September 25, 2012

Week Three Pick'em Results [Ben]
— Open Blogger

I'm too lazy to look, but I wonder if anyone got the GB v. Seattle pick right. Apparently it cost a lot of people a lot of money.


The Leaderboard
Dawgyear: 29
Jimmythelurker 28
Jay in Ames 28
enneadeka 28
HailMaryHector 28
aka.john: 28


Staff Picks
JWF 27
Andy 24
Ben 22
JohnE 21
CDR M: 19
Russ from Winterset: 17

Posted by: Open Blogger at 06:57 AM | Comments (116)
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Top Headline Comments 9-25-12
— Gabriel Malor

Happy Tuesday.

Returning for one day only, it's DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM. (Really, it seems like we're doomed.)

Ahmadinejad, speaking in New York, said that Israel would be eliminated. The official U.S. reply is that Ahmadinejad's statement is "disguthting, offenthive and outrageouth." Oh, yeah, that's gonna leave a mark. Ahmadinejad speaks to the UN tomorrow.

Guy Benson looks into the latest Politico poll -- you know, the one where they're trying to create the idea that Obama is pulling ahead -- and finds some unusual results: they've got Obama up 3% and yet Romney is ahead of him in six of seven issues. Also, it should be pointed out that Obama has been up by about 3% in RCP's average for months; that's not pulling ahead, that's status quo.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:53 AM | Comments (310)
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September 24, 2012

Overnight Open Thread (9-24-2012)
— Maetenloch

Swinging the 2000 Florida Vote

Either I never heard about this or it got lost in all the wailing and endless recounts.

How campaigns try to sway polling results: "In a close race, the operatives are trying to manipulate the turnout through their paid and earned media. The earned media includes lobbying and trying to skew the public polls. Historically the most egregious case was the 2000 Gore campaign's lobbying the networks' exit pollsters for an early, and wrong, call in Florida. This suppressed the Florida Panhandle and Western state turnout." (Polls close at different times in different parts of the state, because the state stretches into two time zones.) "In our post-election Florida poll, we found that thousands of Panhandle Floridians heard the call and although their polls were still open for an hour in a close national race decided not to vote. Panhandle voters went two-to-one for Bush. The CBS early wrong call nearly triggered a national crisis."

And what worked before will be tried again:

What Obama and his allies are doing now: "The Democrats want to convince [these anti-Obama voters] falsely that Romney will lose to discourage them from voting. So they lobby the pollsters to weight their surveys to emulate the 2008 Democrat-heavy models. They are lobbying them now to affect early voting.

Confused? Then use this handy-dandy guide to predict what time your polls will close:

MEPollOpening.png more...

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:14 PM | Comments (736)
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Pennsylvania: Two Point Obama Lead
— Ace

And Romney isn't even running ads there.

I guess Obama really isn't either.

That may change.

Two percentage points separate President Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney in a state poll conducted for the Tribune-Review, even though the campaigns largely are ignoring Pennsylvania and concentrating on other battlegrounds.

Obama polled 47 percent to Romney's 45 percent among likely Pennsylvania voters, with 6 percent of voters undecided and 44 days until Election Day, according to the survey by Susquehanna Polling & Research. The survey of 800 voters, conducted Sept. 18-20, has a margin of error of 3.46 percentage points.

...

Fifty-one percent of the stateÂ’s voters approve of ObamaÂ’s job performance.

Posted by: Ace at 04:07 PM | Comments (519)
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US Delegation Remains Seated For Ahmadinejad's Eliminationist Rhetoric, While Only Israeli Lobby Walks Out;
Obama To Condemn YouTube Video Yet Again In His Own Address

— Ace

The US delegation had no problem with Ahmadinejad's vow to "eliminate" an apparently former ally.

Jay Carney announces that Obama will once again denounce the YouTube video.

Here's a little bonus: The Pakistani Railway Minister vows he'll pay $100,000 to anyone who kills the YouTube video maker.

The White House's response to this is... unsettling.

Calling Pakistan Railway Minister Ghulam Ahmad Bilour’s offer as “inflammatory and inappropriate”, a State Department statement said, “There could be no justification for violence and it is important for responsible leaders to stand up and speak out against violence.”…

The State Department said, “The (US) President and Secretary of State have both said the video at the core of this is offensive, disgusting, and reprehensible – but that is no justification for violence, and it is important for responsible leaders to stand up and speak out against violence.”

Note whom the harshest pejoratives are reserved for.

As Obama is claiming he denounces any insult to any religion, some asked him to denounce "Piss Christ," which is once again appearing in NYC. He refused.

Posted by: Ace at 03:33 PM | Comments (169)
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British Terrorist Conspirator, Abu "Captain Hook" Hamza, To Be Finally Extradited To US
— Ace

He lost his final appeal, fighting this.

In order to get extradition at all, we had to agree to not slap him with the death penalty, but given the Obama Administration won't execute terrorists anyway (and our liberal judges find ways to rule it out), that's without any real effect.

Hamza, who lost both hands and an eye fighting the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, is charged in the US with 11 counts relating to the taking of 16 hostages in Yemen in 1998, advocating jihad in Afghanistan in 2001 and conspiring to establish a jihad training camp in Bly, Oregon in 2000–2001.

The American authorities first requested his extradition in 2004 but the process was almost immediately put on hold when Hamza was charged in the UK with 15 offences under the Terrorism Act, temporarily staying the US extradition process.
In 2006 he was found guilty on 11 charges, including inciting murder and race hate, and was jailed for seven years.

Meanwhile, Amy Bishop, once suspected of being a Tea Partier -- because she murdered a bunch of people, and that, you know, is sort of the Tea Party's schtick (or one day will be-- the media insists it is so), just got life in prison.

Thanks to @benk84 for that.

UPDATE [DiT]: a stroll down memory lane, British nurse gets paid $60k a year to wipe this ass-wipe's ass.

Posted by: Ace at 02:57 PM | Comments (165)
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Ahmadinejad Vows To "Eliminate" Israel; Schedules Meeting With... Occupy Wall Street
— Ace

Remember those crazy stories that Occupy Wall Street grew out of an antisemitic leftist magazine?

Yeshiva World News, an Orthodox Jewish news outlet, explained in an editorial Thursday that “many Jews” are feeling a bit uncomfortable with the growing protests because of hateful video footage claiming the U.S. economy is organized for the benefit of Jews.

“The reasons for these ‘uncomfortable feelings’ don’t need to be elaborated on this page,” the editorial reads. “Suffice to say that Jews have been blamed for the world’s troubles for thousands of years, and many are nervous that this finger-pointing will soon start — or , maybe it already has.”

National Review Online and The Blaze have published online video footage this week showing Occupy Wall Street protesters saying and shouting anti-Jewish slurs.

“Go back to Israel,” shouted one protester at an elderly Jewish man.

In another video a man repeats stereotypes about Jews supposedly controlling the mass media, money, and “other areas of production.”

Adbusters, the anti-consumerist, Canada-based magazine which reportedly sparked the protest movement, has been accused of anti-Semitism in the past, most recently for comparing the situation of the Palestinians in Gaza to the plight of the Jews held in the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II. This resulted in Jewish groups publicly boycotting the magazine.

Well, that was just crazy right-wingers sayin' crazy right-winger things, as usual.

Because Ahmadinejad just proclaimed that Israel will be destroyed....

"Iran has been around for the last seven, 10 thousand years. They (the Israelis) have been occupying those territories for the last 60 to 70 years, with the support and force of the Westerners. They have no roots there in history," he said, referring to the founding of the modern state of Israel in 1948.

"We do believe that they have found themselves at a dead end and they are seeking new adventures in order to escape this dead end. Iran will not be damaged with foreign bombs," Ahmadinejad said.

"We don't even count them as any part of any equation for Iran. During a historical phase, they (the Israelis) represent minimal disturbances that come into the picture and are then eliminated," Ahmadinejad added.

...and also that he's going to meet with some good anti-"Zionists" in Occupy Wall Street.

Ahmadinejad is also set to meet American university students, artists, intellectuals and elites, including Occupy Wall Street anti-capitalist protestors, despite the ongoing efforts made by the pro-Zionist lobbies to prevent direct link between American people and the Iranian president," the Iranian organ Fars News reports.

Well how about that.

Nice: Ahmadinejad, the Jokester, then joked about the fatwah demanding the death of Salman Rushdie.


Update: OWS says they sense a plot to discredit them and, wisely, refuse to meet with Ahmadinejad.

Posted by: Ace at 02:23 PM | Comments (159)
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Fishes, Loaves, And SRO Seating: Media Celebrates The Miracle of Obama's Rally
— Ace

The media estimated that 18,000 turned out to see Obama at a "park."

One problem: The arena (not a park) he spoke at has a capacity of 5,000 people, and was not filled.

I don't even know what to say anymore. I know they'll say, as usual, that this is just an error and they can't get them all right, but they never make an error against Obama's interest. All errors are made in his favor.

Those are not errors, then. If "errors" are all made to the same side, then the system is, yes, biased to error in favor of that side.

If Obama loses -- and I believe he will -- the media will lose greatly. A shift against Obama, and the unavoidable "What Went Wrong" which must follow, would include all of those stories and inputs they refused to cover.

It will be an even greater indictment of them than of Obama. Obama will be repudiated, but they will be humiliated.

I think they must know this, so they are throwing it all away, reputation, credibility, all of it, because they know they'll suffer an even more devastating blow if Obama loses.

Plus, personally, they all drank the Kool Aid. On a personal level they want this more than they've ever wanted anything.

Thus, the Big Show. The constant distractions and excitements; the hype and the hucksterism.

Even PT Barnum would be aghast.

Below, an audio metaphor for the media's frenetic, frantic, frenzied (why use one word when you can use three that mean the same thing?) desperation plate-spinning to keep the public tuned in to The Obama Channel.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 01:49 PM | Comments (171)
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"Obama 2016" Filmmakers Allege An Organized Campaign To Depress Their Film's Box Office
Bonus: On The View, Obama Says He's There To Be "Eye Candy" For the Ladies

— Ace

It's not a crazy notion.

Two things happened this week which would undermine people's desire to see the film.

First, someone pirated it and put it up on YouTube.

Second, some misinformation was put out -- by who, I don't know -- that the film would be airing on FoxNews on Sunday (actually, last night; but that's the timeframe of the sabotage alleged, this past week's box office).

Obviously, if you think you can see a film in the comfort of your own couch, for free, you will probably not go out to see the movie.

That said...

Separately on Monday, Lionsgate Home Entertainment said it will release the movie Oct. 16 on DVD and Oct. 12 on pay-per-view.

Eye Candy: On The View -- one of those top-priority things he must do, instead of meeting with world leaders -- Obama let this brag drop:

Obama on The View - where he was the only guy - per pool report: "I told folks I'm just supposed to be eye candy here for you guys."

I could be wrong, but I'm beginning to suspect that Barack Obama likes himself a whole heck of a lot.


Posted by: Ace at 01:20 PM | Comments (185)
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