The Whole Thing
— Ace

Chris Wallace was on the airplane last night, with his producer, still made-up from a blitz of interviews in New York regarding his Clinton thing. TV make-up is kind of noticable in real life. He looked good, but the make-up was kind of arresting.

I tried to get an interview, and at first he said yes, but as I came back with pen and paper his producer had objected that these things are supposed to go through their media coordinator, or some other nonsense. They gave me the media coordinator's number and supposedly Chris Wallace will make time for me. So, who knows, might get to ask him three or four questions. He was dead tired, but graceful enough as he negotiated my interview time from twenty minutes to "five to ten minutes" to, ultimately, zero minutes.

I'm not a good negotiator.
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Posted by: Ace at 07:40 AM | Comments (95)
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Bloggers Will Join Bush For Signing Ceremony
— Ace

Yeah, I heard something about this.

President Bush has invited bloggers to join him today as he signs into law a bill creating a database of federal spending -- a recognition of their role in forcing the bill through Congress over the objections of senior senators and an indication of how much bloggers are changing the political process.

A coalition of bloggers from the left and the right last month did what the Senate's Republican leadership could not: smoke out obstructing senators, bring public pressure to break their hold and move the bill to the Senate floor, where it passed by a voice vote.

"The bloggers mobilized Congress; Congress did not mobilize bloggers," said John Hart, spokesman for Sen. Tom Coburn, the Oklahoma Republican who teamed with Sen. Barack Obama, Illinois Democrat, to support the bill.

"It really does represent a revival of basic democratic values: that active citizens using tools of technology really can steer the political process," Mr. Hart said. "And what happened was profoundly subversive to the established political order."

The legislation will establish a searchable database of all federal contracts and grants, and most other spending.

The Bush administration supported the database as a way to improve transparency and accountability, but senior senators from both parties blocked the bill through a "secret hold," a parliamentary tradition that allows a single senator to obstruct legislation.

Bloggers mounted a drive to identify the obstructors, asking readers to call their senators and demand to know whether they were the culprits. The obstructors eventually acknowledged their role and relented.

One administration official called the bill the "'Blair Witch Project' version of legislation" because support grew by word of mouth through blogs.

Thanks to David.

Posted by: Ace at 07:26 AM | Comments (19)
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Retired Senior Officers Criticize Rumsfeld -- Michael
— Ace

The news today had been full of articles about the retired military professionals who think Rumsfeld has placed our nation in grave peril because of his incompetence.

Before you blow them off as moonbats, read their testimony. Politburo Diktat has it here.

Posted by: Ace at 08:45 PM | Comments (212)
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CBS Accidentally Reveals Truth [Retired Geezer]
— Ace

HayZeus is one of the blogs I normally read when my sock drawer is organized. Since I make one pair of socks last a week, that usually means every day. I was glad I checked him out today because HayZeus discovered an amazing truth:

Normally, news of CBS doing damage control for the Clintons on one of its programs would be of the “dog bites man” variety. However, today’s attempt resulted in some unintentional hilarity as their reliably anti-Bush terrorism expert is none other than Mike “Anonymous” Scheuer. Mr. Scheuer was the head of the CIA’s Bin Laden unit at the time to which Mr. Clinton refers when he lays the blame for not capturing Bin Laden at the feet of the CIA and the FBI.

You can kind of see what's coming, can't you.

Moreover, Mr. Scheuer has been vocal in the past about his feeling that his unit was repeatedly frustrated by the Clinton administrationÂ’s lack of willpower concerning terrorism, going so far as to suggest that the lackadaisical attitude of Clinton, along with Sandy Burger and Richard Clarke, actually abetted Al-Qaeda.

Go grab some laughs yourself.

CBS forgot to do it's Homework ... Again.

Posted by: Ace at 06:46 PM | Comments (16)
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Alarmism Should Be Saved For Posterity
— LauraW.

Hysteria, Personalized For Your Amusement

In this gizmag piece, you can calculate how far below sea-level your home will be when all the ice melts and the seas rise and all that great old vinyl you've been saving in the basement for Ebay washes away and Oh My God, I Can't Swim NO NO NOOOOO!!!
Sigh.

...some people might think itÂ’s a good thing to plan for rising sea levels given that people have long been predicting that global warming will result in thermal expansion of the ocean and melting glaciers and ice sheets.

And then they provide a link where you can zoom in on your current neighborhood and see what it will look like when the sea rises, one meter at a time.* I zoomed in on my street and checked it out: it took ten meters of rise before the nearest river started to encroach my backyard. I think I'll print this out and figure out a way to archive it. Just to give people a giggle centuries from now.

Since this is supposed to happen hundreds of years hence, we'll all be long dead, but according to the article, we should still 'plan for rising sea levels.' So, you know. Open another beer and think about getting one of them sump-pumps that come with a five-hundred year guarantee.

For a very fair and balanced article on global warming, click here. Its on the long side, so plan accordingly.

*if you feel like playing with this, here's a direct link. Click your continent on the upper right. I found it was easier to find my area when I hit the Flood Map button intead of the default. You can keep zooming in and get a good idea where your house is pretty exactly.

Posted by: LauraW. at 06:26 PM | Comments (46)
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Existential Threat To Liberalism In Development
— LauraW.

If this is turned into a portable program, the NYT is doomed:

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is funding a research project designed to teach computers to scan text and then sort opinion from fact.

The scientists will use machine-learning algorithms to give computers examples of text expressing both fact and opinion and then teach them to tell the difference.

Would love to see what such a computer makes of a modern history textbook.

Of course, since this is a Homeland Security project, I might assume that they're trying to save a lot of man-hours poring over millions of documents that might or might not have useful nuggets in them.

Like maybe, the webpages of persons hostile to the U.S.
Or even documents written in Arabic, left behind by some regime-or-other that has since been deposed.
Just my opinion. I'm probably completely wrong.

Posted by: LauraW. at 05:30 PM | Comments (16)
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"Mega-Mosque" In London To Be Built Next To Olympic Arena
— AndrewR

I remember reading about this about a year ago, but I'd forgotten all about it until I saw this article today.

How big is "mega", you ask? Well, about this big:

It will be the largest place of worship in Europe, a gigantic three-storey Islamic centre, with schools and other facilities, able to hold at least 40,000 worshippers and up to 70,000 if necessary.

It will be called the London Markaz and it is intended to be a significant Islamic landmark whose prominence and stature will be enhanced by its proximity to the Olympic site.

You don't say.

We're not talking about your average house of worship here. To put it into perspective, that's twice as many people as Fenway Park holds.

The 70,000 figure would make it considerably larger than the current record-holder, whose seating capacity is paltry in comparison:

The biggest in western Europe is just a couple of miles from where I live in south London, on a five-acre site. It can hold up to 5,000 worshippers and, while hardly a Timurid masterpiece, its dome and minarets do not detract from what is a rather gloomy bit of suburban Surrey. Funded entirely by voluntary donations from its congregation, it was erected by the Ahmadi Muslims, who also contructed the first London mosque in Putney in 1924. The Ahmadis, who have lived harmoniously in this country for many years, condemn any form of extremism.

And what have the Ahmadis gotten from their co-religionists in return? Stop for a minute before you answer.

Ready? You guessed it:

Tellingly, perhaps, the Ahmadis are considered heretics by the rest of the Islamic world.

You're probably wondering where the money for all this is going to come from. You know what? Let's not even talk about that.

Anyway, one of the Telegraph's readers makes an excellent point:

One aspect, only indirectly hinted at but a serious one, is the use of the population of mosque-goers as a political and physical force which could involve civil unrest. We have seen how imams in other countries (European as well as Middle Eastern) whip their congregations into frenzies and the end of their Friday mosque sessions often produce demonstrations and/or attacks on churches, synagogues, hindu temples or on people. Considering that the British police are either unwilling or incapable of dealing with large unruly groups (think music raves in the countryside) or hostile individuals (demos outside Danish Embassy calling for violence), and that the Army is only about 100,000 strong and deployed world-wide, what is to prevent 70,000 mosque-goers from actually engaging in totally antisocial behaviour without fear of censure, prevention or control?

Imagine the crowd at the Super Bowl. Now, imagine the crowd at the Super Bowl pissed at your girlfriend because she has the nerve to wear a tanktop.

Welcome to modern Britain, infidel.

Posted by: AndrewR at 01:40 PM | Comments (71)
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George Allen and the N-Word: 99% Bullshit
— Ace

One of the biggest bits of evidence of his racism was calling a Dem operative named Shelton "Wizard." Like "Wizard" in the KKK. Because Shelton shared a last name with the then-Grand Imperial Wizard of the KKK.

Other people say that's crap, Shelton already had that nickname before George Allen even came to the University, given to him for being a "wizard" at catching balls.

And, for what it's worth, a black teammate says Allen never used that word and that Allen always seemed comfortable with blacks to him.

PS: Is Salon an example of the accurate media Michael Kinsley contrasts to "rumors in an echo chamber" bloggers?

Posted by: Ace at 01:28 PM | Comments (64)
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Brits Kill Al Qaeda Big In Iraq
— Ace

Man, RSS Bandit rocks.

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Farouq - who has been linked to a series of kidnappings and murders and was believed to be a top lieutenant of Osama bin Laden - was shot when he resisted arrest, according to the MoD.

Posted by: Ace at 01:14 PM | Comments (12)
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Five O'Clock Flashback
— Ace

In honor of Bill Clinton's fearless truth-telling on Chris Wallace. more...

Posted by: Ace at 01:10 PM | Comments (15)
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