Some balls are held for charity.
And some for fancy dress.
But when they're held for pleasure.
They're the balls that I like best.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:47 AM | Comments (123)
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Nobody brings the Doom like Derbyshire! "What are you? Some kinda doomsday machine ...? - JW Pepper

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Posted by: Open Blogger at 11:35 PM | Comments (28)
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Twenty-five years ago today, Ellen Ripley roared back onto the big screen, complete with a genre swerve and a giant mech suit.

If we could all just have a moment of silence for the greatest movie hero of all time?

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Thank you. My additional thoughts on Ripley are here. more...

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 06:32 PM | Comments (521)
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I don't know if this is intrinsic to Romney, per se. The poll specifies the Romney-Obama head-to-head, of course. But maybe Romney could be a stand-in for any nonthreatening sort of "Generic Republican."

Is there any plausible path to victory for Obama that doesn't include Michigan?

he poll showed 46% of likely voters either supporting or leaning toward supporting Romney, compared to 42% supporting or leaning toward supporting Obama, with 12% undecided. Romney is considered to be the presumptive frontrunner among the large field of Republicans running for the nomination to face the Democrat, Obama, next year.

Actually, this is the second finding that Romney leads in Michigan; his support as far as certain voters actually sagged a little in this one.

Thanks to CAC. He adds:

Romney currently leads or ties in MI,IA,NV,NC,PA,FL,NH. Added to the 180EV's from 2008 and Indiana, which is an obvious win, that would give Romney an EV total of 287 (assuming that he loses Virginia somehow).
EPIC is headed by a group of former Dem leaders in the state, so if they are showing Obama down, he is down here.

NOT endorsing Romney, but the perception that Obama is still "leading" is just utter horseshit. Kos' own pollster, PPP, found just butt-ugly stats out of Pennsylvania, our eternal political cocktease

Romney does tie Obama in PA, according to a Kos poll.

Posted by: Ace at 06:12 PM | Comments (86)
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Lot of good stuff here. Nine and a half minutes, but worth a watch.

Schieffer is worth watching too, since it's obvious he's an Obama partisan flacking as fast has he can for his Precious.

But Rubio really demolishes him.

Oh, by the way, Rubio goes for the "Everything is worse under Obama" angle, a tough case to make. Or so I thought. He makes it pretty well.

Oh, he says he's not running for Vice President, but a key skill of a VP candidate is playing the attack dog against the opposition.

Check.

Update: Rubio hits some themes here I'd like to see repeated a lot. He doesn't hit some other themes I'd like people to start hitting.

1. The problem is not the debt limit -- which can be "solved" with the stroke of a pen in an hour -- but the debt itself.

2. The economy continues to be poor largely because people are in a hoarding frame of mind -- we have no confidence this economy will not simply implode in the next few years. In fact, many of us believe, with increasing confidence, it will do just that.

Here's a pair of themes I'd liked to see as a follow-up:

1. The economy will likely improve if there is a credible plan for reducing our debt and putting us on a sustainable, solvent footing.

2. Obama talks up "making the hard decisions" -- but it is his campaign strategy to not make those decisions before January 2013, as hard decisions could threaten his reelection campaign.

And the synthesis of these two:

Barack Obama is deliberately choosing to keep the country in a state of economic disaster because he fears the left will desert him if he makes the hard decisions needed to fix the economy. In other words, Barack Obama has made the political calculation that it's better for him personally to have at least another year and a half of grinding joblessness and economic misery.

Put it all together, guys.

Posted by: Ace at 04:39 PM | Comments (286)
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Via Instapundit, it's just too cute. more...

Posted by: Ace at 03:31 PM | Comments (96)
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Update: Over the air on Fox, the "smoking gun" was described as an internal report by the DoJ, looking into the matter, which concluded the "walked" guns could have been and should have been interdicted, but were not.

BTW, you paid for the report, which finds error on the part of your government, but Eric Holder says you can't have it, and apparently most of the media ("the Watchdogs") agree with him.

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No sure what's in the document. Doesn't say.

The acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said the Justice Department has been withholding key information from congressional officials and that the department sought to protect its political appointees from criticism....

Kenneth Melson told investigators earlier this month that among the materials in Justice's possession was "a smoking gun" document....

Via Michelle Malkin.

Posted by: Ace at 03:22 PM | Comments (75)
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Man's a damn inspiration. Guy's like the Hernando de Soto of jailbait.

The marriage happened a while ago, but the couple just sat down for interviews on GMA a few days ago.

They verified she's 16. She doesn't look 16. I don't even mean she looks 18. I mean she looks 35 with plastic surgery rolling back the years a little.

It's all very odd.

As that blog advises, skip to 4:50-4:53 to see the 16 year old girl doing weird stuff with her mouth. I think it's supposed to be sexy. It's weird.

Posted by: Ace at 02:17 PM | Comments (222)
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Interesting piece, excerpted at Hot Air, hitting on the preference cascade effect I keep predicting. (And you know my stellar record on predictions.)

Psychologists talk about “cognitive dissonance,” the tension that people feel when their thoughts are inconsistent with one another. In this case, it’s feeling as if the president is doing a pretty lousy job on the economy, but still giving him decent (though not glowing) marks when it comes to his overall presidency.

At some point, psychologists will tell you, relief from the tension comes only when you try to restore consistency.

Something has to give; one rating has to movie, eventually, to more closely match the other.

The writer looks for a precedent of a president with low economic approval ratings diverging from his own approval ratings, and finds one in George H.W. Bush; Bush's approval ratings were 70% or higher following the huge success of the Gulf War, but even then, only 36% approved of his handling of the economy.

Eventually his approval rating collapsed:

By June of 1992, the laws of political gravity and cognitive dissonance had taken their toll on Bush. At that point, only 23 percent of Americans approved of the job Bush was doing on the economy and his overall job approval rating was 35 percent.

Is President Unprecedented actually pretty well precedented?

Posted by: Ace at 01:25 PM | Comments (180)
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You may wonder why I keep writing posts like this. "Surely these Global Warming advocates have no credibility anymore! This is a dead issue."

First off, don't call me Shirley.

Second, even though a large and growing part of the general public has had it with the Global Warming movement, many of our leaders and wannabe leaders still buy into it! Entrenched bureaucrats make decisions based on this. Light Bulbs. Light Bulbs! So it's not enough to be skeptical about the GW movement, you have to crush it.

Therefore even though I consider this a dead horse, I still beat it.

Here's a couple of stories you should know about that need a little more space than the sidebar.

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Posted by: Open Blogger at 01:15 PM | Comments (114)
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