I think it's something.

We're seeing some nifty sci-fi stuff these days -- except in the area we really want to see the nifty sci-fi stuff: heavy industry.

Flying cars, I mean.

Meanwhile, this is an... interesting bit of architecture. Outward-facing glass floor-to-ceiling windows in the bathrooms of a hotel in a large city with lots of street traffic? What could go wrong?

And this is Hollywood just basically saying, "Eff you, dude. Eff you."

Posted by: Ace at 01:07 PM | Comments (120)
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Dude burns an American flag.

American flag decides to be totally awesome and kill him with the smoke of fiery liberty.

One of the participants of the rally, Abdullah Ismail, passed away after he was taken to Mayo Hospital. Witnesses said he had complained of feeling unwell from the smoke from US flags burnt at the rally.

I think there's a line from MacBeth that goes like, "blades smoking with bloody execution..."

I denounce myself and apologize to everyone in the whole world who might be offended by anything I say or do and please don't murder me.

Via @benk84's excellent sidebar headlines. Which I'm thinking should be in a big post.

Posted by: Ace at 12:39 PM | Comments (185)
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What can we do to assist the Muslim Brotherhood's quest for worldwide sharia today?

Posted by: Ace at 12:15 PM | Comments (163)
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By the way, in 2001, he said something very similar -- he said that the liberal movement had become too focused on the Courts, which could announce rights and negative limitations on government, but could not affirmatively insist on what the government could do as far as "redistributive change."

Thus, he felt the rights-based focus took the movement's eye off the big issue, redistributive change. Which he suggested had to be accomplished by non-court action (like, for example, a President leading a compliant Congress).

more...

Posted by: Ace at 11:37 AM | Comments (287)
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Yeah, I've been saying this. He says it better.

If you're not sure you want to spend five minutes reading it, check out the Hot Air excerpt. Then spend the five minutes to read it.

Process stories are easy. They're fun. They play who's up-who's down game using simple signifiers and narrative shortcuts....

But process stories – on either side, as “bitter clingers” proved – don't win elections.

Of the dozen or so Romney gaffes in the primary and beyond, each has been greeted by a media more intent on declaring it to be the fatal moment....

Now, everything about Barack Obama's brand – which is what has replaced the Democratic Party, to its future peril – relies on what John Hayward called “...a manufactured political narrative that bears little resemblance to reality.”

The delta between the world as Obama and his legion of fanboys describe it and the world as it is grows more spectacular and more impossible to sustain by the day.

...

Which is why process stories and Obama's considerable self-regard can't paper over an economy teetering on the precipice. Process stories can't make the fiscal crash that's coming any less catastrophic or record unemployment less systemic.

Process stories can't stop the video of burning U.S. Embassies and of the beaten, violated corpses of American diplomats being dragged through the streets. Process stories can't stop the grim sight of Al Qaida flags proudly flying over what were once U.S. diplomatic compounds...

You know how I knew John McCain would lose in 2008?

It wasn't Sarah Palin. It was that he was running (in the public mind) as the third term of Bush and the facts in 2008 were not so good.

We had a financial crisis, and the world seemed to be going to hell.

That's a tough environment to win an election in.

Now, Obama has something McCain didn't -- a media desperately in love with him and willing to embargo important news in order to push minor stories to distract away from the big ones.

In the Obama/McCain contest, the media was, get this, quite willing, even eager to note the bad facts in 2008.

Now they are determined to discuss everything except that.

That's something. That's a big chit for Obama.

And yet, the news got around even in the Soviet Union, didn't it?

Posted by: Ace at 10:58 AM | Comments (212)
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It's a pretty good performance. Whatever the question, he addresses it briefly, then he turns to the economy.

As of now, this whole contretemps is a net-negative, because if you're defending/explaining, you're losing.

That said, some people might take heart that Romney does seem to a stronger opponent of the "government-centered society" than suspected.

A few points about what he said at the fundraiser: People are offering various things he could have said to make the statements more politically useful as public statements.

For example, something Romney doesn't mention, but which is a political winner (which I've not seen anyone note): Among the people dependent on government are Obama's various Clients in taxpayer-supported pretendustry. Such a statement would insulate him against the meme being pushed by the media, that he hates poor people. No, he hates rich people sucking off the government teat, too.

But I have to note: The reason this didn't have the relentlessly-edited and focus-grouped technical perfection of a public statement is that it wasn't meant to be a public statement. Some asshole stung him.

Fine. He'll just have to treat private statements as public ones. (Perhaps he should have been doing so already; but then, if you pay a lot of money to have a lunch with Romney you'd like to hear him go off script once in a while.)

Overall, a net-negative snafu, but not as serious as the press is trying to make it. Obama called small-town Pennsylvanians bitter clingers and still won their vote.

And Speaking Of: Jay Carney now says his boss' bitter clinger remarks were actually a wonderful method of trying to engage Those People, even though he wasn't addressing Those People when he uttered them, but was in fact addressing people who despised Those People.

This also contradicts his statement -- when he was supposedly a journalist -- that this was a real problem for Obama.

Posted by: Ace at 10:26 AM | Comments (189)
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And the same logic from the beginning of the bounce applies here. In the beginning of the bounce, it was thought that Obama's lead would grow over the next week, as the seven-day track included days from before DNC. Ergo, as those relatively bad days for Obama dropped off the track, we could expect the lead to grow.

Which is about what happened.

But now the best days of this track, for Obama, come earlier in the track, and will soon be dropping out of it. Meaning that Obama's one point lead will probably vanish, and Romney might even go ahead by a point or two.

There are two ways to analyze this election, or decide to cast a vote: The first, strongly strongly strongly favored by Obama and even moreso, if you can believe that, by the media, is to look at the two campaigns and decide which campaign is "doing a better job" and say that that campaign is the winner.

The other way is to look at the facts. Not the spin and the arguments and the surrogates and the ads, but the actual facts of America in Fall 2012.

The world is burning. Our credit has been downgraded again. Debt is at $16 trillion and rising like a rocket. 23 million Americans are out of work, or working part-time instead of full-time (against their wishes), or have simply given up searching for work at all.

Now, given the facts, I have no question why Obama and the media want this to be a comparison of the respective campaigns (and gaffes!). Apparently Romney Said A Dirty Word at a fundraiser; the media is very, very insistent we talk a lot about that.

Never the facts. Never what's actually happening.

The NYT's media correspondent, for example, was very mad that Fox was covering the Islamic riots instead of Romney's "gaffe:"

As of 10:15pm, Fox News has not mentioned the leaked Romney video once. Its focus is on anti-American protests overseas.

Let's talk about everything except the facts. Let's talk about everything except the current economic and international-relations facts.

Posted by: Ace at 09:47 AM | Comments (244)
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From the "politics make strange bedfellows" department, I picked up this LAT opinion piece on Innocence of Muslims and free speech from Glenn Greenwald on Twitter. Here's his take, with which I wholeheartedly agree:

The author of this moronic Op-Ed is a former NPR reporter: journalist takes the lead demanding free speech restrictions is.gd/e7Gnu0

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) September 18, 2012

You can see more in his Twitter feed as he's been swatting down idiots defending prior restraint of political speech all morning.

Look, if you seriously try to make the argument that producing a film about Islam is equivalent to yelling "FIRE!" in a crowded theater, you are a ... hmmm, what's the technical term ... oh, yeah ... "f*cking idiot"!

I mean, I get the connection with fires and Islam, because they certainly seem to appear in the same place a lot.

But saying that we need to steer clear of certain expressions of opinion because the person on the receiving end may become enraged and react negatively couldn't be more different than holding someone culpable for intentionally inciting a panic in a crowded space.

There are far too many people willing to grant militant Islamists a blood-soaked heckler's veto. This must be resisted on all fronts, and while I may disagree with Greenwald 99% of the time on other things, he's right on target here.

Posted by: andy at 09:21 AM | Comments (218)
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Below is the leader board after two weeks of fantasy pick'em.

Jay In Ames 21
Shredders 20
Dooley 20
boniface ballers 20
dawgyear 20

Management:
JWF 18
JohnE 14
Andy 13
CDR-M 12
Russ 12
Ben 11

[Imagine picture of hot cheerleader here]

Posted by: Open Blogger at 07:32 AM | Comments (248)
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Partnering with and building up the native forces and government are essential elements of COIN strategy. If you can't trust your "allies" not to shoot you in the back, the strategy has failed and the war is over.

COIN: 2007-2012, RIP.

U.S. troops in Afghanistan have been ordered to significantly scale back operations with Afghan military and police forces after a spike in fratricidal “insider attacks” that has seriously undermined U.S. trust in their local allies.

The decision, officials said Tuesday, is also linked to concerns that American field troops have become more vulnerable to attacks because of Muslim outrage over a controversial anti-Islam video.

...

The fundamental U.S. strategy is to prepare some 350,000 Afghan forces to take over the countryÂ’s security by the end of 2014 so that the United States can pull out its combat troops.

...

The U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force said in a statement Tuesday that “most partnering and advising” would now be done at the battalion level and above. Lower-level joint operations will be “evaluated on a case-by-case basis” and must be approved by regional commanders.

Pull everyone inside the wire, figure out what equipment we can take out and what equipment we have to take out and then blow up the rest and come home.

There's absolutely no reason to stay in Afghanistan a minute longer than it takes to pack up and leave in as orderly fashion as possible.

We did not lose the war in Afghanistan. A decade ago we toppled the government that harbored the people responsible for 9/11, killed, captured and scattered al Qaeda forces using that country as a base of operations and give the people of that country a chance to live a decent life. That it turned out not enough Afghans chose to avail themselves of that opportunity is not the fault of America or the brave men and women of the US military who sacrificed so much in that God forsaken place.

Barbarians will be barbarians. There's nothing we can do to change that. In fact, this post from December of 2009 following Obama's big West Point speech stands up pretty well I think.

I imagine we'll leave behind some residual special forces/CIA types if we can find a reasonably safe part of the country to base them in. Seems there must be a local warlord somewhere we can pay off to operate from his area. Beyond blowing up a bunch of al Qaeda types who are stupid enough to gather in groups of 3 or more, they can have the damn place.

This doesn't mean the fight is over. Al Qaeda has moved on to other places (Africa anyone?) and evolved. So will our fight against them. As for Afghanistan, time to let them get back to what they love doing so much...killing each other. Good hunting boys!

Two things I forgot to mention:

1- I call BS on the General saying the damn video has anything to do with this. Green on Blue attacks have been going on for awhile and getting worse. It's their strategy now and has nothing to do with faux outrage over a video.

2- There was a major attack at a base in Afghanistan this weekend and the US Marine Corps took a big hit.

Lt. Col. Chris "Otis" Raible, commanding officer of the jet squadron whose Harrier fleet was decimated last week at Camp Bastion, was among two Yuma Marines killed when insurgents infiltrated the main NATO strategic base in southwestern Afghanistan.

...

Three refueling stations were also destroyed and six aircraft hangars damaged during the attack on both fixed wing and rotor craft, coalition officials said. With each of the six Harrier jets destroyed costing at least $24 million, damages in the attack total well over $144 million.

Six harriers destroyed on the ground? What the hell is going on over there?

Posted by: DrewM at 06:40 AM | Comments (275)
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