The New York Times is in a spitting snit over NY fire fighters being used to "sell" programs, issues, and candidates:

It's time to wonder whether New York's Bravest are overexposed and overexploited.

Politicians will go the extra mile to rub elbows with them. President Bush went to Queens to get the endorsement of the city's rank-and-file union leadership before he appeared at the G.O.P. convention. Senator John Kerry, who has won the endorsement of the fire officers' union, sounded a siren for them during the debate last week, when he decried that firehouses were being opened in Baghdad while they were being closed in New York. It hardly mattered that more firehouses aren't needed in New York. It's the symbol that counts. ...

New Yorkers don't admire their firefighters for their political savvy or keen judgments on economic development. We look to them for one thing, to be there when they're needed for real emergencies. And that doesn't include being pitchmen for the latest product in need of a hero.

You can imagine my shock and suprise, then, when I noted that the Times had dutifully reported the so-called "Jersey Girls" liberal claque's endorsement of John Kerry, and yet, for the life of me, I have not yet been able to find Gail Collins telling them to mind their own business and go back to their real jobs (vacuuming, bakin' cookies, watching Dr. Phil, etc.)

I'm sure that the New York Times editorial page will chastise the Jersey Girls for using their public sympathy to influence debates in which they have no genuine expertise.

Any. Minute. Now.

Posted by: Ace at 11:21 AM | Comments (1)
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John Kerry has said, repeatedly, that he ran the Boston Marathon.

As you no doubt are aware, John Kerry says a lot of things.

Football Fans For Truth reports that ESPN has been unable to confirm this feat. John Kerry's campaign claims not to be able to provide details -- what year, etc. -- and no official records of this Mendacious Metrosexual Marathon Man seem to exist.

Praytell, was this marathon by any chance the Cambodia Classic? Maybe the Phnom Penh Pro-Am Invitational? The Khmer Rouge Capitalist Dog Run?

Hat tip to CalGal at The Perfect World.

Posted by: Ace at 09:37 AM | Comments (9)
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Friday isn't just the release date for the September jobs numbers. It's also the day the Feds announce their estimated yearly revision to 2004's jobs. In one day's report, Bush's fabled "jobs deficit" could be halved, cut in three, or even entirely eliminated.

My source Deep Stoat tells me that Friday will be even more interesting -- and possibly important -- than I'd thought. On that day, the Fed will announce by how many jobs it thinks it's either overstated or understated job growth throughout fiscal year 2004.

Could be a good day, could be a bad day. Deep Stoat won't say. (Actually, Deep Stoat probably doesn't know, but it makes me feel more important to hint that he knows but he's holding back.)

He sends along this National Journal piece (can't find the link, alas) and suggests that, if the revision is positive, the Democrats will scream that Bush is "misleading us" by "manipulating the economic intelligence."

Administration - On Jobs, an October Surprise?

By John Maggs
National Journal Magazine

9/25/04

Mark October 8 on your calendar. On the same day that John Kerry and George W. Bush are scheduled to clash in a debate, one of the most potent criticisms of Bush's economic record may lose most of its bite.

On that day, the Labor Department will announce September's unemployment figures, which either will show the job-creation slump of the past several months continuing, or will signal that employment growth is back on track.

More important, October 8 is also the date that the Labor Department squares the previous year's employment estimates with actual experience. And based on hints from other data on pay for workers, some Wall Street economists are expecting a hefty increase in the number of jobs created over the past year under Bush. If so, the final month of the presidential race may play out in a very different economic environment.

...

As a result, that 2.6 million job deficit since Bush's inauguration has fallen to 900,000 through August and sets the stage for a possible reversal next month. The first step toward having that happen will be September's job market. If Alan Greenspan is right and the economy has "regained some traction" in recent weeks after what he called a "soft patch" earlier in the year, then September may end up as more of a typical month for job creation during a recovery. That could mean from 250,000 to 350,000 more jobs for the month -- March had 353,000 and April 325,000.

...

A look at past revisions reveals a pattern -- the survey of businesses tends to overcount jobs created during a recession and undercount them during a recovery. (See chart, p. 2905.) ...For the two years that covered the 1990-91 recession, the overcount was nearly 900,000 jobs. But the math goes the other way during expansions -- look at the 1990s boom and you see that Labor undercounted the jobs being created, as revealed by how many people applied for unemployment benefits. From 1993 through 1995, Labor undercounted the number of jobs created by more than 500,000 a year, or about 15 percent of the total.

If the real recovery in employment began in the summer of 2003, as it now seems, then history would suggest that a revision upward is likely on October 8. And there is another reason that some economists who look closely at these numbers are expecting a big increase. So far, compensation for workers has grown healthily, while workers' average wages aren't rising as much. That would suggest that there are more workers out there than have been counted so far. ....

Ethan Harris, chief U.S. economist for Lehman Brothers, is among those who closely watch the job figures, and he said experience shows that the adjustments can be large. David Wyss, chief economist with financial publisher Standard & Poor's, said it would be expected that the benchmarking by Labor would raise the estimate of job creation in a recovery.

There is yet another reason to expect a revision upward in the job numbers.

The most widely cited number for job creation is based on what's called a "payroll" survey of businesses. But another survey by the Labor Department estimates job creation by polling 60,000 households. Most economists consider the household survey less accurate, and it isn't cited nearly as often, but it has gained some adherents in the Bush administration because it suggests that the number of people working has increased under Bush. Economists have been debating for decades about the advantages and shortcomings of the two surveys, but the gap has grown recently between the two estimates. In fact, it has never been wider.

So, how big could the upward revision be on October 8? The average yearly revision since 1979 has been 257,000, and the average of all upward revisions is 308,000. In 2000, there was a positive revision of 468,000.

What this means is that a decent September for job creation, added to an average-sized revision for a recovery, could wipe out half or two-thirds of the remaining 900,000 deficit in jobs under Bush. It is conceivable that almost all of the deficit could disappear next month.

Absolutely no cowbell for speculation, so don't even ask. Don't you guys believe in jinxes?

Update: Link here.

Posted by: Ace at 09:24 AM | Comments (19)
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Even Less Hot Than "Kelvin Lynn" Strumming His Doucheboy Folk Guitar While Trying to Pick Up a CISPES-G Chick: Greg sends this story, which I sorta suspect will be one of those stories that gets big play and then gets retracted in 48 hours.

Still, when someone sends you a link about a man "mistaking his penis for a chicken neck" and then cutting it off and feeding it to his dog before he realized his "mistake," you link that story.

That's my policy:

BUCHAREST (Reuters) - A elderly Romanian man mistook his penis for a chicken's neck, cut it off and his dog rushed up and ate it, the state Rompres news agency says.

The report on Monday said 67 year-old Constantin Mocanu, from a village near the southeastern town of Galati, rushed out into his yard in his underwear to kill a noisy chicken keeping him awake at night.

"I confused it with the chicken's neck," Mocanu, who was admitted to the emergency hospital in Galati, was quoted as saying. "I cut it ... and the dog rushed and ate it."

Doctors said the man, who was brought in by an ambulance bleeding heavily, was now out of danger.

"Out of danger?" That's one way to put it.

Now, I never mistook my penis for a chicken neck, but I did once erroneously believe that one of my testicles was a tangerine that would be very tasty blended up into a margarita, so I can sympathize with this guy.

Yes, I lost a testicle, but I did invent Mangerine Margarita Mix, and I'm now well on my way to being a multi-millionaire. As my Pappy used to say, no door closes without a window being opened.

My time is far too precious to make up jokes about this, but I can make up a few punchlines. Fill in the straight lines as you see fit.

Top Ten Punchlines About Man Who Mistook His Penis For A Chicken Neck and Fed It To His Dog

10. "In fairness, you can understand my mistake. It was up every morning at the crack of dawn waking the neighbors. And, also, it had bright red wattles."

9. "Yes, but apart from that, how did the soup turn out?"

8. "Hey, that's not a beak, that's your vas deferens!"

7. "Say what you will, but my dog's coat is shinier and healthier than ever."

6. "And so, having been tricked by a crafty chicken into cutting off his genitals, he swore vengeance upon the entire Chicken-Race. That man's name? Frank Perdue, the Ahab of Poultry."

5. "Snausages!"

4. "I used to think it was cool to drop a tab of acid before taking off my pants and spending the night butchering poultry. Now, I'm not so sure."

3. "Stop him before he goes for the gibblets!"

2. "It's just not a party until someone chops off his weiner and feeds it to a wolfhound."

...and the Number One Punchline About the Man Who Mistook His Penis for a Chicken Neck and Then Fed It To His Dog...

1. "Well, sir, I'm afraid there's nothing we can do about the penis you chopped off after mistaking it for a chicken-neck. We can only apply a salve and attempt to make you comfortable. What kind of salve would you like-- Barbecue, Honey-Mustard, or Mesquite?"

Posted by: Ace at 08:26 AM | Comments (6)
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A small lead suggesting the possibility that, while Kerry recaptured his flagging base and those independents leaning towards him anyway, Bush still has a slightly bigger pool of support.

Rasmussen Update: Similar findings-- Bush still ahead. Barely.

Posted by: Ace at 07:55 AM | Comments (1)
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Ohhh-oh-oh...

The U.S. Air Force is quietly spending millions of dollars investigating ways to use a radical power source -- antimatter, the eerie "mirror" of ordinary matter -- in future weapons.

...

In a sense, matter and antimatter are the yin and yang of reality: Every type of subatomic particle has its antimatter counterpart. But when matter and antimatter collide, they annihilate each other in an immense burst of energy.

"annihilate my protons"...

More cataclysmic possible uses include a new generation of super weapons...

cataclysmic superweapons, very hot, very hot...

-- either pure antimatter bombs or antimatter-triggered nuclear weapons; the former wouldn't emit radioactive fallout....

Following an initial inquiry from The Chronicle this summer, the Air Force forbade its employees from publicly discussing the antimatter research program. Still, details on the program appear in numerous Air Force documents distributed over the Internet prior to the ban.

These include an outline of a March 2004 speech by an Air Force official who, in effect, spilled the beans about the Air Force's high hopes for antimatter weapons. On March 24, Kenneth Edwards, director of the "revolutionary munitions" team at the Munitions Directorate at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida was keynote speaker at the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) conference in Arlington, Va.

mmmm.... revolutionary munitions...

In that talk, Edwards discussed the potential uses of a type of antimatter called positrons.

Positrons, also known as the nymphomaniacal, polymorphously perverse she-males of the subatomic "scene."

General Edwards sounds like he's very naughty, and naughty generals require spankings.

...

In 1929, Dirac suggested that the building blocks of atoms -- electrons (negatively charged particles) and protons (positively charged particles) -- have antimatter counterparts: antielectrons and antiprotons. One fundamental difference between matter and antimatter is that their subatomic building blocks carry opposite electric charges. Thus, while an ordinary electron is negatively charged, an antielectron is positively charged (hence the term positrons, which means "positive electrons"); and while an ordinary proton is positively charged, an antiproton is negative.

yes yes yes y-esss....

The real excitement, though, is this: If electrons or protons collide with their antimatter counterparts, they annihilate each other. In so doing, they unleash more energy than any other known energy source, even thermonuclear bombs....

Allright, I'm done. Anyone want to order Chinese?

General Tso's? General Tso's? Who's up for some General Tso's chicken?

Not Hot at All Update:

In the meantime, the Air Force has been investigating the possibility of making use of a powerful positron-generating accelerator under development at Washington State University in Pullman, Wash. One goal: to see if positrons generated by the accelerator can be stored for long periods inside a new type of "antimatter trap" proposed by scientists, including Washington State physicist Kelvin Lynn, head of the school's Center for Materials Research.

...

Besides, Lynn is enthusiastic about antimatter because he believes it could propel futuristic space rockets.

"I think," he said, "we need to get off this planet, because I'm afraid we're going to destroy it."

Hysterical whining isn't very sexy at all. I can just see this guy in his ponytail, strumming his doucheboy folk guitar, trying to pick up chicks by crooning about blowing up the world with positrons in his self-penned "Big Yellow Anti-Matter-Producing Supercollider."

That sorta worked in college. Thankfully, it stops working (mostly) for anyone over age 25, which is one of the few assurances that there is justice in the world.

Mirror Matter Update: Ripper suggests that I check out Mirror Matter, which is explained in this BBC piece.

This website is more breathless, but I can't help linking it, because it suggests that "Mirror Matter" might explain one of my private obsessions, the Tunguska Fireball.

Posted by: Ace at 07:20 AM | Comments (14)
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At what point does it stop being "teen outreach" and start being "a creepy need to indoctrinate other people's kids"?

Dawn Eden notes that the "non-partisan" Planned Parenthood has apparently given up on trying to persuade minds-made-up adults and is now going after much more moldable younger minds:

At 14, Sandy Milice has more experience with activism than many adults. This summer, she registered voters door-to-door and protested a visit by President Bush....

"Our goal is to foster healthy, responsible youth," said Alesha Smith, director of education and public affairs for Planned Parenthood of South Palm Beach and Broward counties. "They learned about being informed and the importance of informing others."

Children? In political "clubs"? "Informing"? Eeesh.

When a fourteen year old knocks on my door, I may or may not be willing to purchase cookies or magazines. I don't know if I'm ready to engage our nation's "healthy, responsible youth" on the abortion question.

See, the trouble is, they're children. Idiots, in other words.

No offense to my extensive "tweens" readership.

Thanks to the recently-relocated Alarming News.

Posted by: Ace at 07:11 AM | Comments (6)
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Mike from RedState and Rathergate.com has some advice for the Liberal Legacy Media.

I don't understand how an industry that does nothing but critique, expose, embarass, malign, etc. everyone else can get so defensive about being critiqued, etc. in return.

How can the media claim that it's important for them to be watchdogs on everyone else -- the government, the military, the American Medical Association, insurance companies, police, etc. -- and yet claim that they themselves need no watchdogs and that, indeed, presuming to watch-dog them constitutes beginning a "jihad" against them?

When the media turns its gaze on some unfortunate outsider, they justify doing so by noting (correctly, I think, if self-servingly) that "sunlight is the best disinfectant" and all that. I would like Tom Brokaw to explain to me why sunlight is the best disinfectant for everyone else, but not for our Enlightened Custodians of Truth in the media.

Posted by: Ace at 06:56 AM | Comments (2)
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A lot of people seem to think that Bush is doing better in the electoral college, or state by state polling, than the national polling.

That's wrong.

National sentiment is made up, after all, of the sentiment within each state. When Bush does well in the national polls, he also does well in the state polls, and vice versa, and contrariwise. They're all linked-- they all have a high degree of correlation. Indeed, one can pretty much determine how many electoral votes a candidate will get based on his share of the national vote. Bush, for example, might squeak a 10 electoral vote victory if up by 1 or 2 points nationally, but if up by 3, he'd win by 30 EV's, etc.

So, why do the state by state polls and electoral college counts look better for Bush right now?

Well, easy-- because no one's done any state polls since the debate. It takes time to poll all those 16-20 battleground states, plus states that had seemed like battlegrounds lately, such as NJ. You can point to the state polls but, alas, those are all old numbers. Pointing to the state polls is like noting that Green Bay was ahead of New York yesterday for a while. It's true, but it's dated, and it's irrelevant.

This doesn't mean that Kerry's going to win, just like it didn't mean that Bush was going to win when he was ahead. It does mean, however, that Bush no longer has the advantage. He could get that advantage back, etc., but at the moment, it's tied, with momentum in Kerry's favor.

Posted by: Ace at 06:48 AM | Comments (6)
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The New York Times searches though entire counties in Ohio and can't find a single Democrat supporting Bush -- all they seem to find are "Republicans for Kerry" -- and yet there's one just ten or so blocks away.

Posted by: Ace at 06:10 PM | Comments (3)
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