At Hot Air's headlines, a very hit-whoring blog post at The Hill.

Their claim: Palin previously said she would only run if no common-sense conservatives did. This "boxed her in," as of course some common-sense conservative will run. (Pence is as orthodox a conservative as you could like; Thune too. Daniels too, except for that black mark of the "truce on social issues," but he could always recant.)

Now she needs some wiggle room, the claim goes, because the criteria she set out means that she can't run. So she's added a new, important, game-changing criterion that means she's going back on her word and also that she's of course positioning herself for a presidential run.

That new criterion? The candidate can't just be a common-sense conservative, but must also be... (drum roll) electable.

Uh, this seems sort of obvious to me, lurking around as an unstated but always-present caveat/criterion. Obviously, I think, if the GOP seemed likely to nominate someone who couldn't win, in Palin's view, I think the "wiggle room" for Palin would exist for her to jump in, and no one would really bat an eye.

Well, of course they'd bat an eye, since the whole internet now relies it seems on Palin stories to drive traffic. But no serious-minded person would bat an eye over that.

I really don't think this is big news. "Electability" is of course a primary consideration in candidate selection. (Well, not always a primary one, but I think it should be.)

I don't really see the how this qualifies as newsworthy enough to do a Sarah Palin Then vs. Sarah Palin Now type analysis.

The only interesting question I see here is who Sarah Palin might have in mind as failing the electability test, and, given that she has electability in mind, she probably is thinking of someone failing that test. Who? No idea. Maybe Huckabee, maybe Romney, maybe Ron Paul. (Ron Paul!!11!!)

More News That Isn't News: DC elites down on Palin.

If the media is still in Palinmania after two years, where any mention drives traffic, ratings, and revenue, shouldn't she get a Saturday morning cartoon out of the deal, too, like the Beatles did?

Posted by: Ace at 08:33 AM | Comments (380)
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But is it?

Ryan focuses on the unlikelihood of securing a permanent extension of the Bush Tax Cuts and getting the death tax frozen at zero. I will assume that's true, because it seems so -- liberals need a sop.

But what about all the pork?

This raises a question about priorities among conservatives. Let's say that a certain number of conservatives will defect away from voting for the deal due to it being not strong enough as far as keeping current low tax rates permanent. That means that some number of Democrats will have to be lured into voting for the bill in their place, and that, I imagine, means pork.

So the strategic choice I'm seeing here is this:

Conservative defectors can swallow hard and vote for the tax deal as regards tax cuts only (that is, refuse to vote for a porked-out bill, but accept the compromise 2-year extension of the income tax cuts for the wealthy and a reduction, but not elimination, of the death tax) or they can refuse to vote for those aspects, in which case the deal needs to be sweetened with pork to induce Democrats to vote for it.

If they'd vote for a "clean bill" (no pork, but with the compromises in place), then all conservatives can vote against the bill in its current form, rejecting the pork, and forcing a new deal containing no pork.

But if they'd also vote against such a clean bill because it's not a pure victory on tax rates, then Democrats need to be brought along, and that means pork.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is that taking a maximalist/pure position on tax rates results in pork.

I'm more against additional spending than I am in favor of pushing for tax cuts permanancy. (Partly because that doesn't seem possible at the moment, with Obama holding the veto pen.) My concern here is that a demand on permanancy results, inevitably, in something else I hate, more pork, more spending, higher deficits.

And to be honest I'm not certain that isn't the kabuki game being played -- that Congress, as a whole, including hold-out "purity" sort of conservatives, actually want one last (???) indulgence in pork, and these claims about needing the pork to get it passed are very convenient for them, as they have their cake (pork) and can eat it too (claim they're against all of this).

Am I wrong here? I'd like to scuttle the bill over the pork (and I think Obama and the Democrats would be in a bad position if we did, as they have made promises about reducing pork too, very recently), but if we did, we'd need the holdouts to agree to vote for the improved, pork-free compromise, which I don't know if they'd do.

Posted by: Ace at 08:20 AM | Comments (186)
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TXMarko asked if we were gonna have another Bowl Pickem League for interested morons.

We are.

First go here and sign up. Group ID is 29800, password is hobohunt.

Like last year, you pick winners and then assign "confidence points" to each matchup. If you pick a winner in that game, you get credit for however many confidence points you assigned to that game.

There's 35 games (holy crap, 35?), so you assign each game points from 1-35.

Then after you demonstrate your genius at a) picking winners and b) assigning the correct number of points, you bask in all your college football picking glory.

Such as it is.

No point spread on the games, just winners (like you) and losers (like me). First game is December 18, the New Mexico Bowl, featuring two teams from New Mexico, UTEP and BYU.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 08:03 AM | Comments (27)
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If you wanted to start keeping score, here's the 2012 field so far on the tax cut deal:

For the compromise deal:
Mike Huckabee (first to come out in favor)
Tim Pawlenty
Newt Gingrich
Bobby Jindal
John Thune [I have been corrected that Sen. Thune is supporting the bill and will vote for it.]

Against the compromise deal:
Sarah Palin (first)
Mitt Romney
John Thune
Mike Pence [Received word that Rep. Pence is opposing the deal, as of yesterday.]

Wafflers/No stated opinion:
Haley Barbour
Mitch Daniels
Mike Pence

As far as I can tell none of these people are in favor of the Democrats' omnibus spending bill. If that changes, you can bet I'll be crossing names off the list completely.

Update: I updated the lists above with fresh info. If you see new information, be sure and let me know.

With regards to Sen. Thune's position, I completely misread what I saw from him yesterday. This does not represent a change in his position, only in my reading comprehension skills.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 03:10 AM | Comments (332)
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And, if you know, how do you get up from an all time low?

Update: It's been a while since I bothered to run the old explanation for the top headline post, but since people are asking:

This space is for comments on the stories in the Top Headline sidebar and for other news stories. The link to these comments is stickied at the top of the headline sidebar.

Rather than put that same explanation up every morning, I usually stick a quote in it.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:56 AM | Comments (70)
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I guess we sorta took a pass on this nonsense the past 24 hours. I think because it's much ado about nothing, and others have already put it into the proper context. Meaningless claptrap from unimportant politicos.

We have our fair share of dustups and disagreements around this joint, because we're dorks, but at least we're informed dorks. It's just amusing to me to see the second pathetic attempt to shape public opinion about an actual grassroot movement with another contrived "movement" (Coffee Party II: The Reasoning).

The problem with this approach, aside from it being so very contrived (and that's no small problem), is the "label" charge doesn't stick like it used to. That was no accident, that upheaval in November, which shook not only the US House of Representatives like you're not supposed to shake a baby, but state houses throughout the country. As recently as this week, Dem state reps are defecting to the Republican "labeled" party. Two in Texas, giving Rs a 101 to 49 seat advantage.

The only politicians who want to shed a label these days are the ones who want to shed the "loser" label.

I mean, come on. Charlie Crist? Mark McKinnon? Really?

"No Labels" is like John Belushi's sweatshirt in Animal House. There's a kind of affinity expressed, "College", but you sorta get the feeling "Mr. Blutarsky, Mister. Blutarsky. Zero-point-zero" really isn't committed to the concept of higher education, except perhaps as it pertains to raising hell and falling off ladders.

It's not so much "shedding 'labels'" as it is trying to pin any label onto the conservative side and calling it "extreme" (extreme, it means "bad" to the "no labels" crowd, if it's conservative). A weak appeal to the middle. But the middle has already been exercised into motion at the ballot box, and oddly enough, they chose a label. Like Vikings they chose a label.

You can call it "Republican" or you can call it "Not this awful shit we've had for 2 years".

It's still a label.

*thanks Andy for the McKinnon link. Why this political whore has any credibility left is someone else's guess. Probably could have reduced this post to Mark McKinnon, No Label.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 07:43 PM | Comments (74)
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Welcome to the boringest night of the week. And don't look to the ONT to change this.

Bea Arthur - Secret Truck-driving Marine?

Even though she denied it while alive the evidence seems pretty clear that Bea Arthur (née Bernice Frankel) joined the US Marne Corps Women's Reserve in March 1943. She was assigned to different bases in DC, NC, and Virginia and did clerical work and drove trucks.

On a Marine qualification card that included a section titled “Talent for furnishing public entertainment,” Arthur is credited for “piano & organ 13 years” and “contralto-orchestra.” Her “active hobbies” included hunting with a .22 caliber rifle and “bow and arrow.”

So why would she deny her honorable wartime service? Well it could be a bit of modesty but it also might be residual embarrassment over a minor scandal:

The military records, released in response to a Freedom of Informaton Act request, include a single “misconduct report” filed against Arthur while she was stationed at the Marine Corps Air Station in Cherry Point, North Carolina. That misconduct determination stemmed from Arthur’s contracting of a venereal disease, which left her “incapacitated for duty” for five weeks in late-1944. As a result, her pay was reduced for that period.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:45 PM | Comments (868)
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Almost demanding that someone make a hyper-violent Lego game, like Lego Reservoir Dogs or Lego Snatch. more...

Posted by: Ace at 02:48 PM | Comments (253)
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I honestly did not see this one coming -- I assumed that embryonic stem cells would be where we got our cures, partly because that was what scientists claimed, but mostly because that's how life usually works: It makes you choose between one good and another. It makes you make hard choices. It doesn't usually allow a technological end-around the problem.

In this case, it turns out that's exactly the case, though. It's not embryonic cells producing cures; it's the non-controversial adult ones. One thing, though, is that this seems to be only a lab-experiment cure, not a practical one.

Timothy Ray Brown, an HIV-positive American living in Germany, had leukemia and was undergoing chemotherapy, when he received a transplant of stem cells from a donor carrying a rare, inherited gene mutation that seems to make carriers virtually immune to HIV infection.

The transplant appeared to wipe out both diseases, giving hope to doctors, but Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who has been studying HIV/AIDS for almost 30 years, said while this is an interesting proof of concept, itÂ’s absurdly impractical.

“It’s hard enough to get a good compatible match for a transplant like this,” Fauci told FoxNews.com, “But you also have to find compatible donor that has this genetic defect, and this defect is only found in 1 percent of the Caucasian population and zero percent of the black population. This is very rare.”

1% seems to be a fair amount to me, actually. I'm sure you could pay hobos with this defect $100 a skin-scraping. Maybe they do have a use for society after all, aside from pleasure-hunting.

Posted by: Ace at 02:42 PM | Comments (81)
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Even the Democrat-controlled House had more restraint:

t stands in contrast to the House, which last week passed a streamlined bill freezing fiscal 2011 government spending at 2010's level. The Senate bill, though, boosts spending by $16 billion — a tough sell at a time when deficits and debt already are dominating the policy debate in Washington.

Reid is threatening to keep Congress in session through the holidays in order to force them to pass the bill.

Last year, I think, Republicans cut a deal on allowing an ObamaCare vote (I think the Christmas eve one in the Senate) in exchange, supposedly, for some tactical advantage in the timing of the vote on raising the debt limit.

I think that was b.s.; the deal was struck because Senators wanted to go home for the holidays. And now we have ObamaCare.

I don't care if Reid holds them over every day until January 4th. It doesn't matter. They're paid extremely well and get lots of time off. It's time they joined their fellow Americans in sometimes having to work through the holidays.

No budging on this. Or there'll be real hell to pay.

The bill even includes funding for ObamaCare:

The 1,924-page bill includes funding to implement the sweeping healthcare reform bill Congress passed earlier this year as well as additional funds for Internal Revenue Service agents, according to a senior GOP aide familiar with the legislation.

This is one of those hills you die on. And if McConnell cuts another deal that coincidentally allows him to be home for Christmas, he's gone.

Posted by: Ace at 02:28 PM | Comments (126)
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