Apparently it's official US policy that it's better people die than admit we have a problem with terrorism and a certain religion that dare not speak its name, unless you are saying how gosh darn peaceful it is.

[Rageh] Almurisi went toward the cockpit door 30 minutes before the flight from Chicago was supposed to land on Sunday night, San Francisco airport police Sgt. Michael Rodriguez said. Almurisi was yelling unintelligibly as he brushed past a flight attendant.

Marty, 35, recalled that she and other passengers on the plane were stunned when they saw Almurisi walking down the aisle. She said a woman in a row across from her who speaks Arabic translated that Almurisi said "God is Great!" in Arabic.

Andrew Wai, another passenger, told KGO-TV on Monday that the wife of one of the men who took Almurisi down later said Almurisi was yelling "Allahu Akbar."

"There was no question in everybody's mind that he was going to do something," Marty said.

A male flight attendant tackled Almurisi, and other crew members and passengers, including a retired Secret Service agent and a retired San Mateo police officer, helped subdue him as he banged on the door, police said. The flight attendant put plastic handcuffs on him.

Of course the important take away from this story is that we infidels better not even think about creating a backlash against Muslims. You know, just like we haven't after every other Islamic terror attack.

Posted by: DrewM at 08:15 AM | Comments (342)
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NBC/Wall Street Journal finds a three point bounce, which sounds about right.

A new NBC News poll showed that the president's job approval rating ticked up to 52 percent after the successful strike against al Qaeda's leader. That's just three percentage points higher than the approval rating he received in April, before the raid.

...

Just 31 percent believe the economy will improve in the next year, down from 40 percent in January. And the survey showed that approval of President Obama's handling of the economy has actually declined since then, to 37 percent.

But the president's ratings on other dimensions have improved. Some 57 percent approve his handling of foreign policy, up from 49 percent last month.
Moreover, President Obama gets higher marks in the survey for leadership, crisis management, decisiveness, direction of the Afghanistan war, and serving as commander in chief.

All these polls skew Democrat so it's not really his absolute level of support I'm looking at, just the difference from one skewed poll to another.

These are the worst numbers on the economy he's seen.

Note that the partisan sample in this poll, if you include leaners, is a ridiculous 44/31 in favor of Democrats, so his true economic numbers are actually several points worse than this. His previous rock-bottom rating was 39/56 last August, but as noted in the piece, gas prices and the unemployment uptick have left the country exasperated — or so I assume.

Obama did one good thing. Conservatives may try to deny him any credit for that, but that effort is futile; he'll get some.

But we usually don't consider a president successful for doing one good thing and dozens of bad things. One success cancels out one, or maybe several, failures; but it doesn't cancel out all of them.

It's also a fact of life that terrorism and foreign policy are not tip-top issues for most voters anymore, not like they were from 2001-2005. That's how Democrats got into office in the first place-- by downplaying such issues, and the public agreeing that they should be downplayed. The public isn't going to suddenly make these issues of 2001-2005 potency just because Captain Bullshit reverses his previous position and now declares we should vote exclusively on terrorism.

Joe Biden parodied Rudolph Giuliani's focus on 9/11 by saying every one of his sentences was "a noun, a verb, and 9/11."

I don't think that this administration-- previously dismissive of such things as "distraction" -- is well-positioned to fully capitalize on a good foreign policy outcome.

And beyond that -- there are a number of bad foreign policy outcomes on the horizon.

As any Democrat may have said in 2005 -- "So, Bush is pounding the terrorists. That doesn't help our schools or our budget or get me a job."

Live by the sewer, die by the sewer.

Poll analyst Nate Silver expects the bounce to persist, but to a small extent -- but in a close election (which this could wind up being), that little bit might be what Obama needs.

I’ve hypothesized — and to be clear, this is just a guess — that killing Bin Laden might provide Mr. Obama with a permanent gain of one percentage point in his approval rating, which will be left over after the initial bounce fades. Since almost all people who approve of a president vote to re-elect him, this would increase Mr. Obama’s share of the vote in November 2012 by one percentage point, while decreasing his Republican opponent’s share by roughly the same margin.

In the 35 presidential elections since the Civil War, there have been 9 elections (1876, 1880, 1884, 1888, 1916, 1948, 1960, 1976, 2000) in which the losing candidate would have won the electoral vote had he received 1 percentage point more of the vote in each state, and his opponent 1 percentage point less. That’s a pretty frequent occurrence — it’s happened 26 percent of the time.

What this means is that if a presidential candidate were spotted an additional 1 percentage point “bonus” in each state at the expense of his opponent, he would win in the Electoral College an additional 13 percent of the time. (Why 13 percent and not 26 percent? Because among the close elections, the candidate is already on the winning side half the time, in which case the bonus votes would be superfluous.)

Who can tell? No one knows the future. It reminds me of when British PM Harold MacMillan was asked what is most likely to push a government off course. "Events, dear boy, events," he is alleged to have answered.

What decides elections? Events.

But the main event is a "boring" one from a news perspective: The economy continues to be hideously bad. The media doesn't like talking about that so much. Not just because of a conscious desire to downplay bad news to boost Obama (though there is a lot of that), but an unconscious tendency of everyone towards optimistic scenarios. They want to believe that Obama can and will win reelection; they seize upon news that they think tends towards that outcome, and shy away from news they think tends against it.

This bias has an effect on the public. They can't make people forget that gas is $4 a gallon, but they can do a lot to make sure people's first thought isn't "This is Obama's fault."

But that only works to some extent. There is no way to hypnotize an unemployed man into thinking he's doing splendidly in Obama's New America.

The main event is the economy, and that's not going to change. If Obama gets a string of positive good news -- good events -- he could overcome that.

But I don't think one good event is enough to offset a dozen bad ones.

Posted by: Ace at 07:28 AM | Comments (150)
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Today's Wall Street Journal has some great statistics on the success of RomneyCare in Massachusetts.

• Average wait time for a routine checkup with an internist: 48 days


• Time to secure an appointment with a gastroenterologist for chronic heartburn: 43 days, up from 36 last year


• Time to secure an appointment with an OB/GYN: 41 days, up from 34 last year

The numbers are going up, Up, UP! This is good news, right?

No! Putting this in terms President Tee Time can understand, lower scores are better.

The Journal also reports another grim milestone: "fewer than half of the state's primary care practices are accepting new patients, down from 70% in 2007, before former Governor Mitt Romney's health-care plan came online." So everyone in Massachusetts has "Health Care", they just have an increasingly difficult time finding a doctor.

You'd think with the lack of access to care that costs would be falling, but you'd be wrong. Massachusetts' health insurance premiums continue to rank among the highest in the country, and the only way this trend is likely to reverse is from ObamaCare closing the gap by increasing the costs for everyone else.

Massachusetts health regulators also estimate that emergency room visits jumped 9% between 2004 and 2008, in part due to the lack of routine access to providers. The Romney-Obama theory was that if everyone is insured by the government, costs would fall by squeezing out uncompensated care. Yet emergency medicine accounts for only 2% of all national health spending.

But RomneyCare really is succeeding wildly ... in proving its detractors right. And Mitt's continued defense of it, even though much less spirited than before, should move him into the "not just no, but hell no" category for the 2012 GOP presidential nod. After 4 years of listening to Barry try to blow sunshine up our asses on everything from ObamaCare to Green Jobs to the Summer of Recovery™, the last thing we need on our side is someone who refuses to acknowledge the reality of the policies he supports. So, buh-bye Mitt.

Posted by: andy at 07:12 AM | Comments (39)
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Here's a quote to bear in mind as we wonder why so many idiot uncertain Republicans in Congress waffle when it comes to making the changes necessary to rescue our economic and our country:

"And one should bear in mind that there is nothing more difficult to execute, nor more dubious of success, nor more dangerous to administer than to introduce a new order to things; for he who introduces it has all those who profit from the old order as his enemies; and he has only lukewarm allies in all those who might profit from the new. This lukewarmness partly stems from fear of their adversaries, who have the law on their side, and partly from the skepticism of men, who do not truly believe in new things unless they have personal experience in them." -- Niccolo Machiavelli

Hudson: Hey Vasquez, have you ever been mistaken for a man?
Vasquez: No. Have you?

Posted by: Open Blogger at 07:12 AM | Comments (5)
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The Fourth Circuit will take up the first two ObamaCare appeals this morning in back-to-back arguments. First up is Liberty University, which lost below, and then the State of Virginia, which won on some, but not all issues.

Unlike the multi-state lawsuit out of Florida, which has a much better substantive and procedural posture and resulted in knocking the entire law down, these two lawsuits focused solely on the individual mandate. The big issues in today's hearing will be standing, whether economic inactivity is "activity" for the purpose of the Commerce Clause, and whether there are any meaningful limits on what is "necessary and proper" to the exercise of federal power. The acting Solicitor General will no doubt make the argument that "health care is different" to justify the sweeping, dare I say tyrannical, scope of ObamaCare.

Assuming the Fourth Circuit manages to activate circa-2000 technology (not a guarantee), audio of the argument should be available on its website around 2pm EST.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:58 AM | Comments (338)
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The Birth Pangs of the M16

Most people have probably heard at least some version of the story of how the M-16 came to become the standard issue rifle for the US military. And they generally have the gist right, but this Esquire article delves into the saga of how a rifle ahead of its time came to be selected by the brass, then hated by the men fighting with it, and yet still go on to become the US's longest issued infantry rifle.

Read the article for the full story.

One of the early creations was the AR-15, made at the informal request of an Army general who wanted a prototype rifle that would fire a small, high-speed round. The AR-15 looked like nothing else in military service. It had an aluminum receiver, plastic furniture, and an odd-looking carrying handle. It was thirty-nine inches long. It weighed, when unloaded, roughly 6.5 pounds, about half the weight of an automatic M14. Its appearance — small, dark, lean, and synthetically futuristic — stirred emotions. To its champions, the AR-15 was an embodiment of fresh thinking. Critics saw an ugly toy. Wherever one stood, no one denied the ballistics were intriguing. Stoner had designed a narrow but powerful new cartridge, the .223, for his weapon.

Yet because it bypassed the usual ordnance and procurement channels it didn't get the full field testing and shakeout that it needed. So an unreliable rifle was issued to troops in Vietnam and was getting men killed. more...

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:00 PM | Comments (859)
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My first reaction is cynical, but what does he gain by pure posturing? What point is there to setting up expectations, if he already intends to sell out completely?

If I credit him for having half a brain (I do), then I have to think this is genuine -- or at least his negotiating position will start from the trillions range.

So, that's better than before, when we started at a paltry $30 billion. But will he leverage that greater starting position into a much better gain? Or give it mostly away at the end again?

There is room for some hope; the public is unambiguously against raising the debt ceiling. So our position here is strong. I thought our position with the shutdown wasn't all that bad either, and I guess the leadership disagreed. But how can they disagree here?

Setting up a mark, at least.

The proposals Boehner laid out in New York were bold in how far they tacked to the right and how high he set the bar for spending cuts. For example, under BoehnerÂ’s vision, Republicans would have to find more than $2 trillion in cuts if they wanted to raise the debt ceiling by that amount through 2012, according to the Treasury departmentÂ’s estimates on the debt limit. But Republicans could also go for a more incremental increase in the debt ceiling, coupling that with a smaller offsetting cut in spending. BoehnerÂ’s preference is for immediate cuts, not promises to pare back spending in the future or set triggers for deficit reduction.

His preference? That should be more than a mere preference. Future promises count for nothing, exactly nothing, as we've seen time and time again.

But by mentioning “trillions” in long term cuts, Boehner is clearly putting entitlement reform in play — including Medicare — since it would be near impossible to cut trillions without affecting entitlement spending.

Meh, Obama already proposed some death-panels reductions there.

I point that out because it seems to me the press is always eager to push "Republicans suggest cutting Medicare" but not so eager to note "Obama suggests cutting Medicare."

Six Trillion Now? Per the update at Hot Air. Kyl's more forward leaning. Maybe he can put some starch in Boehner's spine this time around.

A trillion here, a trillion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money.

“You’re going to have to have significant upfront cuts,” he told reporters Monday. “You’re going to have to have significant constraints on future spending. You’re going to have to have an agreement on the next several years of budget numbers so we know exactly what those are. I think there will be other constraints on spending – there is more than one way to do that, I think there are several things that might be done.”…

“I think there will be some Medicare reform; it probably won’t satisfy Republicans in terms of what we think is necessary,” he said. “But I think it’s pretty difficult for the Democrats to simply take it all off the table.”

Not really that difficult. As easy as saying "no."

The only way to win is if Republicans are serious about not raising the debt ceiling unless Democrats come to terms.

If you make a threat, but your opponent doesn't believe you, it really adds nothing at all to your negotiating position. In fact, it may even hurt you, as he smells weakness and desperation in the threat.

Republicans have to be prepared to do what they were not willing to do before: Just walk away.

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Posted by: Ace at 04:00 PM | Comments (197)
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I went in with low expectations, partly because of the critics' savaging (even though I know not to trust them, you can't help incorporate spin if you hear it enough) but mostly because I read the book, and knew, to make a good movie out of it, you'd have to change a lot. And I feared that they wouldn't.

That said, I was pretty nicely surprised. It's good. Not great. But still -- good. It's actually more subtle than I was expecting; maybe too subtle in one key area (more on this later, as it truly is key). Rand's book had the subtlety of a cast-iron lightning bolt, so any screen treatment might be expected to be much less didactic than her novel; but they seemed to have gone even further in toning down the heavy didacticism. Oh, it pops up here and there, but it's not really objectionable.

In fact, to tell the truth, I could have endured a little more of the statement of principle stuff. Because with so much of that stripped away-- why are the heroes acting as they do?

Two and a half stars good (which is my way of saying "Good enough to see, but not outstanding;" outstanding is three stars and superlative is four).

There are amateur mistakes, chiefly in the writing. The writing -- I'm not talking about dialogue, although there are some lapses there. I mean something important (and no, dialogue isn't terribly important). I mean major decisions about what emotion you're trying to convey in a scene and in the overall movie.

My overall guess is this: The producer, or the director, or both, decided that they had to be very faithful to Rand's book. So even in cases where her book was flawed in its under-dramatization (too much thinky-talking, not enough dramatic confrontations and emotion), they followed her down that path, deciding that fidelity to the source material was of primary importance, and dramatic movie-making only second.

In just about every criticism I have of the movie, I suspect that's the culprit. I do not remember much of the book, so I can't be certain of this, but some things that would strike any dramatist as obvious and needed aren't here, and the only explanation I can think of is "It's not here because it wasn't in the book."

That said, that just means it's not as good as it could have been. I still think it's good -- two and a half star good; a sort of minimally good-enough-to-see -- but the material is actually sort of good for a movie. I just wish they'd kept this in mind: That they're making a movie.

But overall-- actually, I thought it was pretty good. I was a little aware of the low budget but chiefly because I mostly thought "This doesn't look all that terribly low-budget at all." They did a good job with the look. When Rand wrote it, it was sci-fi, but from the POV of the fifties. Here, it's sci-fi, barely -- just 2016 -- but it neatly has a sort of 50s-ish tone to it in little ways. Like one character's clearly-throwback 50s eyeglasses. It adroitly mixes the book's time period with the film's, to make something better than a mere compromise.

This review is going to be heavy on criticism rather than praise, because, as with The Green Hornet, there's actually a better movie here, almost but not quite here, undermined by a series of unforced errors.

In this review I'm going to rely on memory of Ayn Rand's book and also Ayn Rand's psychology. My memory in a few cases may be shaky, and if so, let me know. So take my assertions as "This is how I remember it or how I learned it, but I could be wrong, and will correct upon notice of such."

If there's any chance of all that you don't know, Atlas Shrugged is a near-term sci-fi fantasy thriller about an increasingly collectivist and freedom-destroying dystopia, and, crucially, the fight back against it.

Now, many writers have addressed the idea of an increasingly socialistic/forcible-egalitarian society, crushing individual spirits and zeroing out individual achievement. Even cranky old lefty fossil Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. would try this later in 1961; and of course Orwell had tackled it, more or less, in Animal Farm and 1984. (Orwell's focus was a bit different in both, but this stuff was in the mix, at least.)

What made Ayn Rand's book different from these is that it's a heroic narrative. It's one thing to set up a dystopian nightmare and just have the main character be tortured to death and escape only via insanity/dislocation of mind from reality, as at the end of 1984. (Sorry, Spoilers!) Or to have the hero rebel, briefly, against the totalitarianism of egalitarianism only to be gunned down dead after his futile, and quickly forgotten, gesture, as in Harrison Bergeron. (Sorry, again, Spoilers!)

This is realistic, but it is also too easy, in a way. Man goes up against crushing force and is, precisely as expected, crushed.

Ayn Rand decided she wouldn't go for the standard chilling/downer ending that most dystopian fictions favor, but would add a heroic element: The forces of freedom and achievement fighting back, and not just in futile gestures or escapes into fantasy, but fighting back effectively and, ultimately... well, I won't say if their efforts are triumphant or not. But I'll say that at least in Atlas Shrugged, they seem to have a plan with at least a plausible chance of doing more than making a futile gesture of defiance before being executed. Whether it works or not, it's implicit in the book it could work. They do have a fighting chance, at least, unlike poor Winston Smith.
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Posted by: Ace at 02:11 PM | Comments (233)
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It is truly remarkable how all these maverick minds, these unshackled brains, these members of the Vanguard of Free Thought, nearly always manage to fall into line with what a few of their more mouthy members are saying at any particular moment.

Are we supposed to feel bad that we used lethal force to incapacitate a murderous force for evil? Are we to feel guilt that, having exposed so many of our troops to great risks to preserve innocent, and not-so-innocent life, on this particular mission we told our troops, "Don't worry about bin Ladin's life"?

Are we really supposed to regret this?

The answer, if you're a member of the bien pensant class in good standing, is apparently "yes."

Or, more specifically, the answer is "Yes, congratulations, you! You have found an entirely new way in which to demonstrate your superiority over the stupid, uneducated masses that, for some twisted reason, take joy in the fact that a great evil is no more."

This pity-for-Osama lobby, this bishop-led congregation of ‘uncomfortable’ moral handwringers, might pose as radical, denouncing America’s military action in bin Laden’s compound as ‘Wild West-style vengeance’. Yet in truth it is fuelled by self-loathing more than justice-loving. These critics are not opposed to Western intervention in principle – indeed, most of them have demanded ‘humanitarian’, political or legalistic intervention in other states’ affairs at one point or another....

The most striking thing was the speed with which the great and the good of the Western liberal elite sought to distance themselves from those vulgar, excitable Yanks and to express a more erudite and PC view of OBL’s demise. Barely 24 hours had passed since the dumping of bin Laden’s body in the sea before observers were describing President Obama as a ‘mobster’. ‘Are we gangsters or a Western democracy based on the rule of law?’, asked has-been mayor (and wannabe mayor) Ken Livingstone, who is so used to doing politics in the rarefied environs of London’s mayoral office that he doesn’t realise that the rule of law might not be so neatly applied during a shoot-out in a compound in Pakistan. Elsewhere the killing of bin Laden has already been described as a ‘war crime’ (isn’t everything these days?) while human rights campaigners say it would have been a better advert for Western values if justice against OBL had come ‘from a legitimate court of law rather than the end of gun’.

It didn’t take long for these apparently decent lovers of justice over violence to expose their real fears: that the sight of a few young Americans chanting ‘U-S-A!’ in response to OBL’s death might invite even more Islamist retribution upon us. One writer described this ‘frat boy reaction’ as ‘abhorrent’ – it is ‘sickening’, she said, and, more revealingly, it has ‘no dignity’. A British columnist said the anti-OBL shindigs were the products of a ‘patriotic reflex’ – that is, a nationalist kneejerkism amongst America’s unthinking classes – which is apparently ‘intense and pervasive’. In response to the chant of ‘We killed bin Laden!’, the columnist said: ‘If “they” killed bin Laden in Abbottabad, then “they” also bombed a large number of wedding parties in Afghanistan, “they” murdered 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha and “they” gang-raped a 14-year-old before murdering her, her six-year-old sister and their parents near Mahmudiyah.’ Yep, that’s right – if you celebrate the killing of OBL then you are also implicitly celebrating American atrocities overseas, including rape. Gang-rape-loving dunderheads.

The most telling phrase in that article was ‘they’, which was used again and again, always in quote marks, to refer to ordinary Americans. Because much of the ‘uncomfortable feeling’ over the killing of bin Laden is really an ‘uncomfortable feeling’ with, if not outright disgust for, ‘them’, the people who make up America, and for the ideals of modern America itself....

Behind the high-falutinÂ’ expressions of passion for justice over shoot-to-kill, much of the pity-for-Osama lobby is really concerned with expressing its moral superiority over apparently vengeful Americans...

This is the primary psychological drive of the bien pensants. If you understand this about them, you understand everything about them.

Everything they say, and everything they do, is calculated towards one specific purpose, one unchanging goal: To differentiate themselves from their "common" fellows, and, by differentiating themselves, in conspicuous demonstrations of anti-common sentiment, declare and affirm themselves to be members of the New Aristocracy.

I keep reposting this; it's still true.

The aristocracy has always sought to differentiate itself from the hoi polloi by signalling other aristocrats via the conspicuous display of manners and opinions marking them as elite. In the 1920's, for example, the highborn would talk about opera and symphony, but never popular music-- popular music was for the lower classes, and if you enjoyed a pop song, it was best to keep that to yourself. They would discuss live theater but never filmed features-- again, the first was accpetable, the latter declasse. And of course there is all that stuff about eating and drinking.

Gosford Park catalogued much of this, especially in the screenwriter's commentary, which, for my money, was more interesting than the actual movie.

We still have a moneyed aristocracy, of course. And I imagine that many of those old rules still apply (although, quite frankly, I wouldn't know for certain).

What I find interesting from a sociological standpoint is liberals' aping of the opinions and manners of the aristocracy, usually with a healthy infusion of kneejerk progressive politics, as a new form of differentiation from the masses whom they so clearly despise. Just as the old middle classes would also attempt to mimic the behaviors of the wealthy, so too do today's liberals -- even those who aren't very wealthy at all -- seek to emulate the codes and mores of the leisure-class to show that they, too, belong in the company of the elite.

Quick proof: Go find any liberal. Ask him what he thinks about USAToday. If he does not immediately say "McPaper," I will buy you a Filet-O-Fish or McRib (your choice; supplies are limited).

Now, USAToday is neither an especially good paper nor an especially bad one; it's not really remarkable in any way. But the word has come down from the liberal aristocrats that the proper attitude towards USAToday is that it is a McPaper, and so that's what they all say, even if (as is usually the case) they've never so much as read the paper before in their lives.

They call it McPaper because of a series of faux-aristocratic biases -- the "mom and pop" local operation is always more virtuous than the national franchise, anything that smacks of mass-appeal is to be automatically despised, etc. -- and they say it's a McPaper, over and over again, for the same reason 1920's aristocrats all talked about the operas they usually slept through-- to signal to other "Progressive Elites" that they Belong, that They Are Part of the Higher Class.

Shibboleths, in other words, in that most excellent word Rush Limbaugh introduced me to a month or so back.

The important thing about a shibboleth is not whether it is true. That is not the point of the thing. It may be true; it, more likely, especially as years wear on, may be false.

The important thing, the only important thing, about a shibboleth is that it's not what the commoners are saying. The point of the shibboleth is not reaffirm external truth, but to reaffirm personal identity.

It is no wonder they all quickly fall in a line and begin spouting minor variations on the same stupid claim. The point was never, ever to consider the truth of the matter, and subject it to analysis; but precisely to simply repeat what other self-discovered members of the New Aristocrats are saying, because that's how they each know they belong.

You can stuff your "uncomfortable feelings" in a hat, New Aristocrats. People with some sort of true religious or ethical imperative against killing of any kind may fret a bit over this. But you lot?

The only "uncomfortable feelings" you really have is the fear that one day you might be mistaken for a commoner, by mistakenly saying the same thing the commoners say.

As Michael Palin says in the Argument Clinic sketch: An argument is a reasoned series of premises designed to prove a point. It's not just the automatic gainsaying of whatever someone else says; that's just contradiction.

But that's precisely what the New Aristocrats do. This isn't thinking. This isn't reason. This is simply the automatic, reflexive contradiction of anything a commoner might happen to say. Even if the "commoner" happens to be right.

Because the whole point is to have a different opinion, one the commoners do not share. And the commoners, being, generally, a reasonable and sound-thinking lot, unfortunately have the tendency to think the right things a distressingly large amount of the time.

Forcing the New Aristocrats to often, and more and more, take increasingly unreasonable positions simply to signal their uncommonness.

And hence: Increasing stupidity from the supposedly smart.

As the saying goes: Only an intellectual can believe things this stupid.

Bonus: The World's Least Convincing Populist, Paul Krugman: Paul Krugman's mania is particularly florid today. He reveals a sort of conspiracy of the elites against "us," by which means non-elite common folk, by which he means himself, the editors at the New York Times, and the New York Times' readers.

Thanks to DrewM. for that. Crazy people are funny.

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Posted by: Ace at 12:42 PM | Comments (431)
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Tanned, ready, and ranting.

Gasbag Keith Olbermann can't seem to wrangle staff for his Current TV show, "Countdown." Still in need of an executive producer and other staff, famously difficult Olbermann has crawled back to his contacts at MSNBC, many of whom he offended while there, to beg for staff. "Everyone is laughing," said a source. "They would never leave the network to work for him."

The fun part comes when Olbermann takes to what Jammie Wearing Fool calls "the nerve center of the vast Olbermann media empire," i.e., his Twitter account, to deny and deny and re-deny the story, sounding just like the insecure narcissist fool he is.

Sorry: A bad day for blogging. I didn't mean to take the day off. What's going on is that I'm just writing something else, not political. It keeps preoccupying me. I go over to just write a little bit down and suddenly an hour and half's gone by.

I'm closing it for now.

Posted by: Ace at 11:37 AM | Comments (158)
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