in the code necessary to get the Most Recent Entry thing automatically working.

Adding back in the search-function code.

Adding in the correct MuNu archiving code.

Getting the title to act as a link to the home page. We tried this with the text of the title itself, but then that made the title turn to the "link" and "visited" colors, which isn't what we wanted. How does one shut that off? Can we make the entire banner area a link?

Anyway, now that this thing looks like home, we might move over here sooner than expected.

Our Blogspot Address Isn't Quite Dead Yet

Just to let you know: If you've come here from a link at one of the numerous blogs now linking to this address, we're still doing most of our blogging over at the blogspot address.

You can get there by clicking this Ace-o-Spades link.

We're going to switch here, pretty much exclusively, around Tuesday or Wednesday. Right after we figure out how to make our site-design look less, what's the word? ah yes: faggy.

If you're a blogger and you've changed your link to this address, don't bother changing back to www.ace-o-spades.blogspot.com. We'll be here soon enough. And thanks for being so quick to update your blogroll.

The Ultimate Kerry Bumper-Sticker

...comes courtesy of (who else?) Hillary Rodham Clinton, by way of bubble-headed Brit Tina Brown, who just slays us with the cute, "punny" title Taking the GOP Bait, Hook, Line, and Stinker.

Stinker? How does she do it?

At any rate, our hearts soared when we read this delectable quote from Hillary Clinton. What's the best part of the quote? The damning-with-no-praise-at-all for John Kerry, or the scary "Just do what you're told" message to the party faithful?

"You don't have to fall in love," Hillary Rodham Clinton reportedly reproved a top Democratic fundraiser who was recently moaning about Kerry's lackluster performance as a candidate. "You just have to fall in line."

John Kerry

You don't have to fall in love. You just have to fall in line.

Best. Slogan. Ever.

The quote is almost too good to be true. We'd go so far as doubting it was actually said -- no one is that honest and pithy and creepy off-the-cuff -- except that it is attributed to Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Which tends to make it much more plausible.

Photoshoppers, start your photoshopping!

Where's Allah Pundit when you need him? Probably arranging for more Heavenly Hookers for suicide bombers.

Hat tip to Rosetta Stone for printing the article at The Perfect World.

$6.2 Billion in UNSCAM Contracts "Mysteriously Vanish" When Requested for Review

We haven't commented on UNSCAM, because we had nothing much to add to the good work being done in the blogosphere and the right-wing press, if nowhere else.

But now the GAO says that eighty percent of Saddam's contracts have just -- poof! -- vanished, "crippling" their efforts to investigate fraud.

All we can say is that the general excuse for press non-coverage of this sordid scam was that the scandal "didn't involve Americans" and "wasn't sexy enough for the news, TV or print."

Well, boys, now you've got all of the relevant evidence simply "disappearing." Does that sex it up for you enough? Or do we need a fat brunette on her knees?

We don't think the press will cover this any more than it's doing now. When the press says something isn't "sexy" enough for the full-court press, what they generally mean is "it can't be used as a club against Bush and/or the Religious Right."

If 6.2 billion trees are embezzled in a forest, but the press can't link them to Bush, do they make a noise? Apparently not.

Thanks to Instapundit, who has more commentary.

Indymedia: Not Quite the "Fringe" the Liberals Claim It to Be

This is an excellent Ben Shapiro article linked by Nick Kronos on The Perfect World.

The first half is stuff you've almost certainly read if you read blogs at all. It recounts the Hateful Left's vicious attacks on fallen hero Pat Tillman.

But it's the second half that's really interesting. Because, as much as the "reasonable left" would like to pretend that these people aren't a part of their movement, it turns out that the "reasonable left" keeps funding Indymedia with grant-money:

Yet the American left has neglected to excise the Indymedia cancer from its support base. In 2002, the left-leaning Ford Foundation gave Indymedia $50,000. The Tides Foundation has donated $376,000 to Indymedia, according to Frontpagemag.com. Two of the biggest donors to the Tides Foundation? George Soros, who has given over $15 million to Democratic causes during this election cycle, and Teresa Heinz Kerry. Ralph Nader is one of Indymedia's biggest supporters; his group, Public Citizen, is listed as on Indymedia.org as an "ally."

...

The Indymedia list of allies is impressive as well. It lists groups like Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, Adbusters, ZNet, the Institute for Public Accuracy, and Corporate Watch.

It's funny, isn't it? When confronted with this vicious hate in the general media, these people will claim that Indymedia is merely a "fringe" group with no influence on policy.

And yet these same people list Indymedia as an "ally."

Well? Which is it, guys? Fringe-group to which you have no connection, and wish to "condemn in the strongest possible terms," or a trusted ally?

It seems that Indymedia's relationship with the "reasonable left" is very similar to Al Qaeda's relationship to Islam generally. For general public consumption, there are lots of pious pronouncements about fringe elements which are to be condemned, but then, for a different audience, when only the faithful are listening, an entirely different message altogether.

Two Letters; Two Towers; Two Americas

From Little Green Footballs, Pearl 2001:

Sept 11, 11:30 am
Sophie et al,

...I was riding in a cab down Broadway at 8:45 when the first plane flew over. I couldn't believe it, I heard the engines and looked up, it was just above the buildings, a small jet I thought, and a moment later, a boom. Tons of beautiful white paper drifted down on Manhattan. Our Democratic primary is today and my first thought was that a candidate had dropped political leaflets.

...

I directed the cab a few blocks further and saw an amazing sight, a beautiful day and the North Tower on fire. I got out of the cab and watched as one person after another jumped to their deaths 90 stories up as the flames hit them. Behind me was the cavalry, a river of sirens and lights careening down the avenues -- ambulances, Harleys, ladder trucks, black & whites-- weaving through traffic, all throttle and brake, honking, cursing, firemen craning their heads out the windows to look upwards, gaping at the damage, radio to the ear. It was the last thing they would never remember.

I turned away and was staring at the South Tower when the second plane hit. The concussion took my courage. It was an explosion beyond description, I felt that it was 1945 and I was in Berlin, or maybe Pearl Harbor in '41.

I could feel the heat three hundred yards away; everything on four or five floors, people and office equipment, came raining down on the crowd. We all ran north while it fell and got away before it hit because it was high up. As I glanced back I saw the contents of the floors on fire, people killed without a second to consider their lives....

A different sort of letter, courtesy of Alarming News:

But your most disgraceful case was in Somalia; where -- after vigorous propaganda about the power of the USA and its post cold war leadership of the new world order -- you moved tens of thousands of international force, including twenty eight thousands American solders into Somalia. However, when tens of your solders were killed in minor battles and one American Pilot was dragged in the streets of Mogadishu you left the area carrying disappointment, humiliation, defeat and your dead with you. Clinton appeared in front of the whole world threatening and promising revenge, but these threats were merely a preparation for withdrawal.

You have been disgraced by Allah and you withdrew; the extent of your impotence and weaknesses became very clear. It was a pleasure for the "heart" of every Muslim and a remedy to the "chests" of believing nations to see you defeated in the three Islamic cities of Beirut , Aden and Mogadishu.

-- from Osama bin Ladin's Fatwa against the West

And no, we're really not trying to pin 9-11 on Clinton. Clinton was guilty of many things -- a neglectful, Panglossian procrastinating style of foreign policy high among them -- but one can't say Clinton "caused" 9-11. Clinton was America's leader, the man America installed as CINC. To the extent Clinton is to blame, we're all to blame.

But it is worth remembering that Clinton "solved" the Al Qaeda problem by lobbing cosmetic cruise missiles at camels. That didn't actually solve the problem, but it did solve the political problem-- it reassured the nation that we were "doing something" about terrorism.

We weren't really, of course. But in terms of politics, those ineffectual missiles "solved" Clinton's problem.

What is galling to us is that it seems many Americans want to go back to precisely that sort of "solution" -- the phony "solution" of merely getting a problem off the front-pages of newspapers while doing absolutely nothing to actually solve it, and indeed making it worse by encouraging it to fester and metastasize.

The hatred is directed at the perpetrators of these horrific crimes.

But there's another feeling, too. It's not hatred, but it is nearly as intense an emotion, because it's directed not at some barely-glimpsed lunatic cultist in the faraway Kush, but towards people we talk to everyday.

It's a feeling of frustration and disgust.

Frustration and disgust at those who see 9-11 as merely a tricky political problem to be "gotten around" in order to deal with the real problems in America -- making sure no 14 year old ever need ask a parent permission to abort a child, making sure teachers have all the chalk and crayons they claim they have to buy out of pocket.

John Edwards was right. There are indeed Two Americas, but not the two Americas he bloviated about to such ringing media claim.

America is divided into two camps.

Those who want to deal with the actual problem confronting us, and those who merely want to deal with the political problem that arises from that actual problem.

Top Ten Cool Things About Munuvia

10. "Search" function allows you to quickly find and enjoy our oevure of 67,854 Oliver Willis fat-jokes

9. More stable commenting feature means that you won't have to "Say and Pray" when you hit the post-button

8. Advanced Picture-in-Picture fuction allows you to continue scanning Ace of Spades headlines while watching bootleg Brazillian dog-porn

7. "Extended Entry" feature -- which shows just a part of a lengthy article, requiring you to click "continue" to see the rest -- allows us to write overlong, amateurishly self-indulgent pieces that you don't even have to scroll past in order to ignore

6. No longer will you have to remember confusing "www.ace-o-spades.blogspot.com" address; now you'll merely have to write a complex mnemonic song to remember "www.ace.mu.nu" (possible rhymes for "mu.nu": voodoo; Jews Knew (hey, it worked for Amiri Baraka))

5. Fish don't fry in the kitchen; beans don't burn on the grill

4. Clicking on the blog-title banner will bring you back to the homepage from the archives-- now there's an innovation

3. The fact that Wonkette is not on Munuvia means we're still operating in a rich target environment

2. Pixy Misa's major bandwidth means that we won't get our servers blown out when Instapundit finally links us (fingers crossed!)

...and the Number One Cool Thing About Munuvia...

1. There's no commitment required for signing up, and we got a really cool football-phone out of the deal

Specter Wins

51%-49%.

We were thisclose. We had it, but we lost it.

Because about 15,000 or so conservatives desperately wanted to unseat Specter but even more desperately didn't want to unseat themselves from their couches.

Sorry, it's true.

Our New Home

Well, as you can see, we've partly moved into our cool new digs here at Munuvia, but we're still in the middle of unpacking. We'll probably be posting both here and over at the blogspot address until at least the weekend.

We'd like to give a huge thanks to Pixy, proprietor of Munuvia, and creater of the Ambient Irony blog. He's kind of like our current reclusive, mysterious benefactor, Mr. Tranh, except he's not not quite so reclusive nor so mysterious.

And thanks a lot to Miss Apropos, who was kind enough to suggest our little jag-around site to Pixy.

Consumer Confidence Surges

For some time, we've seen confidence climb, only to be knocked back down after a disappointing jobs report. Confidence would climb, heralding a quickening recovery; but then the jobs report would undermine that confidence, delaying a full-scale boom.

But finally both jobs and confidence seem to be in good sync, and they might finally begin reinforcing each other:

NEW YORK (CBS.MW) -- U.S. stocks were solidly higher at midday Tuesday, boosted by bullish news on consumer confidence and home sales as well as another dose of good earnings numbers.

"On the fundamental side, it's a pretty positive backdrop here," said Joe Liro, equity strategist at Stone & McCarthy. "We have a solid economy, a Fed that still shows signs of being relatively patient ... and you've got just absolutely great earnings numbers."

...

The Conference Board reported that its consumer confidence index improved to 92.9 in April from 88.5 in March while the number of Americans who said jobs were hard to get fell to its lowest level since November 2002. Wall Street economists expected the index to remain steady at about 88.7, according to a survey conducted by. See Economic Report.

News on existing home sales was also good with the National Association of Realtors reporting that sales rose 5.7 percent in March to 6.48 million units, well ahead of economists' forecasts for a 1 percent rise to 6.18 million units.

"Today, for some reason, the fact that we got strong economic numbers didn't seem to rattle investors about the prospects of higher rates," Liro said.

Al Qaeda Chem-Bomb Plotter Confesses Iraqi Training

This is huge:

At least one of the al Qaida plotters arrested in Jordan earlier this month as part of a weapons of mass destruction plot that Jordanian officials say could have killed 80,000 people revealed on Monday that he was trained in Iraq before the U.S. invaded in March 2003.

In a confession broadcast on Jordanian television, the unnamed WMD conspirator revealed, "In Iraq, I started training in explosives and poisons. I gave my complete obedience to [Abu Musab al] Zarqawi," the al Qaeda WMD specialist whose base of operations was in Iraq.

Excerpts from the WMD conspirator's confession broadcast by ABC's "Nightline" late Monday show that the WMD plot was planned and trained for in Iraq more than a year before the U.S. invasion.

"After the fall of Afghanistan," the WMD plotter said, "I met Zarqawi again in Iraq." U.S. forces vanquished the Taliban government in Kabul in Dec. 2001 - 15 months before the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

"Some of the details appear to be fairly significant in terms of the planning," reported "Nightline's" Chris Bury. "$170,000, a lot of meetings, getting instructions from people in Iraq, people inside Syria."

"This doesn't appear to be a mom and pop operation," he added.

Let us mention the necessary caveats: The pro-war right has prematurely claimed vindication on stories that didn't pan out. Remember those "secret Iraqi documents" claiming a direct meeting between Saddam and bin Ladin?

And sure, anyone being interrorgated -- especially in a non-Western country -- can be induced to confess to anything, given enough... incentives.

Still: if this checks out, this absolutely vindicates the pro-war right, and rubbishes the constant bleating of "no connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda" of the anti-war, pro-appeasement left.

Another Test

Why the heck is my sidebar partly on one side and partly on the other?

Test

Testing.