Hey, why not. All the cool kids are doing it, if by "cool kids" you mean dri.

Posted by: Ace at 08:57 AM | Comments (89)
Post contains 21 words, total size 1 kb.

Via Hot Air's headlines:

White House corespondent Tommy Christopher with Mediaite.com may have made Social Network history as being the first person ever to update his or her Twitter page while having a heart attack....

Approximately at 6pm on Sunday afternoon Christopher wrote, “I gotta be me. Livetweeting my heart attack. Beat that!”

He's in stable condition, and expected to be okay.

The closest I've ever come to tweeting an urgent physical symptom was accidentally posting Busty Lesbian Porn. Fortunately, I was fine, except for the loathing and crying.

Only a bunch of Morons gives me proper credit for that.

Posted by: Ace at 08:25 AM | Comments (113)
Post contains 114 words, total size 1 kb.

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."-Albert Einstein.

Behold Barack "$800 Billion Plus Stimulus" Obama.

President Barack Obama is asking Congress to approve at least $50 billion in long-term investments in the nation's roads, railways and runways in a pre-election effort to show he's trying to stimulate the sputtering economy.

...The officials said the initial $50 billion would be the beginning of a six-year program of transportation improvements, but they did not give an overall figure. The proposal has a longer-range focus than last year's economic stimulus bill, which was more targeted on immediate job creation.

The goals of the infrastructure plan include: rebuilding 150,000 miles of roads; constructing and maintaining 4,000 miles of railways, enough to go coast-to-coast; shorter, high speed rail projects; and rehabilitating or reconstructing 150 miles of airport runways, while also installing a next generation air navigation system designed to reduce travel times and delays.

Oh, I see it's totally different than the $800 Billion we flushed down the toilet last year because, it's, um, different. Yeah, that's it. Don't believe them? Clearly you're a racist.

Obama's pitch for even more spending is part of a Labor Day event in Milwaukee, so it's pretty clear he's just trying to buy Democratic labor votes with our money. Do you think we'll at least get a nice thank you card?

No word yet on how those crazy anti-spending teabaggers congressional Democrats will react.

Posted by: DrewM at 08:22 AM | Comments (132)
Post contains 273 words, total size 2 kb.

Sixty two percent of Independents -- sixty two! -- now say they would vote for a Republican in their district. (The "generic Republican" question.)

They had been at plus 8 last time. Now they have a thirty two point advantage with Indies, 62-30.

And that's a 24 point bump with this group in month.

The one problem is that people who don't like either party are still unlikely to vote, even if they would prefer the GOP out of both parties they don't like. The GOP still has to do something to make them want to cast a vote.

Posted by: Ace at 06:59 AM | Comments (267)
Post contains 137 words, total size 1 kb.

Woo hoo the weekend continues.

How About Some Johnny To Start The Week

Here are Johnny Cash and June Carter singing 'Jackson' at the Grand Ole Opry in 1968. They had just gotten married a few months before making this one of the finer married duets in music.

And here they are 34 years later accompanied by family.

June Carter Cash died in 2003 and Johnny followed her just a few months later. more...

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:07 PM | Comments (1066)
Post contains 779 words, total size 9 kb.

Really?

Having worked to build good will through nonideological causes like fighting obesity and assisting military families, aides say, she is ready to spend some of her political capital to advance President Obama’s agenda — and her own.

How could these guys be so detached from reality?

Oh, right, the MFM pumps them full of pretty wishcasting lies every day.

Thanks, MFM... sometimes you really come through for us.

Thanks to someone.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 02:44 PM | Comments (560)
Post contains 90 words, total size 1 kb.

I can't take it. I just can't take it.

For what it's worth, I do agree that dark chatter about assassination can in fact increase the likelihood of it happening. That's why I'm so absolutist about insisting that none of it -- none -- occur here. The whole point, I think, of such chatter is to establish that such a heinous crime would in fact be socially acceptable -- or a least understandable -- and possibly even heroic. I find it immoral in the extreme to have anything to do with what seems to me to be a kind of psych-up session for would-be assassins.

I went berserk when I saw this happening on the left all the time under Bush, a bunch of immoral, murder-minded cowards trying to psych up the one lunatic among them with rifle training to take that ecstatic shot. And I cannot countenance it on the right, either.

That said: Peaceful but vigorous and even shrill agitation for one's political beliefs, and against one's political opponent, can never be off limits.

The left never says a goddamn thing in protest of movies or novels that agitate for the assassination of George Bush. They buy them, support them. But if Glenn Beck says "Barack Obama is a socialist," well then, goddamnit, that's "extremist rhetoric" that could incite a crazy rightwinger to violence.

What about their own extremist rhetoric inciting their own demented partisans? (Link to Hot Air.) Not a word -- the Discovery Channel gunman just wanted "better programming," and of course was an anti-immigrant extremist.

So who gets trotted out as examples of rightwing lunatics incited by rightwing rhetoric to political violence? No shock, it's members of the violent, murderous, coddled, supported, encouraged left, the same as militant Communist Joseph Stack becoming, in the media's telling, an "anti-government" conservative extremist.

Example One: John F. Kennedy, gunned down by a committed Marxist who agitated for "Fair Play for Cuba" (that is, Castro's gulag), who once applied for Soviet citizenship.

Tell me: Was Lee Harvey Oswald listening to rightwing chatter as he wrote applications to the Soviet Union for defector status? Was he being steeped in rightwing cant as he attended pro-Castro demonstrations?

Example Two: Robert F. Kennedy, gunned down by committed Palestinian extremist Sirhan Sirhan -- the left likes to pretend this guy isn't one of their own (same thing with Oswald, actually -- thus all the conspiracy theories claiming the CIA killed him), but as far as I can tell the Palestinian cause has always been associated with the left. Vanessa Redgrave, all the fashionably-left celebrities.

When Sirhan Sirhan turned to American media or spokesmen for support of his extremist position, I'll tell you one goddamned thing: He wasn't opening up National Review or watching William F. Buckley on t.v. No, he was turning to Gore Vidal and other leftwingers.

But these assassins -- one expressly Marxist/Communist, the other swimming in the sea of fashionable late-sixties leftist extremism -- are somehow to be blamed on rightist agitation?

Two leftwing assassins are our fault?

How so? Run that by me again, and make sure you do so slowly and with citations, because I really need it explained to me how both of these dead men should not properly be laid at the feet of Gore Vidal, Norman Mailer, and, frankly, if you want to paint with a broad brush -- Jimmy Fuckin' Breslin.

Incidentally: Waddling Cliche Chris Matthews already talked this up a month ago, talking about the "dark chatter" in rightwing circles in the fall of 1963.

True. There was dark chatter in rightwing (really, reactionary racist, but whatever) circles then.

You know where else there was dark chatter? In leftwing/Marxist circles.

You know which style of dark chatter Lee Harvey Oswald was actually listening to?

Hint: He was not a "monitor" for the Rush Limbaugh show.

Let Me See If I Have This Right...

Gore Vidal: Damn the entire American imperial establishment and Jewish fascist state for enslaving the Palestinians.

Sirhan Sirhan: Come on, not the entire American establishment. Bobby Kennedy's okay. It's a new dawn in politics.

Gore Vidal: Bobby Kennedy is not "okay"! Both parties are interrelated plutocratic families united in a the shared family business of Empire. Furthermore, the rightwing conspiratorial John Birch Society, in fact, says he's part of the global Communist conspiracy.

Sirhan Sirhan: Whoa...! No way dude! The John Birch Society said he's pink?! The JBS has a great deal of credibility with me, my good man, a great deal of credibility! Hang on, I need to get a ticket to Los Angeles.

Or was it:

Lee Harvey Oswald: Marina, by beautiful White Russian wife. I am so pleased that I have come back to America after my defection to the Soviet Union so that I was here to witness this very good president whom I admire greatly, John F. Kennedy, ordering the Bay of Pigs invasion against my personal hero, Fidel Castro.

Marina Oswald: William F. Buckley said it was a poorly-planned operation and the CIA wouldn't commit the necessary airpower to protect the anti-Castro insurgents.

Lee Harvey Oswald: W-w-w-what?! That son-of-a-bitch Kennedy did what? to those Cuban patriots? Quick, get the camera, I want you to take a picture of me on the lawn with this newspaper and my lucky rifle.

Really guys?

Is this how it went down? Is this how you figure it all happened, pretty much?

Posted by: Ace at 12:56 PM | Comments (258)
Post contains 957 words, total size 6 kb.

I wrote about this a little while ago. Dick Morris had written that Democrats have to make the same choice as an ER surgeon: Do you try to save the limb, or abandon the limb and try to save the patient?

As Democrats brace for a November wave that threatens their control of the House, party leaders are preparing a brutal triage of their own members in hopes of saving enough seats to keep a slim grip on the majority.

In the next two weeks, Democratic leaders will review new polls and other data that show whether vulnerable incumbents have a path to victory. If not, the party is poised to redirect money to concentrate on trying to protect up to two dozen lawmakers who appear to be in the strongest position to fend off their challengers.

But how serious are the Democrats? In Morris' assessment, they pretty much have to give up trying to defend, say, their 30 most vulnerable seats. Those, Morris suggests, are simply gone.

Their limited resources (they have money, more than us, but resources are always limited) should be directed instead to, say, saving the next most vulnerable 30 seats.

If Democrats attempt too ambitious a firewall -- that is, they give up on only the ten or fifteen most vulnerable seats, but still attempt to maintain their majority -- they will end up diverting money to seats that can't be won, and, critically, diverting it away from those seats which could be won, with great effort.

On the other hand, Patrick Ishmael at Hot Air has found that in his analysis the GOP itself isn't being very aggressive -- it's focusing on the 30 most vulnerable Democrats, whereas an aggressive, confident strategy would be to give little money to those candidate (just assume they're going to win and can win on their own) and target seats 31-60.

Thanks to rdbrewer.

Posted by: Ace at 10:19 AM | Comments (197)
Post contains 334 words, total size 2 kb.

Fred Bauer wonders why so much attention is being given to the Delaware race while a conservative has a chance to be the first Republican elected from WV in fifty years.

In short, this race could be an uphill battle, but it is definitely winnable for the GOP. Raese is very wealthy, so he might not need that much help in fund-raising, but I bet he could make use of more supporters on the ground and online. After all, West Virginia could be a place where the GOP could get a Reagan-endorsed Republican in the US Senate (yes, Raese was endorsed by the Gipper when he ran for the Senate in 1984).

Raese for the Senate!

Among my general concerns about some conservatives is that they seem to be placing too high a priority on the punishment-of-RINOs aspect of politics, rather than the get-good-people-into-office aspect. Punishing RINOs, it seems to me, is a worthwhile exercise, but it's shouldn't be the primary goal. It should come only after -- and quite a bit after -- the primary goal of electing the most conservative viable candidate.

Posted by: Ace at 09:28 AM | Comments (102)
Post contains 202 words, total size 1 kb.

Alas, I had little time to do recreational reading in the past week. I did, however, pick up two new volumes to put on my waiting-to-be-read stack.

The first is the novel by our very own Baldilocks, the lovely and talented Juliette Ochieng, Tale of the Tigers. I'm not normally an aficionado of "relationship" books; my tastes run more to gang-wars, wasteland mutant battles, and outer-space political intrigue. Still, I shall find time in the coming week or two to read the book, and will deliver my opinion on it.

The second book is a very rare bird indeed in that it is an unlikely combination of two of my interests: baseball, and American Civil War history. The book is called Baseball In Blue and Gray, and it was recommended to me by a historian friend who knew of my love for all things baseball. (Yes, Abner Doubleday was a Civil War general -- actually, a Lt. Col. brevetted to General for the war; no, he didn't really invent baseball.) Baseball is called the American Game because it developed right along with the country itself. It is part of our story and myth in the way that no other sport is.

Baseball books are as common as grains of sand, but there are actually very few good ones (at least, few good ones for general interest readers). George Will's Men At Work is one of my favorites, as is Jim Brosnan's The Long Season. Roger Kahn's The Boys of Summer is a perennial classic. Jim Bouton's Ball Four was the first "tell all" book that stripped the sports-hero veneer off of the big-leagues; many have never forgiven him for it. And for baseball neophytes and long-suffering spouses there is the Baseball Field Guide: An In-Depth Illustrated Guide to the Complete Rules of Baseball by Paul Hamburger.

Happy Labor Day Weekend, Morons. Be safe and enjoy the waning days of summer.

Posted by: Monty at 06:04 AM | Comments (100)
Post contains 326 words, total size 2 kb.