No Replacement For Displacement

World Poker Tour

The Travel Channel has a show which is a must see if you are at all interested in playing poker, or even if you are interested in watching good players. The World Poker Tour is on Wednesday nights at 9:00. They play no-limit tournament poker at casinos across the United States, and the final table(the last 10 surviving players) is televised. They show each player's hand as it is being played which is pretty cool.

Most of the time, when I've seen televised poker tournaments, they've come off a bit flat. The tension seems a bit forced. I think that is the case the World Series of Poker, held at Binion's Horseshoe in Vegas.
They televise it every year on ESPN, but even though the tournament is better, I think the coverage of the World Poker Tour is better.

Today's tourney has had a good bit of action. Pocket aces was cracked by K-J that made two pair on the flop, just a second ago a monster pot where K-K(cowboys, or King Kong) beat A-Q suited

If you liked the movie Rounders, watch this show. Unlike the movie, this is the real thing.

Update: The game was won when the winner beat pocket 3's with A-9 by catching a 9 on the flop.

Today is Saddam's Birthday!

By coincidence, today the worm that was eating the contents of Saddam's right eye socket finally ran out of stuff to eat, and has moved on to Saddam's left eye socket.

liberté, fraternité, égalité? Simplisme!

Gee here is a shock. The UK Telegraph is reporting that the French helped the Mukhabarat to stifle dissent:

The files, retrieved from the looted and burned foreign ministry by The Telegraph last week, detail the warmth and strength of Iraqi-French ties.

...

[The Iraqi documents state] that "one of our sources" met the "deputy spokesman" of the French foreign ministry, "with whom he has good relations".

It claims that the spokesman from the justice and interior ministries had sought to find a legal way of preventing the Indict meeting.

The paper said it had been agreed that no Iraqi opposition leaders would be granted visas for France to attend the conference. It is not clear if Iraqis living outside the country were granted visas.

Although the conference went ahead, the Iraqis regarded moves to undermine it as a striking success.

Think about this. France, the nation that puffs itself up as believing in liberty, fraternity, and equality, tossed those principles out the window at the behest of a foreign power. They undermined their own citizens' right to dissent in order to benefit one of the worst thugs on the planet.

When Steven Den Beste wondered what France was trying to hide, I doubt even he would have believed that they would allow foreign powers to undermine the rights of their own citizens.

Then again, this is the nation of Vichy.

It's not just Puppies!

OK, that's it! I've had it with with FrankJ's Filthy Lies about Glenn Reynolds murdering Satan so he can worship Hobos(or the other way around), and Glenn Reynolds putting puppies in a blender. Neither has Glenn fed blenders to puppies, even when the puppies were very very hungry. These things are all filthy lies, without a shred of evidence. .

I on the other hand, have lies, which are only somewhat filthy, have a very firm basis in innuendo, and are based on a conversation I had with Glenn himself back when he was giving a speech at Yale. I was stunned when he related the story to me, usually when someone performs an act of such incredible and devious genius, they take credit for it; however, Glenn had told noone about what he had done until he met me at the post speech reception. I don't know what it was, maybe the wine, maybe the cheese was a little spoiled, but after we exchanged pleasantries, he said something so stunning, so immense in its historical implications, that even now, six months later, I can't believe he did it. Anyway, here is what I remember of the conversation:

"Kitty didn't know."
"'Kitty didn't know?' Who's Kitty, Glenn, and what didn't she know?"
"She didn't know that I did it."
"Glenn, you're weirding me out. Who is Kitty, and what didn't she know?"
"Kitty Dukakis. She had investigators all over the place looking, but she never found out."
"Find out what? What did you do? Glenn, you didn't do anything, um, illegal, did you?"
"Oh, no no. Nothing illegal. But she never found out."
"Find out what? C'mon, stop being so cryptic."
"Oh, she tried to find out. They poured over the tapes for hours, but they could never prove it. I fixed it that way."
"Glenn, you're scaring me. You didn't blackmail anyone, did you?"
"No, nothing so bad as that. Well, almost as bad as that. But I'm not ashamed for doing it. In fact, I did the country a service."
"A service? You sound like you participated in Watergate or something."
"Watergate? Oh no no no. Nothing like that. Well, maybe a little like that."
"You spied on the Dukakis campaign?!?"
"No, no spying. Spying would have been too obvious. Not after the Gary Hart thing."
"'Gary Hart thing?!? What are you talking about?"

Then he angrily muttered something to himself under his breath, and said to me "Gee, there must be something funky with this cheese! I'm not feeling too good. I better go." As he left, one of his ten immense and very threatening bodyguards pulled me roughly aside, and growled, "You'll forget everything you heard today. If you tell anyone about it, if you even think about it again, any blended puppies will be on your head!"

I drove home that night, shocked at what I heard, and afraid that maybe some of Glenn's goons might hunt me down. If I was to survive, if any puppies were to avoid blending, I had to find out what it was. What was the secret? I spent months working, trying to hunt down what it was. It had something to do with both the Gary Hart campaign, and the Dukakis campaign. It was buried deep. But what was it? I finally managed to hunt down some photos that were found deep in the archives. What I found shocked me. How come noone had noticed this before? I called up Michael Dukakis and Gary Hart. They couldn't believe that this had been right in front of them, all this time, and noone had seen it. Noone had noticed it. Why would they? This Glenn Reynolds guy was a comparative unknown then. But somehow, via some arcane methods, he had managed to do something so devious, so ingenious in its execution, that it could scarcely be believed. But after digging up the photographic evidence, the photos(which, by the way, aren't photoshopped in any way, shape, or form) tell the tale:

In this photo, taken right before the infamous tank photo, Glenn Reynolds had given Michael Dukakis via post-hypnotic suggestion the idea to take that tank ride. Then, via his vast legion of puppy-blending minions, he managed to scoop up all the video, and get himself airbrushed out of all the film and photographic imagery. Only this picture managed to survive unchanged. This photo we found on the rim of the Mt. St. Helens volcano. Via hypnosis and sodium pentathol treatments, we found out that Glenn was there on the Monkey Business that day. He brought Donna Rice, a known puppy blender and hobo worshipper, down to meet Gary Hart. Hart, being a Democrat, had no choice but to fall for Rice's charms. Then Glenn struck, had one of his Hobo-worshiping acolytes take the picture of Donna Rice sitting on the lap of an obviously comatose Gary Hart, and conveniently managed to airbrush himself out of the photo that reached the press.

Conspiracy? I don't know. However, every time I walk into the mall, I can't help but notice that the Pet Store is only about 20 yards from Sears' Small appliance section. I'm not taking any chances.

Another anti-war plank goes rotten.

As everyone knows, one of the big canards by the anti-war crowd was that Saddam and Al Qaeda had nothing to do with each other. In fact, they had so little to do with each other they had lots of meetings to strategize their non-relationship. The UK Daily Telegraph has managed to obtain documents about how the Iraqis actually had at least one meeting with Al Qaeda back in 1998:

One paper is marked "Top Secret and Urgent". It is signed "MDA", a codename believed to be the director of one of the intelligence sections within the Mukhabarat, and dated February 19, 1998. It refers to the planned trip from Sudan by bin Laden's unnamed envoy and refers to the arrangements for his visit.

A letter with this document says the envoy is a trusted confidant of bin Laden. It adds: "According to the above, we suggest permission to call the Khartoum station [Iraq's intelligence office in Sudan] to facilitate the travel arrangements for the above-mentioned person to Iraq. And that our body carry all the travel and hotel costs inside Iraq to gain the knowledge of the message from bin Laden and to convey to his envoy an oral message from us to bin Laden."

This meeting was so successful that it was extended a week:

According to handwritten notes at the bottom of the page, the letter was passed on through another director in the Mukhabarat and on to the deputy director general of the intelligence service.

It recommends that "the deputy director general bring the envoy to Iraq because we may find in this envoy a way to maintain contacts with bin Laden". The deputy director general has signed the document. All of the signatories use codenames.

The other documents then confirm that the envoy travelled from Khartoum to Baghdad in March 1998, staying at al-Mansour Melia, a first-class hotel. It mentions that his visit was extended by a week. In the notes in a margin, a name "Mohammed F. Mohammed Ahmed" is mentioned, but it is not clear whether this is the the envoy or an agent.

But what about all those heated denials?

Intriguingly, the Iraqis talk about sending back an oral message to bin Laden, perhaps aware of the risk of a written message being intercepted. However, the documents do not mention if any meeting took place between bin Laden and Iraqi officials.

The file contradicts the claims of Baghdad, bin Laden and many critics of the coalition that there was no link between the Iraqi regime and al-Qa'eda. One Western intelligence official contacted last night described the file as "sensational", adding: "Baghdad clearly sought out the meeting. The regime would have wanted it to happen in the capital as it's only there they would feel safe from surveillance by Western intelligence."

There you go. Another leak now sprung in the anti-war/pro-Saddam boat.

Where's the perp walk?

OK, sorry I haven't posted in a while, but I'm right now working in a job that will probably qualify me for the 8th ring of hell. How bad is this job? Let's just say that the pit of hell I'm in is somewhere above that reserved for Geraldo, but somewhere below that for televangelists, and you've probably already hung up on me. Anyway, on to the main topic.

I've noticed that there is something missing from our roundup of Ba'athists: the perp walk. The perp walk is something police departments do when they've bagged a really big fish. They let slip when and where the defendant will be brought into the station house so that the press can be there to photograph the event. We haven't done that for any of the Saddam's baddies. All the video that is being shown is when they were in power, with their swagger and their bodyguards and their trappings of power. I think it would be very instructive for the associates of Kim Jong Il and Bashar Assad to see their Iraqi compadres being pulled roughly from the back of a Hummvee with their hands cuffed behind them, and roughly escorted by a couple of soldiers/marines into a cell.

Oops. Gotta go. Off to hell work

Another Bad day for Terrorists

From the Jerusalem Post today, Nabeel Musawi a high muckety-muck in the INC, has some rather strong opinions about the Palestinians should have in a Free Iraq:

Today, the large Palestinian community is regarded by INC leaders as a loathsome fifth column, among the most faithful followers of Saddam Hussein.
Will the Palestinians be welcome to remain in a new, post-Saddam Iraq?

"Absolutely not," Musawi snapped.

Nor, for that matter, will Arabs who had opposed the US-led war to deliver freedom to the Iraqi people.

Not only that, but the INC has some ideas that aren't exactly going to make them popular with the rest of the Arabic-speaking world:

We had spoken before of the INC vision of an "arc of peace" that would run from Turkey, through Iraq and Jordan to Israel, creating a new fulcrum in the Middle East. Does that concept still stand? "You know we have always wanted that," he said

Put a fork in Arafat, and Pan-Arabism, for that matter. It is done, finished, kaput. Gulf War I wounded it, Gulf War II killed it. Now for some threats, muttered sotto voce to the Syrians and Saudis, to prevent anyone from trying to reanimate the corpse.

On Fox News tonight

John Gibson was interviewing Oliver North today, and Oliver North took an interpreter and talked to an Imam for a few minutes. The Imam, through the interpreter, told Ollie that he had instructed his people to turn in any foreigners in to American forces. Ollie responded, "But, aren't we foreigners?" The response: "No, you're Americans." I think we've just dealt Pan Arabism and Islamism a death blow.

OK, I've been bad

I've barely done any blogging for the duration of the war. I'm back now.

I wanted him alive

I know this is probably counterintuitive, but I wanted Saddam alive. If he was blown into bits, then we are going to have to deal with five bazillion of Saddam's basement tapes now--because there will be no body.. OBL and Saddam Hussein--the Jimi Hendrix's of our age.

Did we bag Saddam?

MSNBC and Fox are both reporting that we hit Saddam sometime this morning with a bunch of JDAMs. Fox is saying right now that Mansoor Ijaz has talked to one of his contacts, who tells him that one of Saddam's cronies sold him out.

"We are In Baghdad"

Greg Kelly is reporting on Fox that he is in Baghdad. He says the city looks deserted.

Now there's a shock

Descendents of Nazis offer Iraqi foreign minister asylum.

Someone Will be blogging this in about a minute

Make that 30 seconds, Aaron.

Has anyone noticed this?

I think I'm detecting a bit of sexism regarding the TV coverage of the POW rescue. Instead of calling her "PFC Jessica Lynch," it is either "Jessica," or "Jessica Lynch". I doubt if she was a man that they'd would ignore her rank in the Armed Services in that way.

New Parts Department Link

I found the Kurdistan Observer on Lucianne.com today. I'm sticking it in the Parts Department for the time being, and I'll be paying attention for any interesting links in the future.

Go ahead. Make my day

John is a Purple People-Eating Psycho Monkey ...with a Battle Rating of 8.6 To see if your Food-Eating Battle Monkey can defeat John, enter your name:

Yeah, that's right Michele. Cringe before Purple-People Eating Master of Disaster!