Not only did Karol from Alarming News get invited to the convention, not only has she been blogging it from MSG all week, but now she's going to be on CNN Headline News at 8:45 PM (eastern).

But I too have some good news to report! I am pleased to announce that Ace of Spades will be signing autographs outside the Arby's at the New Jersey Turnpike rest area in Perth Amboy, at least until they compel me to leave their premises and/or I'm arrested for loitering.

At some point, that crazy blog-money I've been dreaming about has got to kick in.

Doesn't it?

Doesn't it?!?!

I'm horrified, appalled, outraged, sickened, filled with "heart-ache" and utterly "gob-smacked" at the vile realization that I am not yet a celebrity.

Not even on MSNBC.

For crying out loud. Put me on at eight with just the site's readers for an audience and I'd start out with half of Keith Olbermann's ratings.

Posted by: Ace at 12:36 PM | Comments (9)
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10. Just had his bicep tattooed with slogan, Beef: It's What's For Dinner

9. Has demanded an apology from Sting for his misleading and alarmist claims about the rainforests; also has demanded an apology for Dream of the Blue Turtles and Dune

8. Bob Dole, previously believed to be on fire, has stopped referring to his cock in the third person, and now refers to Zell Miller's cock in the third person, as in "Bob Dole says you can trust Zell Miller's cock" and "Bob Dole promises that Zell Miller's cock will cut your taxes"

7. Has finally confronted the historic pattern of Democratic appeasement and weakness by challenging this pattern to a duel

6. After his confrontational interview, he put Chris Matthews in a pink party-dress and then rode him like a Big Wheel; not in a gay way, mind you, but rather like a Viking

5. Just signed contract to take on The Undertaker and Mick Foley under new WWF guise of "Senator Smackdown"

4. Six Words: The Delicious Tears of Paul Begala

3. His limousine suspiciously resembles the "Delta Death Machine" from Animal House, except the styling isn't as subtle

2. Old Zell Miller nickname: "The Conscience of the Democratic Party"
New Zell Miller style nickname: "Z Diddy"

Â…and the Number One Sign that Zell Miller is on Frickin' FireÂ…

1. The Navy just awarded John Kerry his first legitimate Purple Heart

Credit That's Overdue: The "like a Viking" line, which I've used before, is actually stolen from Son of Nixon, who's also (of course) got some thoughts about Senator Zell Miller.

I told him to name his blog "Like a Viking." He didn't, so now it's just out there for the stealing.

Update: Frank Luntz's Cincinnati, Ohio focus group of independent-minded, politically-moderate, persuadable undecideds -- morons, in other words -- were more inclined to vote for Bush after the one-two Miller-Cheney combination.

Good. We'll take morons.

Posted by: Ace at 11:49 AM | Comments (23)
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Over at FreeRepublic, someone said that Jeff Greenfield reported the rumor -- just a rumor -- that Friday's August job figures would be bad. As in, bad for the country. Bad for Bush.

That could just be a planted rumor, designed to lower expectations. But now I'm worried.

One might even say I'm outraged, chagrined, sick to my stomach, "gob-smacked," appalled, horrified, and filled with "heart-ache" that I can't "quite dislodge from my consciousness."

A source tells me:

But seriously, I'm not sure if you knew this or not, but President Bush
will have the August employment data before he gives his speech tonight.
Common practice is for the Bureau of Labor Statistics to send a scrambled fax
to the Council of Economic Advisers on Thursday afternoon, ahead of the
Friday morning release. The CEA then of course gets it to the President,
SecTreas, and Fed Chairman ASAP, and so they are all in the know.

I don't have a story to point you to, unfortunately. This is something
that I have picked up from economics research I read as part of my job.

The questions:
1) Does Bush 'shade' his speech tonight depending on the jobs data?
2) Since this is common knowledge (that Bush will have the data ahead of time), how will the lefties spin it?

I wonder if some of the speakers (especially Dick Cheney) already knew the numbers when they spoke. I'm not sure how early this stuff gets circulated among the administration (I just wrote back to ask). If it only gets released the night before, then ignore what comes next.

I'm fearing that we've already seen "shading" that may indicate a stinker of a jobs report.

None of the speakers, to my knowledge, has mentioned Bush's recent job creation*; to the extent they mention the economy, they mention low interest rates, expanding manufacturing, and home ownership. The fact that they seem to be avoiding mentioning jobs at all tells me they don't want to emphasize that particular datum, which means they might be expecting bad news on that front tomorrow morning.

As my personal hero Dan Rather says:

Courage.

* Someone may have mentioned it. I haven't watched gavel-to-gavel. If any of the featured, prime-time speakers mentioned it, they didn't do so very prominently, because I just have no recollection of it at all.

Unrelated Rumor Update: FreeRepublic is quite the rumor mill.

This is just a rumor, and we've heard this crap before, and there's no sourcing here whatsoever.

I think it's bullshit. I'm posting it, however, because I'm irresponsible and attention-craving.

Update: Questions Answered.

Morpheus:

The CEA gets the fax late Thursday afternoon from the BLS (again, this is standard practice - I'm not sure if they might 'break' from that practice and give the admin an even earlier heads-up) so I doubt they have the actual numbers in front of them yet. It does take some work by the BLS to compile the data into usable statistics. However, some of the data this week, such as the ISM manufacturing survey, the Chicago PMI, and today's jobless claims numbers, have been a bit softer and point to possible disappointment for the August payroll numbers.

The Republicans may have used these stats as reason to shade away from job creation as a theme.

Larry Jones:

The White House receives the numbers on the Thursday evening before the Friday release. They're not floating around anywhere before that. Second, while Greenfield may end up being correct, he has no clue what he's talking about. There is absolutely no way for him to know what's going to happen tomorrow.

Answered, but not perfectly consistent. Morpheus thinks there's a chance that the numbers may have been circulated earlier, although that's not the practice, and Larry seems to rule that possibility out.

Either way, though, it seems like Jeff Greenfield doesn't know what he's talking about.

It's reassuring to have one's deeply-held beliefs ocassionally reassured like that.

Update: Larry clarifies: He said no way, he meant no way.

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"Fall" means both "autumn" and, well, "fall." I'm crafty like that.

The convention/SwiftVets/getting to know John Forbes Kerry seems to finally show up in Rasmussen's polling.

49-45: This is the first time that Bush has reached the 49% mark in the Tracking Poll since Kerry wrapped up the Democratic nomination on Super Tuesday (March 2). It's also the first time Bush has been up by four points since April 26.

Kerry reached 49% a few times following his convention but neither candidate has yet reached the 50% mark.

As Harvey Keitel said, "Let's not all start sucking each other's dicks just yet, gentlemen." Still, better small and evanscent movement in our direction than against us. Even if this bounce won't last, even getting a bounce is an accomplishment. At least that means that the public is capable of being persuaded, and certain arguments and facts have been/may yet be capable of persuading them.

Not Even Related at All Update: Actually, this is an update to the Paul Krugman Insanity post, but that's buried by now.

MyPetJawa thinks he's got a picture of the Princeton Paranoiac protesting the RNC.

Posted by: Ace at 10:26 AM | Comments (3)
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So says RatherBiased, based on a tally of CBSNews' mentions of Zell Miller vs. mentions of Susan Collins, etc.

It's not as if we didn't know this, but now we have some numbers.

Republicans who break from the party are maverick free-thinkers who earn themselves plenty of air-time and fawning press-coverage. Democrats who break from the party are cryptoracist traitors who are only mentioned in order to question their betrayals.

Posted by: Ace at 10:18 AM | Comments (1)
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Edwards is down on Republican "hate," but whose face is on that "The Real Terrorist" poster?

The Edwards pic here has to be seen. And captioned. And photoshopped.

Update: The First Photoshop is here, and it sets a high bar.

...and...

If you're looking for spitball stuff to photoshop, The Black Republican offers some starting material.

Another Photoshop: Funny.

Posted by: Ace at 09:29 AM | Comments (9)
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"I'm not easy to offend, but this speech was gob-smackingly vile."

So says my longtime pen-pal and former college badmitton partner Andrew Sullivan, evaluating his capacity to be offended, and finding himself to be quite a cool customer in this regard.

I think that's the way we all think of Andrew-- as not easily offended.

When I think of the man who (to tell a secret) actually writes half the posts on this site (tip: me, the real Ace, never played D&D in my life; that dorkwad elf crap is all Andrew), I think of a calm, stoic, almost impassive man; and not at all, let us say, a man prone to twitchy excitability, shrill hyperbole, embarassingly emotional language, or frequent hysterical outbursts.

Not. At. All.

The sort of man who never, ever finds something that outrages him, and tells us all in no uncertain terms about how "vile," "disgusting," "sickening," et al. it all is.

The sort of man who you could easily see playing the Steve McQueen role in a remake of Bullitt, so long as the director would be comfortable with a more understated and laconic performance.

At any rate, here's a quick run-down of Andrew's recent take-no-offense, just-hang-and-chill-with-it postings. The blase ennui practically drips from these posts, I think you'll agree.

"Purple Heart bandages are plain sickening."

"This is an almost seventeenth century piece of public sectarianism and anti-Catholic bigotry. But it's now the Republican mainstream."

"One thought sprang into my mind immediately: what an arrogant jerk."

"I feel sick to my stomach."

" have to say my mind and heart are reeling from these images from the bowels of Abu Ghraib and the thought that worse are yet to come."

"Both are repulsive in different ways."

"I can barely believe that the Catholic hierarchy is doing Karl Rove's work for him. But then, as we have discovered, the current hierarchy is capable of almost anything."

"To describe this deep human need, this conservative impulse, as an "attack" on an institution revered by many homosexuals and their families is itself a piece of callous demonization. And the precedent is chilling."

"Jonah's second point is simply insulting... Conservative opinion on gays ranges from boredom to outright hostility and animus. There are times when I prefer the animus."

"I'm befuddled why he cannot simply apologize. Rumsfeld's blithe assertion that he hadn't even bothered to read the full Taguba report before a major press conference also cannot quite dislodge itself from my consciousness."

"How convenient. Now, merely campaigning for equal marriage rights weakens marriage. So you can blame the fags for the decline of an institution they have had nothing to do with. A million sighs of relief go up from the social conservatives."

"There was no "extremely significant silence" [on Sullivan's part]. Just outrage and a period of reflection. "

"Has this caused me heart-ache? No end. I do indeed feel betrayed, as do many other gay people who trusted this president and paid a price in many ways for supporting him."

"I'm sick of being told that worrying about this is a sign of faint-heartedness in the war."

"It's this blindness that rankles."

"More evidence that many parts of our agricultural industry - even with chickens now - is, with respect to treatment of animals, a moral disgrace.... Just incredible - but perhaps unavoidable in a food industry that often treats animals with contempt and cruelty."

Wait one red hot minute: even with chickens? Even chickens? Wouldn't you guess that, in the heirarchy of food-animals, chickens would be the first to be abused? I don't know why I think that.

Oh yeah, yes I do: because they're fucking chickens.

But anyway, on to the piece de resistance:

"As a believer in free trade, I was offended by steel tariffs; as a federalist, I was appalled by his incursion on states' rights, from marriage to marijuana; as a balanced-budget conservative, I was horrified by the president's insouciance toward deficits and expansion of entitlements..."

That's my best bud-- Andrew "Not Easy to Offend" Sullivan. Just about the calmest, coolest, least emotional cat I know.

Steady as a rock. An emotionally unstable rock with a nervous disorder shrieking hysterically in the grips of a meth-fueled halluciation that its eyes are being devoured by "sinister lobsters."

And who's really, really passionate about gay marriage.

That's the sort of rock I'm talking about.

Unrelated Serendipitous Irony Update: From a different era in Andrew's life, back when the War on Terror was, like, you know, sorta important 'n stuff.

"If National Review could can Coulter, the mainstream left can certainly can Rall. My bet is: they won't. Nothing should be allowed to detract from the war against Bush. Not even elemental decency and taste."

Nothing should be allowed to detract from the war against Bush. How... self-prescient, to coin a clumsy term.

Posted by: Ace at 11:39 PM | Comments (27)
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Maybe we've got some guys working on a "huge story" about which we "can only say very little at this time, for reasons which will soon become clear."

Instructions for reading this link:

1. Don't get too giddy. It might not be true.

2. However, make sure you're sitting in a confortable chair which will protect you from head injuries should you faint.

3. Click on this link and scan down to "An Impending Bombshell."

Remember: It might not be true.

Posted by: Ace at 11:38 PM | Comments (7)
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I'm so proud.

Thanks for noticing, Unabrewer!

Unabrewer also links this, a good sign that Bush is winning.

Can he actually win it? I don't know if he can win it. You maybe can't win it, but you can create the circumstances under which certain areas of the world won't nominate candidates like John Forbes Kerry any more.

Posted by: Ace at 11:01 PM | Comments (2)
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To the extent I know anything about politics -- and, as you may have noticed, I know precious little -- I knew that undecideds always break for the challenger, by 2 or 3 to 1.

Always. Or, almost always at least. Virtually always.

I've heard this a thousand times if I've heard it once. Again and again-- Bush needs to be at at least 50% by election day, because incumbents always break for the challenger. You see, "undecideds" have already pretty much decided not to vote for the incumbent, which would be the natural action; if they're undecided by election day, that means they've really pretty much decided to vote against the incumbent but just haven't registered that as a conscious choice yet.

On MSNBC tonight, Joe Trippi (Howard Dean's former campaign manager) blew my mind by stating that in a presidential election, incumbents break for the incumbent, the Commander-in-Chief. He said it's only in Senate and gubernatorial races that the "undecideds have already decided against the incumbent" rule applies. The rule is reversed as regards presidential elections.

I've never in my life heard such a thing, and I don't know how much stock I put in Joe Trippi.

Has anyone else heard Trippi's rule before? Has anyone ever heard someone like Sabato or Barrone or Russert say anything like that?

Posted by: Ace at 10:45 PM | Comments (10)
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