We'll be down for about 15 minutes at midnight PDT / 3AM EDT for maintenance.

And probably for a similar period at a similar time tomorrow to complete the work, but I haven't confirmed the schedule for that yet.

Sorry about this, folks.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:53 PM | Add Comment
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Why on earth we'd look at the incomplete costs rather than the full costs, I have no idea.

The trick is that the program ramps up over several years, starting at a "mere" $100 billion a year until it hits $230 billion a year (and it will be more!).

So what to do? Focus on the spending in the first few years then extrapolate them out for ten years, despite the fact that the full ten years' of costs have already been estimated. I.e., rather than taking the estimate in hand, they use an "estimate" they know to be false, using the costs of the first several years and using them as an "approximatiton" of the next ten.

But why approximate like that to get an estimate when we already have an estimate?

Well, because doing it that way dishonestly keeps the costs "down."

Boy, those crazy Tea Partiers and their insane belief that Obama's going to raise taxes on the middle class!

This is all about hating on a black man, you know.

Posted by: Ace at 03:50 PM | Add Comment
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Is it legal to whack al Qaeda bad guys when we find them? The answer is of course it is legal, under international law (well at least our interpretation of it), US law and common sense to kill terrorists anywhere, any time, any place. Now there are those who would argue that the ban on assassinations prohibits us from targeting al Qaeda or other terrorists, but those people would simply be wrong. This right is based in the concept of self defense, nothing more nothing less, not the Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) passed by Congress after 9/11 that allowed us to kill anyone involved with those attacks, no UN resolutions, nope good old-fashioned self defense doctrine is accepted to justify whacking tangos of any flavor.

The rest of this piece at BLACKFIVE and for those who don't think AOS HQ is enough like Hot Air, a video rant on the topic below the fold.

more...

Posted by: Uncle Jimbo at 02:38 PM | Add Comment
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Seriously?

I need confirmation on this one.

Tom Arnold just emailed me to say, "I can't believe this no-talent jackass is parlaying the fact that he schtupped a woman into a semblance of a career."

Posted by: Ace at 02:16 PM | Add Comment
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I was trying to make this point earlier, but didn't complete the circuit.

A Lindsey Graham type can claim, quite fairly, that while he would not vote against Sotomayor just for her ugly racial-superiority remark and believes everyone should get a second chance, he cannot vote for someone who is brazenly dishonest in her testimony.

That doesn't mean Sotomayor is sunk, by any means. But it does mean that her dishonesty is noted, and can and probably will be cited as a reason to vote against her.

Posted by: Ace at 02:07 PM | Add Comment
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First of all, not even half of the country supports her confirmation -- a mere 47%, which means 5% of Obama voters oppose. (More than that, I think -- bear in mind fewer people actually voted compared to the pool of potential voters. Actually CNN only asked "adults," not voters at all.)

Here's CNN's headline, by the way:

Poll: Nearly half support Sotomayor's confirmation

Here's how the headline would read in any non-Obama-Aid news universe:

Poll: Less than half support Sotomayor's confirmation

They actually try to spin the "less than half" into a positive thing. Nearly half! Whoo-hoo! Last time I had sex I lasted nearly 40 seconds!

Anyway.

40% oppose her nomination and 13% aren't sure. Indpendents, importantly, are split, and only 7 in 10 Democrats support her. (The "bitter clingers," we must assume, are the ones who don't support her.)

It's incorrect to view every battle in terms of only success or failure. Any general in a real war looks not merely at success or failure, but at the cost of securing that particular victory. If you take a hill but suffer 5000 losses to the enemy's 500, did you "win'? Well, sort of, but you also sort of lost pretty badly.

Senate Democrats will vote in lockstep for this wise Lie-tina (yeah I'm pretty annoyed I wrote that myself) despite the lack of support for her because the vote costs them very little. While people don't support her, neither do they oppose her in a majority, and even if they did, the passion for their opposition is not that high (except among conservatives, by and large).

So Democrats can afford to defy the American public -- or if not "defy," at least take a step the public does not support -- at low cost.

But a low cost is not no cost at all. The public is already souring on Obama and the Democrats. Obama and the Democrats have continued pushing policies on America that America doesn't want because they had a certain amount of political capital they could burn without endangering themselves.

But they've burned through that by now. The public knows they've given the Democrats a free pass on a lot of stuff already and is becoming increasingly disinclined to continue offering them free passes.

Let's not forget this is one battle in a much bigger war. Yes, we will probably lose. But it's important to consider what the Democrats are blowing their now-depleted store of political capital on, and bear in mind that capital spent on this idiot can't also be spent on cap-and-trade and health care.

Republicans can't win every fight. Actually, being such a small minority, they can't win many fights. But they can make each Democratic success costly. And that's not nothin'.

Dick Morris notes how badly Democratic fortunes have shifted. (Link Fixed.)

I remember, personally, watching Republican numbers slide on the underlying issues from 2004-2006. Even though we had a majority until 2007, I knew the erosion of support would cost us, unless we started making a much better case for ourselves or we were rescued by good news.

We weren't. (Except for the Surge, but by then it was too late.)

I watched those numbers grimly.

Democrats are watching the numbers just as grimly now:

In the polling hierarchy, the least signif icant data measure is a president's per sonal popularity. Here, President Obama excels, with most polls showing him in the high 60s. Next comes his job approval, significant but not necessarily predictive.

Obama's approval, in the Rasmussen Poll, has now dipped to 51 percent, one point less than his 2008 vote share of 52 percent. In past polls, most voters registering disapproval for the president had voted for Sen. John McCain. Now, Obama's starting to lose people who backed him last November.

But the true predictive measurement is a chief executive's and his party's ratings on specific issues. As these shift, so usually do his job-approval numbers and eventually his popularity. And current trends suggest that Obama is in for rough sledding -- his job-approval ratings likely will quickly fall into negative territory and then drop further.

Rasmussen asked voters to compare which party was best on 10 issues. While Obama's ratings are likely better than his party's, the Republicans can take heart in trumping their opposition in eight of the 10 categories.

The most significant topic was, of course, the economy. For the second straight month, Rasmussen shows a GOP lead over the Democrats, this time by 46 percent to 41 percent, indicating that the incessant bad news and the collapse of the false hopes the stock market entertained this spring have taken their toll.

And only 39 percent of voters say that Obama is doing an excellent or good job on the economy, 11 points lower than his overall job approval. Forty-three percent say he's doing fair or poor.

As unemployment continues to rise and even Obama predicts that times will get worse, this gap on economic issues will likely rise.

On their competing health-care reform plans, Rasmussen finds Obama and the Republicans drawing equal support. On health care generally, Democrats find their margin down to 4 points from 18 two months ago.

Obama is rapidly losing support on health reform, his key issue. And if he stays behind on health care and the economy for long, nothing much will hold him and his party aloft.

Obama and the Democrats can still be rescued by good news in the economy. The American economy is resilient and can usually grow no matter how badly the government sabotages it.

But this seems less and less likely. Obama's sabotage is not of the normal variety. It is massive and system-wide and fundamental. The nightmare scenario, whereby Obama sabotages the economy but it nevertheless manages some growth, encouraging further sabotage, may yet unfold. But Obama's doing so much damage he's -- what's the word? -- admirable in failing to leave himself any hidey-holes or escape-hatches when the damage becomes apparent.

Sotomayor is overall one of the smaller cases of Democratic overreach and Democratic thwarting of the wishes of swing voters (and most of the country, when conservatives are included). But these things add up.

And if present trends continue, the battlefield may well change in 2010.

Obama's Not Clinton: I'm guessing many conservatives are downbeat because they see a repeat of Clinton -- a president they loathed who was, despite their most fervent wishes, popular with the American people.

Clinton was only popularity because the economy began growing like gangbusters. (Actually, it began growing under his predecessor, but the full effects of the recovery were not acknowledged until sometime into the middle of Clinton's first term.)

Obama will not likely have that advantage.

Now, if he does, then yes: Prepare for eight years of eating your livers.

But Clinton had two big advantages: Hillary and his liberal instincts. Hillary did such a poor job of selling health care the pubic recoiled from it, and Clinton was initially liberal enough to invite the Republican Revolution and became, much to his benefit, "stuck" with a Congress that kept spending down and wouldn't approve of further tax hikes. Having lost Congress, Clinton was forced to let the economy fend for itself, pretty much... which it did, and, as it usually does when left alone, it grew.

Even if Obama is thwarted on health care and cap-and-tax, he's still already grown the government well beyond sustainable levels. Clinton benefited from a rapidly declining deficit. Obama will be in as opposite a position as the human imagination is capable of positing.

He's been willing to risk his presidency on his true-believer faith that socialism is not only an answer, but the answer. He's wrong about that, and, while evil miracles are still possible, conservatives should reflect on how much they believe what they think they believe.

If you believe your concept of how economics works is right, how can you be so downbeat about conservativism's eventual resurgence? If you're sure socialism is counterproductive, why the grim predictions for Obama's success?

Again, there is always that improbable nightmare scenario to worry about. But it's not the most likely scenario at all. The most likely scenario is that Obama plunges the country into a four (or eight, or 12) year economic funk, an American Lost Decade, and he and the Democrats pay dearly for that.

Oh, and incidentally, Ronald Reagan was not the true father of the conservative revolution.

Jimmy Carter was. Regan was the revolution's first son.

I've got a lot of hopes for Obama on this score.

Posted by: Ace at 01:20 PM | Add Comment
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Distributing a... sex gum to kids, the Palestinians claim.

Sex gum.

Yeah, that's what the Israelis really need. A greater rate of Palestinian fecundity.

Thanks to Nita.

More Sex Stuff: New Zealand Airlines figures out a way to make people pay attention to their pre-flight safety speech: Nudity. Or rather, near nudity, which focuses the mind even more than real nudity.

If you're as crazy about the little brunette as I am, you get to see something, all blurred out, at the end.

Posted by: Ace at 11:57 AM | Comments (1)
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Here's the link to the live stream; YouTube vids are added a couple of hours after the questioning. Sessions' stuff is good; Graham's stuff is pretty good too, although Sotomayor navigates his minefield. (She also avoids his cutesy-poo trick -- he asked her to "recite" her wise Latina line, claiming he didn't have it handy. He just wanted that sound bite of her repeating the statement again, or changing it to make it sound better, which he'd then seize upon. But she saw through this ruse and buttoned her lip. I would say this ruse was "beneath the dignity of the senate" or something if I weren't so rooting for this idiot to fall for it.)

Update: Attacks her on her temperament, noting all the negative ratings she's gotten from lawyers, including calling her a "bully," stating that she makes "inappropriate outbursts," and "seems angry."

Sessions had "her back on her heels" as Chris Wallace said. So his vid is worth watching.

Two answers that shed light into the mind of Sonia Sotomayor: more...

Posted by: Ace at 11:37 AM | Comments (6)
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Interesting.

I just heard it and will look for a link but Jon Kyl of Arizona asked Sotomayor if she agreed with Obama's idea that the law will only get you so far in deciding some cases. She said she disagreed with the President.

Now, I don't believe that for a moment (at least as a practical matter) but it will make an interesting ad on judicial nominations in 2010 and 2012.

Nicely done.

Now he's going after her on her bias in favor of Latinas and their role in the law.

More [ace]: She keeps calling her exultation of her own biases a "rhetorical flourish" and disingenously claims she never meant what she meant. For example, Kyl quoted her discussing a court that split along gender lines, the three women voting one way, the two men the other. The quote obviously was intended to suggest that either there were gender differences in the interpretation of the law, or even (in accordance with Sotomayor's we're-better philosophy) that the women were right because they were women.

Sotomayor's response? I never intended that remark to suggest some sort of gender difference in the application of the law.

What?

Huh?

Kyl makes the further point that it is important to be aware of biases and prejudices, but only so as to be alert to them in order to correct for them. He puts it to her simply: You can't correct your biases because you're not "on alert" for them at all; rather, you praise them as affirmative goods. You're not looking to correct them in order to make a positive contribution to jurisprudence; but indeed believe that your biases and prejudices are your positive contribution to jurisprudence.

She offers another dog-food answer about how she never intended to mean what she meant, and that she was only trying to inspire young Latinas, and who can argue with that?

Steven Hayes on FoxNews says he's "blown away at how she's trying to twist her speeches," at her naked disingenousnes in flatly stating that her words don't have their obvious meanings, and in fact often have the opposite meanings.

I'm blown away too. This is not a walk-back. This is brazenly lying while giving testimony. And lying is of course reason to vote against nominee.

You can promise you won't sin any further. You can offer context or mitigation for past sins. You can argue your statements weren't even sins at all.

You can do all of that.

But you can't just repeatedly lie about having made those statements or meant what you clearly did when you made them. That is every much a lie as claiming you weren't in a particular location on a particular date or that you don't know someone you know well.

We see now her philosophy of interpreting the Constitution -- or any words, in fact. Words mean precisely what it is advantageous for them to mean at any moment, no matter how strained or even how nonsensical that claimed meaning may be.

Powerline: She Lies. [ace] "The opposite of the truth," they say.

Idiocy: [ace] I wanted to comment on this. Thankfully palin steele, the non-partisan, states the stupidity for me:

Sotomayor can't be lying because only she knows the intent of her words. DrewM, don't you realize it doesn't matter what her words means prima facie. It only matters what she INTENDED, and you can't prove her intent beyond what she is now saying she meant. So you can't prove she is lying.

Posted by: palin steele (the only non-partisan on AoSHQ)

It is indeed difficult to prove someone is lying about what they meant. That does not, however, mean it's impossible, or mean that they're telling the truth even if you can't prove they're lying.

That's why this form of perjury is so popular. See Hillary "I can't recall" Clinton lying about Whitewater (where she later "explained" that she'd said she'd never worked on Whitewater at all, despite billing records proving she worked on it for dozens of billable hours, because she didn't know the development was called Whitewater; she only knew it according to its three-letter billing code) and Bill Clinton, who didn't believe, he said, that he was "alone" with Monica Lewinsky while using her as a human humidor.

But one's intent is indeed a factual matter just as their actions are a factual matter. Almost every crime requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the criminal had criminal intent. Intent is, indeed, defined as a fact of the crime which must be proved.

We can prove that Sonia Sotomayor is lying: She said the same thing at least six times and a simple familiarity with the English language and semantic logic tells us what she meant.

She is now telling us that everything she said previously was said in a made-up childhood language called "Opposite Talk," where everything she says means the precise opposite.

This is a lie.

If I were to be sued for libeling Sonia Sotomayor, I could attempt a defense that each time I called her a liar, I was not in fact calling her a liar and had no intention to do such a thing; indeed, when I called her a liar, I meant a "wise truth-teller."

I could attempt this defense, but I would lose, at it is absurd. Everyone knows what my words mean and therefore my intent in using them.

Posted by: DrewM at 10:21 AM | Add Comment
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This will not end well.

A Maryland company under contract to the Pentagon is working on a steam-powered robot that would fuel itself by gobbling up whatever organic material it can find — grass, wood, old furniture, even dead bodies.

Robotic Technology Inc.'s Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot — that's right, "EATR" — "can find, ingest, and extract energy from biomass in the environment (and other organically-based energy sources), as well as use conventional and alternative fuels (such as gasoline, heavy fuel, kerosene, diesel, propane, coal, cooking oil, and solar) when suitable," reads the company's Web site.

That "biomass" and "other organically-based energy sources" wouldn't necessarily be limited to plant material — animal and human corpses contain plenty of energy, and they'd be plentiful in a war zone.

Yes and if there isn't enough "biomass" around, this armed little bugger will simply 'make some more'.

Now when Skynet becomes self-aware and we try and shut it off it will simply kill us faster so it can eat. Great.

Thanks to "maddogg" in the comments.

Posted by: DrewM at 07:43 AM | Add Comment
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