Reuters might be a second-rate outfit, but it's absolutely first-class at finding Angry Iraqis to feed them just the right anti-American pro-Saddam quotes for any occasion.

Hysterical.

"The Weekly Standard is an evil, deceptive organization," said Aikkem Hayida, an unemployed Baghdad bomb fabricator. "The Americans come and say they will liberate us, but what do we get? A very snide article from a neocon Jew-lover. Even being tortured by Saddam was better than this humiliation."

Posted by: Ace at 08:17 PM | Comments (2)
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Okay, you don't care about this, and to tell you the truth neither do I.

But it's embarassing already. Camilla is the love of this guy's life, and they're living as man and wife in all but name as it is. Let them get married already.

Note: I'm not sure I should link this. First the testes-thing, then the poetry on the side of the page, now the Prince Charles-Camilla saga.

Tongues will be wagging.

In my defense, the poem in the sidebar is about firetrucks rushing to a fire, and if a guy can't dig a poem about firetrucks, then surely there's no poetry at all a guy can dig.

Posted by: Ace at 08:07 PM | Comments (6)
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click map for story

Update-- Because You Asked For It: Dale also provides you with an electoral map, this one with the Democrats in the Reds and Pinks that better suit them.

Dale doesn't force toss-ups into one camp or another, though. So his current map has neither man amassing enough EV's to win.

Posted by: Ace at 01:53 PM | Comments (7)
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"Over 200,000" new jobs created this past May, according to economists:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. employment likely surged again in May, analysts said on Wednesday, cementing expectations the Federal Reserve (news - web sites) will raise interest rates this month and buoying President Bush (news - web sites)'s election hopes.

Economists believe more than 200,000 jobs were created last month, building on the 625,000 added in March and April, as employers geared up to meet robust demand after three long years of layoffs and tepid hiring.

375,000 is an awful lot of jobs, but by gum, it sure would be nice to be able to say "one million jobs in three months."

While the roaring employment gains in March and April surprised most observers, who had been disappointed by the slow recovery from the 2001 recession, analysts have been quick to embrace the new rosier jobs outlook.

"I'm swinging for the fence this week," said ClearView Economics president Ken Mayland, predicting 300,000 jobs were created last month. "There's just every indication that the labor market is improving very dramatically."

Swing, baby.

Can I get a 375,000?

No?

Just 300,000?

Damn your conservative estimate, Mr. Mayland.

The Labor Department (news - web sites)'s closely watched payrolls report, due on Friday, is expected to show 216,000 new jobs in May, according to a Reuters survey of economists.

They've lowballed in estimating the last three months' jobs growth. They might have finally caught up. But maybe not.

...

Economists said while job growth below 125,000 could erode market confidence in the hiring rebound, some moderation of growth after March and April is expected. Forecasts in the Reuters survey of 24 analysts ranged from 140,000 to 300,000 new jobs.

...
The boost in hiring has brightened the campaign trail for Republicans, but with 1.5 million jobs gone since Bush took office, 250,000 would need to be created every month until the November election to erase that deficit.

Difficult to do, yes. Especially since everytime I turn around they up the number of jobs Bush supposedly "lost," despite the fact that he's been adding jobs to the economy for half a year.

Small cowbell, because no one should count their cowbells before they're hatched:

Now That's Good Bias Update: Only tangentially relevant, but this asinine piece from the liberal advocacy journal Newsweek reeks with partisan bias.

Basically, this idiot lays out four scenarios for the upcoming election. In two, Bush loses. Fine.

In one, Bush wins only because of Nader.

And in the other, Bush wins only because he incompetently allows Al Qaeda to strike us again, which drives the moronic masses to vote for him.

Apparently there's no conceivable scenario, according to Newsweek, where Bush wins re-election because the economy is booming and Iraq is fairly stable, or because John Kerry is judged to be too liberal for the voting public.

Can't happen.

He announces his "four plausible" scenarios, and then gives us a reverse-Gore scenario in which Bush wins the popular vote but loses the electoral college. Presumably, that is more "plausible" than the public simply preferring Bush over Kerry.

Don't bother clicking on the link. It's not worth reading.

Cowbell Update: No fan of the cowbell can afford to miss Son of Nixon's exhaustive set of cowbell links.

Including an interview with the guy who actually played the cowbell on Blue Oyster Cult's Don't Fear the Reaper. No, his name's not Gene Frankel, and he's not dead.

But he is a big fan of the sketch. Here's a sample:

"It was completely fiction," Bloom said, laughing, "but that's what kind of made it bizarre. They made it all up. Funny thing is, the actor who plays the cowbell guy - Will Ferrell - he's got a name at the end and it says he died. I've had people come up to me and ask, 'What happened to that guy who died?' I'm like, 'Uh, there was no guy that died. It was all fiction from beginning to end.' And Bruce Dickinson is a real guy, but he has nothing to do with 'Don't Fear (The Reaper).' He works for Sony and he's in charge of the production and remastering of all our old albums. He had nothing to do with the original 1976 'Don't Fear (The Reaper).'

"Of course now, every time somebody talks to Bruce on the phone, they say, 'Is this superstar record producer Bruce Dickinson?' "

And Yet the Updates Continue: CEO's agree: Economy strengthening. Survey says 38% of CEO's expect to add workers; only 19% anticipate shedding workers.

Posted by: Ace at 12:45 PM | Comments (8)
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MRC digests an article from CBS MarketWatch (registration required for MarketWatch) which is must-reading.

The article is digested in the second item, in the second half of that item (the first half is MRC's own evidence of media bias on the economy, which is also sort of interesting, but it's repetitive and it's stuff you already know).

Choicest bits:

To hear Big Media tell it, the U.S. economy is in a fragile state of 'recoveryÂ’ that threatens to be undermined at any moment, by rising interest rates, by soaring gas prices, by another terrorist attack.

In fact, the economy has been in a state of rip-roaring 'expansionÂ’ -- the strongest in 20 years -- yet the media persists in painting a dreary picture.

...

"I don't know how much is agenda and how much is ignorance or just lemming-type journalism," said Comerica Bank Chief Economist David Littmann, who's tracked the economy for 40 years. "We're in a mini-boom, and to characterize it as a recovery is to diminish it."

This isn't nitpicking, mind you. The media is a powerful influence on how we view ourselves, and refusing to come around to substituting one word for another is depressing the national mood.

Think about it: An expansion implies strength and virility, while recovery suggests lingering weakness -- the stroke victim in therapy for paralysis, or the reformed alcoholic still at risk of falling off the wagon.

...

[!!! Did anyone else know this?!!! The media keeps throwing the final unemployment reading under Clinton at us --3.8% -- but it turns out that was just a one-month figure; the average for the year was actually higher than Bush's is now, and indeed his averages for all the years of his his Presidency were higher than Bush's current unemployment figures.]

* Home ownership reached a record-high 68.6 percent in first quarter of this year -- up nearly 5 percentage points in the last decade

Yet the major media clings to the word "recovery" like a malpractice-fearing doctor too afraid to offer an optimistic prognosis to family members. For instance:

* A May 19 Wall Street Journal story on a speech by Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank President Anthony Santomero said he expects inflation to remain contained during "the U.S. economic recovery." (The Journal's words)

* A May 15 New York Times story on Money magazine naming a new editor said: "By this time in the recovery, most people can at least bear to open their 401(k) statements..."

* A May 18 Reuters story carried on NYT.com, the Times' Web site, said: "Mortgage rates dipped to near 40-year lows in the first few months of 2004, but have risen in recent weeks as signs of the U.S. economic recovery have solidified..." ...

When I alerted my boss to his use of the word "recovery" in a TV interview about rising oil prices, and its use by one of our columnists, he said: "You wouldn't call it an expansion if you were one of the people still unemployed."

Therein lies the root of the error.

Those who think we're still in a recovery apparently won't change their view until we return to the record-low 3.8 percent unemployment we enjoyed for a fleeting moment in 2000 during the most prosperous economy in history.

That's like not recognizing a bull market until the Nasdaq surpasses 5,000 again. I'd bet my retirement savings no one alive in the U.S. today will ever see sub-4 percent joblessness again, and here's why.

For decades, economists considered 4.5 percent "full employment," so the U.S. entered a labor-market utopia when we dropped far below that. But 3.8 percent didn't reflect real production needs. It reflected a gross overcapacity of human resources, as employers with delirious growth expectations rushed to net the little talent left in a labor pool then shallower than a sidewalk puddle after a light summer rain....

Posted by: Ace at 12:16 PM | Comments (2)
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Content Warning: PG-13. Contains nothing but juvenile potty-mouth.

Another Content Warning: It's completely apolitical.

A Last Content Warning: I'm not sure this is even funny. It seems sort of funny to me, but what do I know? It's hard to judge your own schtick.
more...

Posted by: Ace at 11:41 AM | Comments (85)
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Well, so far today, I don't have anything interesting to say. So I'll do a link-dump of things I've read and found interesting.

Jay Nordlinger's column is pretty much a blog in column format, and just about everything he writes today is interesting. Media bias, an Iranian dissident calling the US "our only friend in the world," and Edward Jay Epstein's debunking of the conventional liberal media wisdom that a Mohammed Atta-Al-Ani meeting in Prague has been "disproved." It hasn't been "disproved." Says who? Says George Tenet, morons. Catch up.

A Harris poll shows American optimism on the rise. Here's what I find interesting:

Asked in a Harris poll if their personal situation has improved over the past five years, 56 percent of Americans said it had, up 7 percent from last year.

For a while I've been attempting to prove a theory. I think that people view their personal economic situation fairly positively, but then rate the national economy poorly. There's a big disparity there.

And there shouldn't be. The national economy is, after all, just made up of millions of individuals. If individuals are mostly saying their own economic situation has improved, then, logically, that ought to be reflected in how they rate the national economy.

But it isn't, because the media continues telling everyone the national economy is in a shambles. Thus the disparity between personal and national economic ratings.

I wish some blogger with access to historical Gallup polls would examine the gap between these two measurements under Clinton, as compared to Bush. I'm guessing there was no disparity between the two numbers under Clinton, or even a slight bias in favor of the national, not-me-personally economic rating.

And that's because the media was determined to let everyone know the great economic news.

When will I know that George Bush will be safely elected?

When the media, doing its economic reports, starts using that B-roll footage of the US Treasury printing out money on a press, montage'd with cash registers beeping and opening and slamming shut. That's the visual and audio cue the media uses to indicate "We're all doing okay!"

I saw that montage eighteen bazillion times when Clinton was President. They'd even run it for entirely unrelated stories. Clinton could be talking about trimming operating costs at the Commerce Department, but the liberal media would still run that fricking printing press montage, punctuated by the Monopoly guy handing poor children a $500 bill.

So-- when we will we get the printing-press/cash-register montage?

Ummm, how about the next of Never?

Byron York takes down the Ace of Spades HQ's favorite reporter, Dana Milbank. Good stuff. The media has apparently decided that slanting alone won't cut it; they've decided it's now okay to actually lie.

Which leads directly into Howell Raines' delcaration that yes, it's time for the media to start (ahem) actively indulging in deliberate disinformation, in order to convince stupid Americans of the liberal truth via useful lies. It pains me to link Andrew Sullivan, but his commentary on this is must-reading.

And then he segues right into whining about gay marriage. Oh, well. Just stop reading when you get to "That Virginia Law."

Another piece on Atta/al-Ani, and again must reading. I think I got this from Instapundit, which means that everyone's already read it, but it's so damn good it can't hurt to quote it again:

At least two separate lines of evidence point to a pre-9/11 Saddam-Osama axis of evil. The Czechs have always maintained that 9/11 mastermind Mohammad Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence officer, Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, in Prague in April, 2001. The CIA, on the other hand, has maintained Atta was in the US at the time. But in fact, Atta's whereabouts cannot be established between April 5 and 11, and on the 4th, he and another of the 9/11 hijackers cashed an $8,000 check in Virginia Beach, VA.

Atta and al-Ani also apparently met in May and June of 2000 after which Atta flew from Prague to Newark. It all sounds like Atta was an Iraqi intelligence "asset," and al-Ani was his handler. Newsweek is now claiming that the whole story was a fiction made up by Ahmed Chalabi (wasn't everything?) but people who've followed the trail closely aren't buying it.

Newsweek may not believe in an Iraq/al-Qaeda connection now, but they used to. In their January 11, 1999 issue, they wrote: "Saddam Hussein, who has a long record of supporting terrorism, is trying to rebuild his intelligence network overseas-- assets that would allow him to establish a terrorism network. U.S. sources say he is reaching out to Islamic terrorists, including some who may be linked to Osama bin Laden, the wealthy Saudi exile accused of masterminding the bombing of two U.S. embassies in Africa last summer." Well, as I said once before in this article, that was then, this is now. Then, the Clinton Administration wanted a connection, and even that paragon of honesty, Richard Clarke, told the Washington Post there were links, a statement the Post would duly print in January of 1999. Now, with a Republican administration, Clarke will not admit, and the media establishment will not publish, anything suggesting a connection.

Damning. Utterly damning. We may not have smoking-gun proof of The Connection yet, but we do have smoking-gun proof of media bias. Saddam and OBL were connected when Clinton said they were; they could never have any connection when Bush said they did.

Did someone say "cowbell"? Larry Kudlow repeats what can't be repeated often enough by my lights:

The much-maligned factory sector is booming. Not rising. Not improving. Booming.

According to just-released data from the Institute of Supply Management, which tracks the manufacturing sector, new orders, production, order backlogs, export orders, and employment were very strong in May. The industrial sector is so strong that the speed of supplier deliveries has hit its highest level since April 1979. This means that firms cannot produce fast enough to meet rising demand, which is why commodity prices continue to climb. As a result, capacity use keeps growing and inventories are still too low in relation to skyrocketing sales.

Meanwhile, new factory hiring has jumped to a 31-year high, the best since 1973. Of more than 400 industrial firms surveyed, 36 percent added workers in May while just 7 percent had fewer workers. This is another nail in the coffin of the jobless recovery. As the inventory-rebuilding process ratchets up over the next year, expect even more job creation to follow.

Election-year battleground states in the Midwest industrial heartland are reporting significantly lower unemployment rates compared to one year ago, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. In April, Michigan registered a 6 percent jobless rate compared to 7.2 percent in April 2003. OhioÂ’s jobless rate fell to 5.8 percent from 6.2 percent. PennsylvaniaÂ’s dropped to 4.9 percent from 5.4 percent. West Virginia reported 5.4 percent from 6.6 percent a year earlier. MissouriÂ’s jobless tally dropped to 4.5 percent from 5.5 percent.

Imagine, in your head, the Treasury printing presses churning out hundred-dollar bills, and Macy's cash-registers beeping and blinking like an old Coleco football game.

Because that's the only place you're going to see it.

Correction: I made a dunderheaded goof reporting on the Harris poll. I've edited out my error, because I certainly don't want to report erroneous "facts," but mostly because it was really, really embarassing.

Thanks to Nathan for pointing it out in the comments.

Ouch.

Posted by: Ace at 10:44 AM | Comments (4)
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Via Ilyka, another charming example of how dunderheaded, retarded liberalism just keeps making our world a worse and worse place:

They are, after the Lord's Prayer and the Ten Commandments, possibly the most famous words in the Bible.

But now the 23rd Psalm, undoubtedly the best-known and best-loved in the English language, has had a makeover.

In a new version published by the Church of England, the words: "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil" are replaced by: "Even if a full-scale violent confrontation breaks out I will not be afraid, Lord." The new version shares with the traditional one the opening line "The Lord is my shepherd", but the psalmist goes on: "He lets me see a country of justice and peace and directs me towards this land" and that His "shepherd's power and love protect me" - instead of "thy rod and thy staff they comfort me".

Wow. I can really feel the Holy Spirit moving within me.

All of this brings up an interesting point: One must never merge church and state, or else the church becomes filled with the sort of moronic bureaucratic time-servers who serve the rest of the government, and for the same reasons (good pay, little real responsibility, no chance of being fired).

I forget who told me this, but someone (who seemed to know what he was talking about) said that in England, the Church isn't a calling at all anymore; it's simply yet another bureaucratic-type job that people sign up for because it pays okay, isn't terribly demanding, and has some degree of social respectability associated with it.

But -- get this -- the Church has less and less to do with actual worship of God, and indeed the "clergy" is one of the groups most hostile to the notion of traditional religion in the country. The Church's priests are the ones most likely to look down on people of actual faith as being religious "rightwing" nutters.

Since I got that second-hand, I can't be sure if it's true. However, passages like "Even if a full-scale violent confrontation breaks out I will not be afraid, Lord" seem purposefully calculated to drive people away from the Bible entirely.

Posted by: Ace at 07:43 PM | Comments (11)
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I have trouble with genuine sentiment, but Miss Apropos shares a story from her husband that should touch you.

It's not a war story. It's just the story of a simple but beautiful gesture of respect.

It seems to fit in with Lileks' declaration-of-decency-for-decency's-sake:

But the older I get the more I add to my personal list of things you just do, because you're supposed to. You dress up for church. You wear nice clothes on the airplane. You don't swear in public. You don't kick dogs. You fly the flag on Memorial Day and the Fourth. Is this so hard?

It's not too hard. It's just hard enough to be worth doing.

Posted by: Ace at 07:18 PM | Comments (1)
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Thanks so much to Light and Dark for fixing my stupid archives. I was really starting to hate blogging because of that glitch. Now everything is copacetic.

And thanks to Miss Apropos for offering to help, and to Ilyka Damen for putting out a distress call on my behalf (which resulted in Light and Dark rescuing me).

The archives now work like a dream, and you can now peruse my scary-important older postings. If you want to read about Michael Moore's lunch-time New York rampage, it is available for your renewed pleasure.

There's other stuff that still needs to be fixed, but now I'm quite sure that the comments/remember me stuff will all get fixed shortly. With Paul, Emma, and Ilyka on the job, it's a lead-pipe cinch.

Posted by: Ace at 01:01 PM | Comments (6)
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