I like Ann. I like her fiery, angry, crazy-ass schtick. But really, when will she learn that joking about planes crashing into the New York Times Building or poisong judges just aren't funny?

Coulter had told the Philander Smith College audience Thursday that more conservative justices were needed on the Supreme Court to change the current law on abortion. Stevens is one of the court's most liberal members.

"We need somebody to put rat poisoning in Justice Stevens' creme brulee," Coulter said. "That's just a joke, for you in the media."

I've said this before, but here goes again: The more offensive a joke is, the funnier it needs to be to justify it. It's a simple rule. Her "joke" isn't funny, and the offensiveness of it -- and quite frankly, the dangerousness of it; there are unhinged people out there who adore her, after all -- so greatly exceeds its "humor" content as to be, well, f'n' stupid.

I had my own lesson in this when I wrote, as a joke of course, that people who were crippled no longer wanted to be called crippled, but instead wanted to be called by a more sensitive term, "People with retarded spines and legs." I caught hell for that (and that was actually funny in a sick way!) and had to change it to a joke about blind people ("People with retarded eyeballs"). Not sure why the latter was more acceptable than the former, but apparently it was.

Maybe because people with retarded eyeballs can't read. Or something. Who knows. Maybe their dogs read for them.

I understand Ann's desire to tweak and outrage liberals, but doesn't she have any sort of internal censor at all? Or does she just need the publicity that badly?

Those on the right constantly criticize the left for its suggestions of violence against political figures they despise -- sometimes in a "joking" manner. Does she not understand that it compromises our efforts to shame them away from such dangerous "joking" when one of our most prominent spokeswomen engages in the same sort of "jokes"?

I love her, but damn, it's like being in love with someone with Tourette's. You say, "I love you, Ann," she says, "I love you too dirty-ass cocksucker shitface twat! Stinky puma farts!"

Thanks to Allah.

Posted by: Ace at 09:02 AM | Comments (189)
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Not good, but Clinton had clunker quarters in his boom, too:

Real gross domestic product -- the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States -- increased at an annual rate of 1.1 percent in the fourth quarter of 2005, according to advance estimates released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the third quarter, real GDP increased 4.1 percent.

The Bureau emphasized that the fourth-quarter "advance" estimates are based on source data that are incomplete or subject to further revision by the source agency (see the box on page 3). The fourth-quarter "preliminary" estimates, based on more comprehensive data, will be released on February 28, 2006.

The major contributors to the increase in real GDP in the fourth quarter primarily reflected positive contributions from private inventory investment, personal consumption expenditures (PCE), equipment and software, exports, and residential fixed investment that were partly offset by a negative contribution from federal government spending. Imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, increased.

The deceleration in real GDP growth in the fourth quarter primarily reflected a deceleration in PCE, an acceleration in imports, a downturn in federal government spending, and decelerations in equipment and software and in residential fixed investment that were partly offset by an upturn in private inventory investment.

I'm not sure that this one will be adjusted upwards when more full figures are available. It seems that big numbers are usually revised up a bit, but weak numbers can go either way.

It doesn't take a genius to realize how this is going to be spun. After failing to acknowledge the Bush Boom for three years, the media will now mention it -- in retrospect -- in order to tell us that the good times they were never informed about are now officially over.

Posted by: Ace at 08:46 AM | Comments (43)
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Crazy blog-clemency?

Vernon Lee Evans Jr. -- amateur advice columnist and convicted murderer -- is scheduled to die next month by lethal injection. He is one of the very few death row inmates to have a blog and, activists say, perhaps the only condemned man worldwide to use a blog to take questions from readers.

...

Though defense attorneys in capital cases have long strived to remind judges and juries that their clients are human beings with lives beyond the crimes they are accused of, Evans's blog is the leading edge of a strategy by death penalty opponents to use new technologies to make the same point to the wider public.

A coalition of activists in Canada maintains Web pages for about 500 death row inmates. Another group, Campaign to End the Death Penalty, began holding events in 1998 in which condemned inmates are patched through by speaker phone. The blogs are the latest experiment, and the activists say Evans's blog is the most novel and daring because readers can post questions.

"Part of the reason the death penalty is allowed to exist is that people don't acknowledge the fact that the people on death row are human beings," Simmons said.

Evans, 56, of Baltimore, was first sentenced to death more than two decades ago for the contract killings of potential witnesses in a federal drug case. He was convicted in the murders of David Scott Piechowicz, 27, and that man's sister-in-law, Susan Kennedy, 19, in 1983 at a hotel that Piechowicz managed in Pikesville.

We acknowledge you're a human being. An evil human being who murdered other human beings.

I have little doubt that you have some outside interests, apart from murder-for-hire. You probably like puppies and ice cream. That's a human thing.

But a desire for justice is also a human thing, you know.

Posted by: Ace at 08:25 AM | Comments (18)
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Hell, they couldn't have stopped Harriet Miers.

Again, this is a double-victory: 1, we get a more constitutionalist constitutional court. 2, the unhinged base becomes further angry at the Democratic Party and starts thinking about supporting third-party leftist parties or sitting out elections entirely.

Posted by: Ace at 08:18 AM | Comments (17)
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It's insufficiently "nuanced" to deny funding to a terrorist organization, I suppose.

Palestinian defenders keep saying, "Well, this was a fair election, we should respect their choice." Well, I do respect their choice in the sense that I believe it was voluntarily and knowingly made, and it represents their true political preference.

But respect for their choice does not mean I have to honor their choice. If a plebiscite in Hitler's Germany determined that 70% of the German population favored the genocide of the Jews, I would acknowlege that as a fair and democratic mandate-- and also a vile one.

Elections have consequences, as they say. The fact that we might approve of democracy as political procedure does not require us to approve of every vile and murderous decision democratically agreed upon.

Posted by: Ace at 08:12 AM | Comments (14)
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The usual games -- oversampling Democrats as well as oversampling Democrat-leaning cohorts (the young, the unmarried, etc.).

Plus, unfair questions that are designed to provoke a negative response.

According to the Times story accompanying the poll responses "vary" based on the wording of the question.

That is true of course, but the story neglects to mention that the wording of any of the questions doesn't include a misleading fact - that the calls are "in the US". I'd like to see the response if they actually asked the question about one of the callers being as suspected overseas terrorist, the approval numbers would skyrocket.

Par for the course.

Posted by: Ace at 08:05 AM | Comments (22)
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The left is howling about Deborah Howell's remarks that Jack Abramoff "gave" money to both parties. The sinestrosphere continues pushing -- strenuously-- the disingenuous Howard Dean line that "no Abramoff money went to Democrats."

Howell exposes this howler:

I've heard from lots of angry readers about the remark in my column Sunday that lobbyist Jack Abramoff gave money to both parties. A better way to have said it would be that Abramoff "directed" contributions to both parties.

Lobbyists, seeking influence in Congress, often advise clients on campaign contributions. While Abramoff, a Republican, gave personal contributions only to Republicans, he directed his Indian tribal clients to make millions of dollars in campaign contributions to members of Congress from both parties.

Records from the Federal Elections Commission and the Center for Public Integrity show that AbramoffÂ’s Indian clients contributed between 1999 and 2004 to 195 Republicans and 88 Democrats. The Post has copies of lists sent to tribes by Abramoff with specific directions on what members of Congress were to receive specific amounts.

CBSNews' Public Eye comments:

Howell even offered up documents obtained by the Post to back her up. Not good enough for those upset with Howell – and the paper. It didn’t take long for comments to come flooding in – none too supportive.

The nastiness and name-calling in the "debate forum" caused the WaPo to shut it down.

Since I bash the MSM a lot, it's only fair to also credit them when they get something 100% right-- especially when doing so causes them grief from the people whose opinions they most care about (i.e., their fellow liberals'). It's not easy to take on your core audience and ideological brethren and tell them, "Sorry, I know what you want me to say, but what you want me to say is a lie. You're flat-out wrong, and possibly dishonest."

This whole contretemps illustrates the left's reliance upon slanted reportage and a carefully-controlled and censored flow of information. When they're not getting that, they realize it's a dire threat to their political prospects, and their "outrage" postively redlines before the engine explodes from too much nitrous oxide.

It also illustrates their post-modern-esque belief that the world is not as it is, but as they say it is. And by saying it's otherwise than it is, they think they can change it. And when others won't play ball, again, it's a massive threat to them.

Posted by: Ace at 08:03 AM | Comments (25)
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Good Lord. Not a photoshop.

A Russian boxer may be the "next big thing."

Nikolay Valuev [was] crowned in December as Russia's first World Boxing Assn. heavyweight champion.

Valuev himself strode into the gym recently during his triumphant return to Russia after the title bout, in which he defeated American John Ruiz on a controversial decision in Berlin to become the tallest (7 feet) and heaviest (323 pounds) world champion in history. He's so big he usually steps into the ring over the top rope....

In the rest of the world, Valuev, 32, is known as the "Beast from the East" (promoter Don King wants to call him "King Kong" when he defends his title in the U.S.), but in his homeland, he is more often known as the "Russian Giant."

His brain is played up here as much as his brawn — a boxer who reads Tolstoy and writes poetry to his wife? — along with his diffident, quiet demeanor.

Homo.

Posted by: Ace at 07:09 AM | Comments (61)
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BlogAds and the Holland Board of Tourism have arranged a fully-comped five-day stay in Amsterdam for twenty-five lucky bloggers.

The piece suggests the bloggers should have been more upfront about the trip when they were first contacted about it. I don't know-- does one typically disclose in the middle of things? Before an agreement has been reached? What if that queers the deal?

Celebrity "journalists" are typically flown to resort hotels to do press for upcoming movies. Everyone knows this (I guess) but they don't disclose it.

As blogging becomes more important, yes, a system of ethics becomes more critical, but are we really so influential that we need to be more open and transparent than many salaried journalists? I don't think so.

As much as I'm filled with envy, spite, and hatred for these jagoffs, I don't know that they've done anything wrong. I'm sure if someone wrote something fawning about Amsterdam during the non-disclosure period we'd be hearing about it.

But I guess they had better common sense than that. Even the lefties invited, like TalkLeft and Pandagon.

Posted by: Ace at 07:03 AM | Comments (8)
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A woman got a bad vibe about a child's safety. Instead of putting it out of mind, she actually followed up-- a lot. And spared a 3-year-old girl further rapes.

Florida-Cracker, a librarian, also notes my annoyance yesterday about Kathy Glick-Weil was unfounded. It's the law in 48 states that librarians must demand a warrant before turning over anything to law enforcement, she says, and I believe her.

Posted by: Ace at 06:53 AM | Comments (47)
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