Bad News: SMOD suspends campaign until 2040

No official reason given but rumors are that several deep pocket donors have switched over to the Solar Flare of Death.

Scientists are keeping a close eye on a big asteroid that may pose an impact threat to Earth in a few decades.

The space rock, which is called 2011 AG5, is about 460 feet (140 meters) wide. It may come close enough to Earth in 2040 that some researchers are calling for a discussion about how to deflect it.

Just another disappointment to bear I guess. Who knew that SMOD would turn out to be just another spineless RINO who prefers the Establishment's orbital cocktail parties?

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:16 PM | Comments (830)
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Frankly, I don't get it.
I'll look for clues in the comments.
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Posted by: CAC at 04:20 PM | Comments (267)
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"This isn't really about misogyny; this is about the Democratic Party. And that's what it always comes down to, it's a proxy war for the Democratic Party."

Good interview (and more links from Allah, which I can't steal), and good article.

But if Limbaugh’s actions demand a boycott—and they do—then what about the army of swine on the left?

During the 2008 election Ed Schultz said on his radio show that Sarah Palin set off a “bimbo alert.” He called Laura Ingraham a “right-wing slut.” (He later apologized.) He once even took to his blog to call yours truly a “bimbo” for the offense of quoting him accurately in a New York Post column.

Keith Olbermann has said that conservative commentator S.E. Cupp should have been aborted by her parents, apparently because he finds her having opinions offensive. He called Michelle Malkin a “mashed-up bag of meat with lipstick.” He found it newsworthy to discuss Carrie Prejean’s breasts on his MSNBC show...

The grand pooh-bah of media misogyny is without a doubt Bill Maher.
Left-wing darling Matt Taibbi wrote on his blog in 2009, “When I read [Malkin’s] stuff, I imagine her narrating her text, book-on-tape style, with a big, hairy set of balls in her mouth.”

She makes a great point about Maher. Maher claims the reason he's allowed to call Palin a twat, c**t and so forth is that "he doesn't have sponsors."

No, he has a patron in HBO -- and HBO suffers him. HBO is a corporation; shouldn't they drop him?

But that's not Powers' point. Powers makes the point that while he may not have sponsors, he has a lot of top-liberal guests, without whom his show would consist of his own, ahem, comedic talent.

Why do they continue to flock to him? And giggle over his crassest comments?

Now, as I said about Limbaugh, I think many of these things are less egregious due to their being jokes of some kind.

But Limbaugh's crack was a joke too.

And yet he's to be hounded off the air?
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Posted by: Ace at 01:32 PM | Comments (624)
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CAC writes:

PPP has it now Romney +1 37-36, leading amongst those who decided in last few days. Numbers currently only on twitter (@ppppolls) but should be up on their main site soon.

Larry Sabato, I think correctly, pegged Romney carrying 6-7 states on Super Tuesday.

But Rasmussen has Santorum +1. ARG has Romney +7, and Qunnippiac has it Romney +3.

Of course that is current sentiment. But people have been casting early ballots for weeks.

Among such voters, a Suffolk poll says that Santorum has a seventeen point lead.

According to the survey, 13% of likely voters have already cast their vote. A seventeen-point advantage could be decisive, especially if turnout drops off tomorrow and that percentage of early voting ends up being larger than 13%.

A Marist poll has Romney up 3 among early voters. Which I think is wrong. It makes a lot more sense that Santorum would be.

In any event, the smaller the subgroup you're looking at, the higher the Margin of Error.

Posted by: Ace at 12:26 PM | Comments (242)
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I did a Twitter gag on Saturday.

By the way, someone said "You should put this in a post." Let me mention why I didn't.

A post is an investment. It feels more substantial. I feel like when I do a post, I have to turn in a Real Essay or something. Or in this case, a real comedy bit. Like edited.

Twitter isn't like that. There's no investment in a 140 character joke. It doesn't need to be good. I can stop whenever I like. I don't need an ending.

Anyway, a lot of people liked this gag so I'll post it.

The background, the thing I'm spoofing, is Sandra Flake's claim that some woman she heard from -- some "voice" -- told her that she had been raped, but she knew Georgetown's insurance did not cover birth control, so she assumed -- assumed, her word -- that the insurance would not cover rape.

Wouldn't cover a check-up afterwards for STD's. Sandra Fluke said that herself -- this "woman's voice" told her that she assumed that there was a special provision in Georgetown U's insurance stating something like "We don't cover rape. You're on your own."

I find that rather implausible, and to the extent it's plausible at all, I find it to be absurd to claim that because someone assumed that Gerogetown had a special "Screw you, rape-victim" rider that they should be denied their religious liberty to not cover birth control.

Their religious liberty must fall so that people don't make erroneous "assumptions" like this?

Another story was of a woman who got a birth control prescription and then was embarrassed and shocked when she went to CVS (or wherever) and was informed, for the first time, that she'd have to pay for that out of pocket.

That huge $9/month cost.

So she left the pharmacy, shocked, embarrassed, victimized, and traumatized.

In both instances the trauma attached due to a misunderstanding about what Georgetown covered. And the correct position, Fluke maintains, is that the Jesuits should abandon their religious scruples, not, say, that people might pick up a phone and call to inquire about the coverage. Or, say, ask a Reproductive Rights advocate like Sandra Fluke what the insurance covers.

Or that they should actually read the policy.

I almost don't even want to mention that because at this point in our nation's trajectory most people will laugh at this possibility.

And yet, in both cases, simply finding out the terms of coverage would have avoided the traumatization. Shock in one case, forgoing necessary post-rape treatment (including STD testing) in another.

And the media, of course, permitted these silly claims to go forth into the public square as we debate a very serious principle, that of religious liberty, and the proper role of the state in intruding into personal choices.

Personal choices by employers, too. Funny how that part always gets left out.

So if you go here and scroll down to where I first mention "Wheelbarrow," you can read my own testimony, about how I was hit by a car but didn't call the doctor because I assumed, wrongly it turns out, that gross physical injury sustained by truck wasn't cover. It's in reverse order, so once having found the wheelbarrow post, read up, not down.

See, I assumed some things.

Damn confusing coverage!

I too have a tale of Woe, and no one seems interested in it.

Why is my voice to be Silenced by a World Waging War on Women? And also, me?

Posted by: Ace at 11:27 AM | Comments (203)
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I'm not slacking. I'm writing. But offline.

Here's David "The Frumbag Frum. No link.

"It's not fair!"

As advertisers quit the Rush Limbaugh radio program -- and as Republican politicians squirm uncomfortably -- the broadcaster's fans are complaining about double standards.

Yes, they'll concede, maybe Limbaugh went too far in denouncing a female law student as a "slut" and a "prostitute" and then demanding that she post a sex tape online for him to view.

But look (they continue) at all the liberal/lefty broadcasters who have also said obnoxious things! No one calls Democratic politicians to account for them. Why us?

It's a question that will be aired often in the week ahead. Here's the answer, in four points.

Point 1: Even by the rough standards of cable/talk radio/digital talk, Limbaugh's verbal abuse of Sandra Fluke set a new kind of low.

Speaking of dumb c***s, Sarah Palin-- Bill Maher.

Really? This is a new low?

I can't recall anything as brutal, ugly and deliberate ever being said by such a prominent person and so emphatically repeated.

Oh? Let's check the wayback machine to see what Letterman actually said.

Letterman's "Top 10" list Tuesday night focused on Palin's recent trip to New York, and included several cracks: "Bought makeup from Bloomingdale's to update her 'slutty flight attendant' look," Letterman said.

But it was a line in Letterman's monologue that set off a firestorm: "One awkward moment for Sarah Palin at the Yankee game, during the seventh inning, her daughter was knocked up by Alex Rodriguez."

Palin was in New York with her 14-year-old daughter, Willow.

A new low? Limbaugh joked about a 30 year old activist.

Letterman joked about a 14 year old girl slutting around.

This is a new low?

No, it's not.

This was not a case of a bad "word choice." It was a brutally sexualized accusation, against a specific person, prolonged over three days.

Sandra Fluke is not a rape victim and Limbaugh did not dredge up her sexual history.

His joke -- which I've called bad and strained in a previous post -- was that if she wants to be paid for sexual activity, that makes her a "slut" by this strained definition.

The way the left repeats it (and the Frumbag is now a member of the left) they make it sound like he was really, seriously calling her a slut.

He wasn't. He was making some dumb point which no one could have misunderstood to mean "I have information about her sexual history and she sleeps around a great deal."

By the very formulation he employed, he was saying she was a "slut" (as a joke, again) only by his silly formulation that if she demands someone else pay for her birth control, she's a "slut" by this goofy definition.

Crude? Sure. Lame? Yup. Strained? Yes. Sexualized? Also, alas, yes.

But seriously contending she's a loose woman? Like a cruel defense attorney might claim of a rape victim on the stand?

"Sexually brutalizing" her?

No.

Point 2: The cases that conservatives cite as somehow equivalent to Limbaugh's tirade against Fluke by and large did bring consequences for their authors.

After David Letterman for example made an ugly joke about Sarah Palin's daughter, he delivered an abject seven-minute apology on air. (To which Palin responded by refusing the apology and insinuating that David Letterman was a child molester.)

Rush apologized too. And Fluke, similarly, rejected the apology.

What the Frumbag insinuates is poor form by Palin turns out to be perfectly reasonable when done by his New Heroine.

When liberal talker Ed Schultz nastily called my dear friend Laura Ingraham a "slut" on his radio show, MSNBC responded by suspending Schultz for a week without pay from his TV show. Schultz likewise apologized in person on air. (Ingraham accepted the apology with grace and humor.)

Paid time off. By the way, people on the left, and especially on the right, get these paid one-week suspensions all the time.

Speeding ticket.

Why is it being contended that Rush must pay more than a fine?

The exception to the general rule is Bill Maher, who never apologized for calling Palin by a demeaning sexual epithet. But now see point 3:

Point 3: Limbaugh's place in American public life is in no way comparable to that of David Letterman, Bill Maher or Ed Schultz.

Letterman is not a political figure at all;

Yes he is. He's an intense partisan and has been, increasingly, since 2000. He was radicalized by the Iraq War.

The Frumbag doesn't notice this, because he's on the same page, politically.

... and while Maher and Schultz strongly identify as liberals, neither qualifies as anything like a powerbroker in the Democratic Party.

Maher's show is weekly One Hour Hate for liberals. He just did a free "comedy" concert whose point was to note his $1,000,000 donation to Obama's PAC, and his strident advocacy, then and since, that rich liberals must do likewise.

Speaking of dumb c**s, David Frum.

Posted by: Ace at 10:28 AM | Comments (324)
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At the new Bretibart site, a report on a 1998 play Obama attended and even took the stage for a panel discussion after a performance.

So, what’s in the play? It truly is a love song to Alinsky. In the first few minutes of the play, Alinsky plays Moses – yes, the Biblical Moses – talking to God. The play glorifies Alinsky stealing food from restaurants and organizing others to do the same, explaining, “I saw it as a practical use of social ecology: you had members of the intellectual community, the hope of the future, eating regularly for six months, staying alive till they could make their contributions to society.”

In an introspective moment, Alinsky rips America: “My country … ‘tis of whatthehell / And justice up a tree … How much can you sell / What’s in it for me.” He grins about manipulating the Christian community to back his programs. He talks in glowing terms about engaging in Chicago politics with former Mayor Kelly. He rips the McCarthy committee, mocking, “Everyone was there, when you think back – Cotton Mather, Hester Prynn, Anne Hutchinson, Tom Paine, Tom Jefferson … Brandeis, Holmes … Gene Debs and the socialists … Huey Long … Imperial Wizards of all stripes … Father Coughlin and his money machine … Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd … and a kicking chorus of sterilized reactionaries singing O Come, All Ye Faithful …”

And Alinsky talks about being the first occupier – shutting down the O’Hare Airport by occupying all the toilet stalls, using chewing gum to “tie up the city, stop all traffic, and the shopping, in the Loop, and let everyone at City Hall know attention must be paid, and maybe we should talk about it.” As Alinsky says, “Students of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your juicy fruit.”

The play finishes with Alinsky announcing he’d rather go to Hell than Heaven. Why? “More comfortable there. You see, all my life I’ve been with the Have-Nots: here you’re a Have-Not if you’re short of money, there you’re a Have-Not if you’re short of virtue. I’d be asking more questions, organizing them. They’re my kind of people – Hell would be Heaven for me.”

More at the link. Many of the other people on the panel were Marxists, or, as the media calls them, "moderates."

Posted by: Ace at 08:47 AM | Comments (333)
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Talk amongst yourselves.

Also, new "Game of Thrones" Season 2 trailer below. Geek out: more...

Posted by: Slublog at 07:17 AM | Comments (321)
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I've decided to turn my hiatus into a permanent vacation, my groovy babies.

There is an old bar-room weeper sung by Emmylou Harris called "I Know An Ending When It Comes", and I think for me that time is now.

I've got too many demands on my time, and not enough hours in the day to service them all. It's no one's fault but mine: I took all these burdens on. But it's time to declare this particular job finished and move on to other things.

It's been no end of fun blogging (and tweeting!) on the HQ. I love the Moron Horde, and believe more than ever that Ace's site is one of the best hangouts on the web. Ace himself is the polestar of this enterprise, and his wit and humor -- and occasional ill temper -- are what give the site its characteristic tone. It's been an honor to work with the other co-bloggers in contributing content to the site over the years, first as a commenter, then as a co-blogger.

I will not disappear entirely. I will continue to make the site a daily stop, and you may see my name pop up in the comments section from time to time. However, this will be the end of 'The Daily DOOM' and the Sunday book thread (under my byline, anyhow). I hope that over the time I've been doing these things I've managed to entertain, inform, and maybe coerce a mordant chuckle or two out of you.

I am leaving not in anger, or depression, or disillusionment. I am simply leaving because I have done the job I meant to do, and said all the things I wanted to say. I've begun to repeat myself. History, like music, moves in circles, and I find myself treading the same old ground over and over again. The task is done. Time to move on to the next thing.

Ace: you are an Ewok of rare vintage indeed. Thank you so much for allowing me to contribute to your site.

To the co-bloggers: You guys have been great in more ways than I can possibly express. It's odd to feel such a close kinship to people I've never actually met face-to-face, but so it is.

To the commenters: Thanks for reading my stuff, and for keeping me honest. Thanks for catching me out when I put my foot in it. Thanks for the humor, and the insight, even the disagreements. You guys are a large part of what makes this site work -- don't forget that.

I may have missed a lot of things you said
I know most of them went right overhead
But with all my heart I know this song's been sung
And at least I know an ending when it comes.
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Posted by: Monty at 04:43 AM | Comments (421)
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Monday morning, you're early. Please wait in the lobby.

Posted by: andy at 02:20 AM | Comments (188)
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