A picture is worth several thousand empty seats.

From CBS White House Correspondent Mark Knoller.

DNC says there were 8,000 people at the Wolstein Center at Cleveland State Univ. Full capacity is about 13,600.

That's the DNC number. Anyone want to bet 8,000 was a wee bit generous?

Even the NY Times noticed.

Crush their spirits and break their backs.

Posted by: DrewM at 01:15 PM | Comments (81)
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Resident hottie Candace Kita dropped by the palatial Ace of Spades HQ executive offices in Beverly Hills for a chat this week. Below is her enlightening interview.

AoSHQ: Do you have any funny Halloween stories to share?

Candace: Long before I was an actor, I was a professional clown named Blueberry Muffin. I actually paid my way through graduate school this way. The only day I felt normal driving in my car with blue hair and a blue face was Halloween.

AoSHQ: That is too funny! What is your funniest clown story as Blueberry Muffin?

Candace: Well, I don't know if it's my funniest, but one weekend I was doing a show out in Malibu. I was on a rather rural road and turned a corner. A man riding a bicycle was heading straight for my car. He was looking behind him at his two sons that were also riding bikes. He turned around and I saw that it was Mel Gibson. He was so shocked to see a blue clown driving a car he fell over into the ditch. I heard one of his sons say, "Get out of the road, Dad!" I was so shocked to see Mel Gibson that I didn't stop and kept going!

Years go by, and I play opposite Mel in a show called "Complete Savages". I play his girlfriend, Misty. I told him the story and said, "Good thing I didn't hit you because then there would be no Braveheart." We both had a good laugh.

UPDATE [Gabe]: There are some photos below that are NSFW in many workplaces. Be advised, if you have a Nazi IT or HR department or just mega-uptight coworkers. more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 12:50 PM | Comments (118)
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As hunter, outdoosman, and Lyme disease awareness advocate Wellington Winchell Wolf sagely observed, "Gentlemen, let's not start plucking each other's ticks just yet."

But 52-42 is pretty solid, and while I don't eally want to bank on it, I know a lot of people are adding on 5 points to represent typical Republican overperformance at the actual polling places as compared to the polls.

"Six in ten suburban voters say they plan to vote for the Republican candidate for the U.S. House on Tuesday,” says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. “That's not good news for the Democrats since most of the seats in play are in suburban districts."

...

The survey indicates that 44 percent have a favorable view of the GOP, with 43 percent saying they hold an unfavorable view. Forty-six percent of the country has a favorable view of the Democratic Party compared to 47 percent with an unfavorable view.

Fox News' last poll showed the public split on the GOP -- 44% favorable, 44% unfavorable -- but had Democrats at 42% favorable, 50% unfavorable.

Although previous elections have been wrongly called "permanent realignments," this election will produce one permanent, but limited, realignment: The South will now be almost uniformly red. Democrats have been able to hang on to congressional districts there, and even statewide, based on talking a good game about moderation and being blue-dogs and other such bullshit, and also based on the South's let's-get-over-it-already animus against Lincoln's Republican Party.

That's over. A few Democrats will persist in majority-minority urban districts, and maybe one fluke hold-out, but from now on the South will finally be Republican territory up and down the ballot. The spectacle of so many "Blue Dogs" voting with Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama on the stimulus and health care put lie to the idea of a "conservative Democrat."

Posted by: Ace at 12:31 PM | Comments (100)
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Last push.

I'll be at the Freedom Works Victory Center tomorrow night in Vegas (near the airport), making calls or somethin'. Whatever they want. Probably calls.

The address there is:

Hampton Inn and Suites 6575 South Eastern Ave, Near the airport.

I'll be there 5:30 until 8:30.

The EventBrite sign up is here.

Posted by: Ace at 11:50 AM | Comments (126)
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Jason Sudekis' "Joe Biden" is always worth a watch. This is decently funny.

Also worth a watch: Bill Hader as Vincent Price doing another Halloween Special (guests Judy Garland, JFK, and Liberace, of course) and this randomly funny sketch about a lame Vegas lounge duo. SNL goes to this well a lot, these bad entertainment duos, but they keep coming up with decent variations of it.

The Back to the Future screen tests were good too, but they're not posted yet.

Oh, this one about people traumatized by their embarrassing videos going viral is so-so, with one halfway decent laugh at the end, but it's internet-specific, so I guess I should link it.

Posted by: Ace at 11:19 AM | Comments (51)
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51% of Democrats, that is. Only 47% want him renominated.

Will he be primaried? Not seriously. Maybe as a protest by either an old DLC type or someone of the open left.

No one can primary Obama because even if you won the nomination you'd lose the general, with the critical bloc of black Democratic voters strongly turned off by it all.

Still, if this sentiment persists, he might take another page from LBJ. "If nominated, I will not run, if elected, I will not serve..."

If we assume, correctly, that Obama is all about adoration and isn't very happy about having the first real job of his life (and first real accountability), the Obama Declares Victory and Goes Home scenario becomes more likely.

He needs an easy gig, like running some kind of foundation or think tank. Something where he can work ten or twelve hours a week, golf with celebrities, and receive adoration of (smaller but more, um, selective) crowds.

Posted by: Ace at 10:54 AM | Comments (123)
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That's all that's been reported so far. I think the end of the combat mission in Iraq isn't quite as ended as advertised.

Posted by: Ace at 10:17 AM | Comments (101)
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DiT is MIA. I guess he's still celebrating last night's win by the Rangers. Awesome game. 2-0 over the Leafs in Toronto, great goaltending, great...oh, right. Yeah, the other Rangers.

Posted by: DrewM at 10:10 AM | Comments (216)
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I don't know why but I like picking on Friedman so much. I guess it's because it's like watching a big budget movie that just stinks. You think, "if they let that guy make that movie, maybe someday I can make one. I couldn't do any worse."

Friedman is the kind of guy who often comes so close to making a valid point and then falls just short or his column is just a steaming pile of idiocy because he falls in love with a few stock ideas (China will rule all! The Saudis are the key to Mideast peace!).

Today he turns in one of the former columns. He comes so close to getting the importance of India, why they are a rising power and then... dreck.

India and America are both democracies, a top Indian official explained to me, but emotionally they are now ships passing in the night. Because today the poorest Indian maid believes that if she can just save a few dollars to get her kid English lessons, that kid will have a better life than she does. So she is an optimist. “But the guy in Kansas,” he added, “who today is enjoying a better life than that maid, is worried that he can’t pass it on to his kids. So he’s a pessimist.”

Yes, when America lapses into a bad mood, everyone notices. After asking for an explanation of the Tea Party’s politics, Gupta remarked: “We have moved away from a politics of grievance to a politics of aspiration. Where is the American dream? Where is the optimism?”

Wait, what? A column on India's surge on the global stage ends with a shot at the tea party? And of course it misses the reality of the tea party movement by about as much as possible (nothing new for Tom).

Sorry Tom but you beloved Obama is the one saying the America will have to do with less in the future, appointed anti-prosperity advisers and implemented economy killing policies to ensure he was right.

The tea party is about empowering individuals to do all the wonderful things that mother India dreams for her kids too. We used to do that here (and honestly, still do) but decades of reckless government spending and borrowing (by both parties) has reached the end of the line. We either pull back now and rebuild or we try give up hope, suck out the last few drops from the bottle and ride it out to hell.

Yes, there is a lot of anger from the tea party and Americans in general but it's because something has been stolen from them, something very important...the ability to organize our lives with the minimum amount of government support and control. When you lose something of value and want it back from those who took it, anger is an appropriate response.

Anger isn't the opposite of optimism, in fact they can be quite complimentary. If you are angry that your future isn't bright but that if things change it can be, that's healthly anger. The anger of the tea party isn't of paralyzing frustration but is motivational and at it's core optimistic that things are set back to right, the future will be bright.

As for the rest of the column, I really wish Friedman and other China lovers would pay more attention to India. Yes, they are an economic competitor but they are the kind we can deal with and they simply don't pose the security/military threat China does. We should be working with them as much as possible. Free nations tend to find ways to do things that benefit them equally in economic terms. With China, all economic opportunities are filtered through and distorted by the larger security concerns.

In the long run, I think India is a better bet over China. Economic and political freedom are messy (and lord knows Tom hates messy) but they are the only proven winners over the long term.

The tea party wants to restore economic liberty to this country. What could be more optimistic than that?

Posted by: DrewM at 09:00 AM | Comments (129)
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A brief recap of the Alaska Senate race to date:

-Insurgent candidate backed by national tea party organizations and national conservative super star, who just happens to be from the same state, defeats entrenched Republican hack in primary. (Check!)

-Entrenched Republican hack Senator refuses to accept the judgment of her party and flirts with running on minor party line. When that fails, she launches long shot write-in campaign. (Check!)

-Insurgent candidate's security staff gets into fracas with editor of online political website. (Check!)

-State Supreme Court invents new rules to help long time incumbent to bitterly cling to her long shot hopes. (Check!)

-The race can't get any more bizarre. (Check!)

Big Journalism has the recording and transcript of a voicemail accidentally left on a Miller campaign staffer's phone from a reporter for the Anchorage CBS-TV affiliate. In the conversation reporters (possibly including the station's news director and assignment editor) discuss trying to identify sex offenders at a Miller event and using social media outlets to announce that "Joe Miller punched at rally".

Palin is, um, pissed.

Corrupt bastards. CBS/media plot against Joe Miller before our Anchorage rally Thurs Kinda'what I've put up w for 2 yrs

No comment so far from the station or the reporters propagandists involved. I'm sure they will say, "hey just joking! Don't you wingnuts have a sense of humor?"

Funny one guys! You know just like when MurCOKEski had a talk radio host thrown off the air for supporting Miller and criticizing Her Royal Cokeness.

I know some of you will say the idea of an "objective media" is a joke in itself but I would disagree. The MFM are objective...objectively hyper-liberal partisans.

UPDATE: Monty sends along the station's confir-denial...Yeah, it's us but it's not what you think it is. more...

Posted by: DrewM at 06:56 AM | Comments (340)
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