Update 4: Fixed! Sort of. Ustream has live coverage... with an obnoxiously heavy music track! So exciting. Player embedded below the fold. (Thanks to commenter "RokShox.")

Update 3: Never mind. Sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn't. Go to the Fox link below or use the InfoSatellites.com tracker. (Thanks to commenter "t-bird.")

Update 2: It did work. I added it back. Wait a few minutes for the data to load.

Update: It looks like the plugin works here, but the tracking data doesn't load, so I deleted it. You can see it at Fox News.

The Google Earth plugin is required to see the tracker below the fold. There is a short wait for the tracking data to load. Depending upon the time, you may have to spin the Earth around with your cursor to see the track. Give it a few moments.

Re-entry estimates are updated here. Here is the latest:

As of 10:30 a.m. EDT on Sept. 23, 2011, the orbit of UARS was 100 miles by 105 miles (160 km by 170 km). Re-entry is expected late Friday, Sept. 23, or early Saturday, Sept. 24, Eastern Daylight Time. Solar activity is no longer the major factor in the satelliteÂ’s rate of descent. The satelliteÂ’s orientation or configuration apparently has changed, and that is now slowing its descent. There is a low probability any debris that survives re-entry will land in the United States, but the possibility cannot be discounted because of this changing rate of descent. It is still too early to predict the time and location of re-entry with any certainty, but predictions will become more refined in the next 12 to 18 hours.

Last night, it wasn't expected to be a threat to the United States at all. Now it is again, which goes to show how difficult it is to estimate guess when and where it will fall. Regardless, chances are greatest it will hit an ocean or an uninhabited part of the planet.

Follow me on Twitter. more...

Posted by: rdbrewer at 09:30 AM | Comments (95)
Post contains 356 words, total size 3 kb.

We assume there'll be a dramatic US veto, but who knows.

Obama's other out is to convince enough members to vote against this so it fails without a veto.

Obama encouraged this, of course. The Palestinians have been openly talking about it for months. This should come as no surprise, then, to Obama, but, like everything else, obvious hazards have a way of just sneaking up on him.

Posted by: Ace at 09:18 AM | Comments (114)
Post contains 98 words, total size 1 kb.

H8. more...

Posted by: Ace at 09:05 AM | Comments (204)
Post contains 19 words, total size 1 kb.

I mention this because several emailers and commenters in the live-blog are ready to flip from Perry to Newt.

Here's something to keep in mind: What is causing the desire to flip? Perry said something that runs strongly counter to the conservative orthodoxy.

But these things pass. You hear these awful things, you react badly, eventually you halfway forget about them. Not completely, but they don't drive the train any longer.

Proof? The very fact that people are jumping on the Gingrich Express, apparently forgetting completely that three months ago Gingrich completely screwed the pooch by calling the Ryan Plan -- a thoughtful, realistic tough-love solution to a problem that absolutely requires a solution -- "right-wing social engineering."

Remember? Or has everyone forgotten?

My point here is simply that, three months later, people have almost completely forgotten this statement -- which once produced cries of outrage and condemnation -- and they're thinking of flipping to Newt from Perry over a statement Perry's just made which has produced cries of outrage and condemnation.

What will Perry's line look like in three months? I don't know. I know right now it looks bad.

But I know three months ago people announced that Newt had jumped the shark and should abandon his presidential campaign in disgrace, and spend the next year attempting to atone for taking a cheap shot at a brave plan, just to move the needle a little in polls.

And now...? Well now Newt Gingrich is on fire and may be the best hope we have.

Maybe we're all reacting very badly to the most recent bullshit we heard.

Which may be why Romney continues to do well -- his bullshit is the oldest.

Posted by: Ace at 08:21 AM | Comments (240)
Post contains 292 words, total size 2 kb.

Of all the things he could have said, this was pretty much the worst.

Drew covered this, but it's worth noting this really hurt Perry with Frank Luntz's focus group.

According to LuntzÂ’s focus group, this line by Perry was not only his worst moment in the debate, but perhaps the worst moment any Republican has had in any debate since he started doing these debate-watching focus groups.

A few points:

1. Although Romney is never convincing as to why RomneyCare is right for Massachusetts but wrong for America, he does at least stress, again and again, that it's only right for Massachusetts. Gibberish though it is, he is insistent that Massachusetts is a special, magical place where RomneyCare is good policy... and nowhere else.

At the end of the day, the most important thing is that "and nowhere else" part. Romney makes no sense on this point, but he does try to convince people that RomneyCare is a unique thing which should not be duplicated elsewhere.

Perry obviously has some problems on immigration. The way I envisioned him dealing with this would be to stress that Texas has a different experience with the border than non-border states, and that anything he'd done in Texas on immigration would be, like RomneyCare in Massachusetts, explicitly limited as a policy response to the special conditions of Texas.

This "You don't have a heart line" completely undercuts that. If Mitt Romney proclaimed, "If you're not in favor of some kind of government-guaranteed health care, you don't have a heart," that would be evidence that his own heart urged him towards a national health care system, RomneyCare for EveryWhere.

Similarly, Rick Perry's claim that this issue is a matter of heart -- not particular circumstances in Texas, not a policy forced upon him by a federal government which refuses to patrol the border (and thus creates the problem in the first place) -- seems to suggest he thinks this is good policy as a national matter.

I'm not sure how he walks that back. And that's a problem, because while the purpose of the debates is to answer nagging questions about you (and not, as Drew notes, to rack up debating points against opponents), Perry is creating more of them.

2. Once again Perry seemed to grow mentally tired in the second half of the debate. All of his worst moments seem to come in that second half.

Why is that? Some have suggested he's still fatigued from his back surgery. I don't know.

3. Although there's joy in RomneyTown today, it should be noted that Romney always seems to be granted "you lose in the primaries, but you win in the general, so you really win in the primaries" sort of special rule.

On many issues, taking the "moderate" position is thought to be a political help with moderates. (I'm not sure that math applies in this election, at least not to the extent it has in the past, but ignore that for now.)

Romney is thought to be a strong general election candidate, because he has taken liberal positions on, say, abortion in the past. And by "playing in the field of health care," as ParisParamus says, that indicates to moderates, who just want to know a candidate is willing to consider a range of policy responses to a problem, Romney is also stronger in the general.

To some extent, on some issues, "losing" an issue in the primary is actually "winning" it in the general election campaign. Being perceived as the most doctrinaire, full-throated conservative is considered a plus in the primary; but being considered a more nuanced, heterodox thinker is a plus in the general.

Romney's backers rely on this logic all the time. But does this not apply to Perry as well? Who came across as the "extremist," and who the "moderate," in the in-state-tuition-for-the-children-of-illegals argument?

Not to say I liked Perry's answer. At all. But Romney's folks have a way of spinning primary sow's arses into general election silk purses. They should confess that this special rule applies to other candidates too.

But what a strange inversion this is when the putative "conservative" candidate is offering up emotion-tugging soft-headed moderate pablum, and the "moderate" one talks up vetoing a similar bill.

4. In the case of Mike Castle, I had a good reason for not caring very much about his liberal position on Cap and Trade: Cap and Trade was dead. (Seen it proposed lately?)

Sure, it offered a glimpse into his thinking, and that glimpse was not appealing, but the issue itself? Harmless. No one's passing Cap and Trade, not in current climate (nor the foreseeable climate for the next six years).

The actual issue of in-state tuition, though, is somewhat more live on a national level, as the Democrats attempt to get various amnesty-leaning bills through Congress. They go nowhere, but they do actually bother to introduce them into the Senate.

Given a right-leaning House of Representatives, and also given a Senate which will almost certainly have 40 strong conservative filibuster votes (for anything) in 2012, there is less danger in a candidate who frankly is simply soft on immigration.

But there is some.

Whether this is disqualifying, I don't know.

I know it's not a good thing for Perry that the best argument for him here is "Congress will restrain him.... hopefully."

5. But on that point, I do consider one's political sense and savvy to be important attributes. Perry's failure to have a smooth prepared response here seems to indicate he scarcely saw this one coming.

I don't know what kind of malfunctioning political compass he has to not have anticipated his weakest issue was immigration.

I anticipated that. All of my questions for him (I sent some to people who know him, or know people who know him) were on immigration.

Why didn't he?

On the 3am Question: Perry's answer wasn't good, but there are no good answers. Drew's proposed answer -- which he considers a "good" one -- is an evasive punt, essentially saying "I'll have a plan."

Here's the problem: First of all, this question should have been about a hypothetical country, not Pakistan. When you name the country as "Pakistan," you are... inviting a presidential candidate to announce to an Al Qaeda friendly, on-the-edge-of-becoming-a-full-fledged-terrorist-nuclear-state, that you intend to invade them.

What's a candidate supposed to say? "Yes, I will invade this country, which is formally an ally (even though it's an enemy), so let me right now push this nuclear armed terrorist-loving state further to the edge by playing into jihadist victimization mythology by announcing the Great Satan will take their nukes."

Further, look, here's what I really think about Pakistan: I think this ends in a nuclear exchange.

I don't think the public really wants to contemplate that. I'm contemplating that myself, and I don't like contemplating that.

But Pakistan is, in fact, pretty much Al Qaeda with nukes.

It won't end pretty.

I would not advise anyone in power, or seeking power, to be perfectly forthright on this point.

Posted by: Ace at 07:55 AM | Comments (329)
Post contains 1191 words, total size 7 kb.

Allow me to be charitable...it was awful.

Maet was kind enough to link a piece I wrote at my own little blog last night that laid out my concerns with Perry prior to the debate. Clearly nothing he did last night improved my opinion of Perry.

First let me say...I don't give a damn about how many shots he was able to land on Mitt or wasn't able to land. That's simply the game that these "debates" set up. Being President has nothing to do with scoring "debate" points. It has to do with the ability to layout a vision, build the necessary political coalitions to bring them to fruition and then implement the relevant polices. Candidates sparring over what was in the others book doesn't really tell you much about their ability to do any of that.

What really bothered me about Perry? Two things stood out.

First, immigration. Perry seemed defensive and thin skinned when he was challenged on his support for the Texas DREAM Act. As I've said before, there may well be a valid public policy basis for Texas' program. For some reason Perry chose not to make it but rather he fell back a cheap line of attack that would make Lindsey Graham proud.

“I supported Arizona’s immigration law by joining in that lawsuit to defend it. Every day I have Texans on that border that are doing their job. But if you say that we should not educate children who have come into our state for no other reason than they’ve been brought there by no fault of their own, I don’t think you have a heart. We need to be educating these children, because they will become a drag on our society. I think that’s what Texans wanted to do.”

Really? You can't have a good faith difference of opinion with Perry on this, you simply don't have a heart? Got it.

The second major problem with Perry was his answer to a question about what he would do if as President he got a 3am phone call saying terrorists had gotten control of Pakistan's nukes. His response was...baffling.

Well, obviously before you ever get to that point, you have to build a relationship in that region. ThatÂ’s one of the things that this administration has not done. Just yesterday, we found out through Admiral Mullen that Haqqani has been involved with, and thatÂ’s a terrorist group, directly associated with the Pakistani country. To have a relationship with India, to make sure that India knows that they are an ally of the United States. For instance, when we had the opportunity to sell India the upgraded F-16s, we chose not to do that. We did the same thing with Taiwan. The point is, our allies need to understand clearly that we are their friends, we will be standing by there with them. Today, we donÂ’t have those allies in that region that can assist us if that situation that you talked about were to become a reality.

"Haqqani has been involved with, and thatÂ’s a terrorist group, directly associated with the Pakistani country". Non-responsive and gibberish.

As for this idea the chose not to sell F-16's to India, that's simply wrong. They rejected our proposal.

FTR- I'm pretty sure the right answer here something along the lines of, "As President I'd make sure the military has contingency plans for just this scenario. In fact, I imagine they already do. In my administration, we will ensure that our military has the proper resources to deal with such a crisis and I will not hesitate to do whatever is necessary to prevent terrorists from getting nuclear weapons and failing that, make sure they do not have the chance to use them on us or our allies".

I've prefaced most everything I've written about Perry to this point by saying something like, I want to like him but have concerns about him. Well, after a month of watching him campaign I have to say I simply don't like him and have no faith that he has sufficient command of the issues or ability to build the necessary coalitions to be an effective candidate.

Maybe that will change. I hope so.

As for Mitt..he's Mitt. All his negatives are known and baked into the cake. I'd vote for either of these guys over Obama but as things stand now, I won't be happy about it.

In other news...please stop with this stuff. It's not happening. This is the field. Deal with it.

Rasmussen has a poll out confirming the Suffolk poll from earlier in the week. Perry is getting smoked in New Hampshire.

In Iowa, Perry still leads in the RCP average of polls.

All of this was before last night. It will be interesting to see if Perry's FNC performance has any impact.

Posted by: DrewM at 06:11 AM | Comments (447)
Post contains 815 words, total size 6 kb.

That's not exactly how the MSM will spin the House passed Continuing Resolution but it's just as valid a frame.

The 219-203 vote sets up a confrontation with the Senate, where Democratic leaders have vowed to block the measure in a dispute over federal disaster aid.

For Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), the vote was little more than a mulligan. After 48 Republicans opposed his bill on Wednesday, he faced a choice: Scrap a spending cut to win over Democrats who had pulled their support for the bill, or persuade dissenting conservatives that the original bill was the best deal they could get.

Boehner chose his right flank, adding a sweetener in the form of a $100 million rescission to the loan guarantee program that funded the bankrupt energy company Solyndra.

The actual amount is a pittance when you consider that Solyndra alone got over $500 million in loan guarantees. Still, by including to this provision it forces the media to cover Solyndra and that's a plus.

Last night's vote came a day after the House rejected the GOP's original spending plan.

Following a lengthy closed-door meeting, House Republicans emerged with a strategy to keep intact the continuing resolution the House defeated on Wednesday by adding a $100 million offset targeting the government program involved in the loan guarantees awarded to the failed energy company Solyndra, the solar-energy firm backed by more than $500 million in government loan guarantees and previously supported by President Obama. The company has since declared bankruptcy and is the focus of a federal investigation.

The inclusion of the Solyndra language sent a clear message that Republicans seek to pass the CR with Republican votes, instead of softening the original bill to get House Democrats on board. Some 48 Republicans voted against the CR on Wednesday, and all but six Democrats voted against it. House Republicans largely voted against the bill because the overall $1.043 trillion CR price tag exceeded Budget Committee Chairman Paul RyanÂ’s, R-Wis., blueprint passed by the House early this year. But House GOP leadership aides were confident those conservatives would be mollified with the inclusion of the Solyndra language. A vote was on track for Thursday evening.

The move is politically motivated since the Energy Department program through which Solyndra received a loan guarantee is going to expire Sept. 30. Under the Recovery Act that Obama signed in February 2009, Congress created the program and gave it a sunset date of Sept. 30, since the the program was aimed at short-term economic recovery.

But again, it's a timely reminder to voters that while Obama is crossing the country holding political rallies that are thinly disguised as a legitimate effort to promote his tax and "jobs" plans, his track record with this stuff is woeful.

My question is, why didn't Boehner do this the first time? Boehner seems to need an awful lot of mulligans. Remember when he had to pull the debt deal bill and postpone the vote? Maybe he needs to start leading with his Plan B from now on.

Is this whole thing less than ideal? Of course but everything is going to be less than ideal when you have deal with a Democratic Senate that simply refuses to pass a budget framework and a leftist in the White House. We're simply not going to get fiscally sound polices in the current environment. The only solution to this is get them the hell out of there.

Now the House has dropped this in the Senate's lap. Do they want to shut the government down and withhold disaster aid they say is desperately needed or do they want to protect green energy companies?

Posted by: DrewM at 04:21 AM | Comments (200)
Post contains 641 words, total size 4 kb.

FRIDAY!!

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:46 AM | Comments (258)
Post contains 15 words, total size 1 kb.

Your Guide To Manscaping

Okay apparently chest hair on men is okay:

As sad as I am to admit it, I am not blessed with Burt ReynoldsÂ’ luxurious organic rug. Thankfully chest hair isnÂ’t an all or nothing proposition. ...If it starts to get a little unruly, itÂ’s time to trim it back a bit. Also, unless you are a professional body builder, you have no reason to wax your chest.

There is no excuse for having back hair, so get rid of it. Sure, you didn’t ask for hair in a place that isn’t readily accessible to you, but you’ve got it so it’s your responsibility. If you think you can handle it, ask your girlfriend to wax your back for you. While that might make you uncomfortable, she’s probably done plenty of waxing in her day so she won’t even flinch. I know you don’t want to deal with this, but in a non-scientific survey conducted in my elevator, 9 out of 10 people described back hair as “creepy.”

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:24 PM | Comments (598)
Post contains 722 words, total size 7 kb.

Another one of these things. Tonight at 9pm Eastern on Fox News Channel (link is for the live stream).

These people want your vote:

That guy on the right looks vaguely familiar. Not sure who he is, but he looks baked.

Google *spit* has some part in this. Questions via YouTube, I think.

In case you haven't already seen this in the sidebar, my buddy Wiserbud over at The Hostages posted this nice reminder of why this is important today. Say it with me now ... S-C-O-A-M-F!

Standard reminder: Your comments do not automatically display. So don't ask "Why aren't my comments displaying?" They don't display.

They're not posted comments a la chat room. Instead they go to queue, which the producers (cobloggers) read, and we post them, by hand, if we think they make a good point.

Also: We're going to try to slow the scroll down a little tonight. It got kind of out of unmanageable last time, so your comments are going to have to be extra good to clear the bar.

Liveblog thingy below the fold. more...

Posted by: andy at 04:45 PM | Comments (877)
Post contains 202 words, total size 2 kb.