Evenin' all.

How Long Ya Got? World Life Expectancy at Birth

Congratulations. If you're reading this, you have won the lottery of life.

If you're a moron, you should pace yourself for about 75 years on the disco floor; moronettes, you get an extra 5 years to party down and wait in line for the bathroom.

Of course if you're a regular here, you'll also have to apply the AoSHQ Lifestyle^TM lifespan discount. So be sure to use your remaining 16.361 years wisely. i suggest giving up corect speling local news and not seperating yur recyclubables

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:46 PM | Comments (720)
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Tough stuff, but it's about time to start acknowledging truth that is being suppressed in the interest of not hurting people's feelings:

Yes, the polls are real.

Yes, they all say the same thing.

And yes, as Coulter says, there is such a thing as "unelectable." It's not a word that was just invented to try to "get Palin."

Posted by: Ace at 05:09 PM | Comments (878)
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My guess is that these leaked details are deliberately inaccurate, and this list of things already tried (and failed) is intended to lower expectations. I imagine he's not releasing at least a couple of bigger ideas -- themselves actually small, but if he tricks people into thinking he's got absolutely nothing, those ideas look bigger due to low expectations.

If this is actually his plan, this speech will wind up costing him.

According to people familiar with the White House deliberations, two of the biggest measures in the president's proposals for 2012 are expected to be a one-year extension of a payroll tax cut for workers and an extension of expiring jobless benefits. Together those two would total about $170 billion.

.,.

The White House is also considering a tax credit for businesses that hire the unemployed. That could cost about $30 billion. Obama has also called for public works projects, such as school construction. Advocates of that plan have called for spending of $50 billion, but the White House proposal is expected to be smaller.

Obama also is expected to continue for one year a tax break for businesses that allows them to deduct the full value of new equipment. The president and Congress negotiated that provision into law for 2011 last December.

All of these points, except the small-beer incentive to hire the unemployed, are policies already in effect, which he seeks to continue.

It seems obvious that you can't change the current circumstances by only continuing the current policies. I don't even mean this in any kind of ideological way; in a meta way, there is no plausible way one can argue that doing essentially the same things is likely to produce new and different results. That seems elementary.

So what's his real plan? Either he's holding back a lot, or maybe he's just daring the Republicans to refuse some part of this plan in order to claim that this or that $50 billion cancelled expenditure is the reason we're now in a second recession.

Thanks to Slublog.

There will be no formal response by the GOP to Obama's address.

“Republicans are, and have been, entirely focused on job creation," Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said. "Every Member of Congress, and – more importantly - the American people, will provide a reaction to the president’s address. We trust in the good judgment of the American people, and the president’s proposals will rise or fall on their own merits."

I don't get the math on that. Always respond, even if you're not attacking; always take advantage of free media to at least say "We've got our own plan for jobs creation."

Who knows; maybe this was the agreement made behind-the-scenes for Obama to back off his insistence on speaking during the Republican debate.

Posted by: Ace at 04:18 PM | Comments (213)
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59 points? There were 9 that he just couldn't live without or they couldn't come up with 1 more to round things off?

Pro tip for Team Mitt: When voters say they want details, they are lying. People want to feel comfortable with a candidate and a basic understanding of their positions. That's it. The rest is just stuff people say to reporters so they don't look like slackers. In a world where 140 characters on Twitter has made reading a full length blog post like slogging through War and Peace, no one other than rival campaigns and political reporters are going to read all of that.

But since they went through all of the trouble to put it together, let me summarize a summary of it for you (slackers!). Here are 10 things, finally a nice round number, Mitt says he would do on the day he's inaugurated.

They would include five proposed bills that would: lower the corporate tax rate to 25 percent from 35 percent; implement free-trade agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea; expand domestic energy exploration; consolidate worker retraining programs and turn them over to the states; and cut non-security discretionary spending by 5 percent. (Obama also supports those three trade agreements, although he has been accused of dithering to satisfy the demands of organized labor.)

If elected, the former Massachusetts governor said he would also issue five executive orders on Inauguration Day. They would roll back President ObamaÂ’s health-care overhaul; eliminate Obama-era regulations; issue new oil-drilling permits; sanction China for currency manipulation; and reverse a number of policies that favor organized labor.

Romney also said he would cut the size of the federal workforce by 10 percent through attrition, possibly by hiring only one new government employee for every two who leave.

Romney says all of this will produce dramatic results.

According to his campaign, by the end of RomneyÂ’s first term, his proposals would lead to GDP growth averaging 4 percent per year over four years; 11.5 million additional private-sector jobs; an unemployment rate reduced to 5.9 percent and a reduction in spending of $1.6 trillion less than the projected amount under the current administration.

The Club for Growth gives Mitt a generally positive review except for his talk about China.
That strikes me much like Obama's promise to renegotiate NAFTA, (hey, how is that coming along?) a good primary talking point but in the cold light of actually governing, not so great.

The histories of campaigns are littered with plans and policy papers and most GOP candidates share the same broad outlines (cutting corporate taxes, cutting spending, reforming entitlements, etc.). The differences are within who has the record of doing what they say and their ability to make it happen if they are elected.

Related enough: Perry is reported to be attending tomorrow's debate in California.

Posted by: DrewM at 03:38 PM | Comments (151)
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Not thirty thousand. Three thousand.

The Obama administration has decided to drop the number of U.S. troops in Iraq at the end of the year down to 3,000, marking a major downgrade in force strength, multiple sources familiar with the inner workings and decisions on U.S. troop movements in Iraq told Fox News.

Senior commanders are said to be livid at the decision, which has already been signed off by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.

...

Currently, about 45,000 U.S. troops are stationed in Iraq. The generals on the ground had requested a reduced number of troops remaining in Iraq at the end of the year, but there was major pushback about "the cost and the political optics" of keeping that many in Iraq. The military's troop-level request was then reduced to 10,000.

Commanders said they could possibly make that work "in extremis," in other words, meaning they would be pushing it to make that number work security-wise and manpower-wise.

Now, sources confirm that the administration has pushed the Pentagon to cut the number even lower, and commanders are concerned for the safety of the U.S. troops who would remain there.

How can 3000 men in a foreign country accomplish anything, even securing their own safety?

This seems, yet again, to be a purely political decision, made without regard to any security goal or even the affected troops' safety.

If you're hollowing out the force to the point where they are no longer tasked with anything except defending themselves from terrorist attacks, why are they there at all?

But Obama seems to want the headline-grabbing drawdown, but without a headline-grabbing "Obama withdraws all troops from Iraq."

Voting present, again.

Thanks to DanF.

Posted by: Ace at 03:00 PM | Comments (250)
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You mad bro?

I was hours early for a flight and stuck in a relatively small terminal crammed with people. Only one area in the whole wing had empty seats; an unused gate that contained a TV blaring the CNN broadcast of Obama's Labor Day speech at full volume.

So it was either sit underneath a full-volume broadcast of our fearless president bellowing out his latest hollow promises, or the hellish alternative: retreat to gates full of screaming five year-old children, all of them jacked up on sugar and bawling their eyes out because it was the end of Labor Day weekend and their cruel parents were dragging them home from Disneyworld.

I ended up choosing the screaming children.

...

I just don't believe this guy anymore, and it's become almost painful to listen to him.

Now his reasons for all this are all super-lefty but who cares. The important thing is that even his ideological allies are abandoning him as a SCOAMF.

Thanks to Andy for that.

Matt Lauer Puts On His Sad-Clown Face Discussing Obama's Woeful Poll Numbers: You sad bro?

Posted by: Ace at 02:10 PM | Comments (176)
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I assume, because I have no idea what the hell those noises coming from his food-pipe are.

Transcript we much.

He's kind of like an obese, race-baiting Beaker, but not smart.

And speaking of race-stupidity -- You mad bro?

Very dumb. Apparently it's a catchprase among kids to ask "You mad bro?" when someone is clearly angry, in order to infuriate the target still further. I assume this like saying "Don't be irrational" to someone who's being irrational -- fuel for the fire.

Some kids held up a sign at a football game reading "You mad bro?" and... they are being attacked for racism, because obviously "bro" is a racial slur, and also because no adult bothered to find out what the catchphrase actually means.

That's via DrewM's twitter stream.

Decipher We Much, and We Much: robtr: "I speak sharpton, he said carpool, Nikki Haley has offered to provide carpools for potential voters without id's so they can get an id."

This is like the Da Vinci Code, only fat and stupid and guilty of racial arson.

Posted by: Ace at 01:40 PM | Comments (164)
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Seriously, watch this. All props to Jake Tapper for attempting to elucidate a simple rule, applicable to all, going forward.

Carney spins that Obama wasn't on the stage at the time -- and didn't speak for an eternity of 20 minutes later.

Tapper points out that in 2008 someone introducing McCain made a mean comment about Obama, and Obama demanded an apology from McCain.

So Tapper wants to know if, going forward, Republican candidates are to be only held responsible for their own statements, and not the statements of those who may appear before them on stages.

Carney refuses to bless that rule, because of course he doesn't want a rule, he wants two: One for Obama and another for Republicans.

Great series of questions. Carney looks even douchier than usual.
more...

Posted by: Ace at 12:53 PM | Comments (254)
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He also committed suicide, and I absolutely hate it when a headline includes the perp's death in the numbering of the dead.

Three people were murdered, and one psychopath offed himself. Let's not confuse things.

He shot more people than he killed -- initial reports were 9 to 13 but I don't know what the latest numbers are.

Police have not disclosed a motive for the shooting.

Ralph Swagler, who owns a Locals Barbecue in the strip mall, told the Reno Gazette-Journal that he saw a man pull up outside the IHOP in a blue minivan. Swagler said the man, who was carrying a rifle, shot a man on a motorcycle. The gunman then walked into the IHOP and started shooting. The gunman also fired at the Locals Barbecue, hitting the restaurant's windows.

The Reno Journal-Gazette was reporting that two of the people killed were National Guard members in uniform.

Posted by: Ace at 12:39 PM | Comments (125)
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This is in Weiner's old district, NY-9.

The poll also finds that President Barack Obama has a dismal approval rating in the district, which has a solid Democratic electoral history but is among the more conservative New York City districts.

The special election is next Tuesday.

Posted by: Ace at 11:55 AM | Comments (131)
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