Scrambling and all.

If anyone's in the DC area, send me your email & maybe cell phone. I'll try to set up some night for an Aceapallooza at a DC bar or something.

It'll be like the Yearly Kos, except no dancing around like jackasses.

Oh, and Mark Warner won't be spending $75,000 for booze and free-range aparagus.

Actually... Probably easier (for me) if I just annoucne it on the site.

Posted by: Ace at 11:49 AM | Comments (48)
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The WH has asked some bloggers who pushed on the earmark reform bill to witness the signing of it into law tomorrow morning. I've never been in the White House; I pretty much have to go.

I guess I'll go to that Pajamas Media panel down there, too.

I had an idea earlier that I might spend a little time in DC at the end of the month, becausse I'd briefly considered taking a one-month sublet down there. Thought it might be cool to live in DC, if only for a month. Then I thought later I might try to spend a week down there. I blew that idea off, until today.

Hey, I've never been anywhere near the President. Again-- gotta go.

So I'm scrambling right now. Tomorrow at 9am. They don't give you much by way of notice, do they?

I'll keep blogging until around 5:30 or six tonight, then I'm on a plane. I'm not really talking the week off or anything; I'll just be blogging from DC. Have laptop, will travel.

And... um... I know I've made a lot of jokes about strangling hobos, but, given a security check is being done as we speak, maybe it's best not to bring those jokes up. Thanks for understanding.

Posted by: Ace at 11:11 AM | Comments (126)
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Short answer: No.

Longer answer: Almost certainly not.

Contains the usual sniping at blogs by a guild member quite unhappy to see actual competiton by those who haven't "paid their dues:"

Meanwhile, there is the blog terror: people are getting their understanding of the world from random lunatics riffing in their underwear, rather than professional journalists with standards and passports.

So are we doomed to get our news from some acned 12-year-old in his parents' basement recycling rumors from the Internet echo chamber?

...

You can sit down at your laptop and enjoy that same newspaper or any other newspaper in the world. Or you can skip the newspapers and go to some site that makes the news more entertaining or politically simpatico. And where do these wannabes get most of their information? From newspapers, of course. But that is mere irony. It doesn't pay the cost of a Baghdad bureau.

...

And later? The "me to you" model of news gathering--a professional reporter, attuned to the fine distinctions between "off the record" and "deep background," prizing factual accuracy in the narrowest sense--may well give way to some kind of "us to us" communitarian arrangement of the sort that thrives on the Internet. But there is room between the New York Times and myleftarmpit.com for new forms that liberate journalism from its encrusted conceits while preserving its standards, like accuracy.

This is doubly ironic. For one thing, Michael Kinsely has overseen one major journalistic scandal (Ruth Shallitt), failed to correct problems at TNR which then led to the another (Steven Glass), and had a major embarrassment at Slate with the "monkeyfishing" fakery.

For another thing, Michael Kinsely was a major, and very influential, user of the high-attitude, heavy-sarcasm school of opinionating which is now dominant on the Internet.

It's okay for him to lard up his pieces with snark and sarcasm and obvious bias but not, apparently, for we upstarts to emulate him. Because, you know, he want to J-School.

This "accuracy" charge is absurd, because, as Kinsely notes, blog "reporting" comes 99% straight from the mainstream media. There are few original blog reportage pieces, and the few that exist have been, largely, proven true -- and explosively true, to boot. (Rathergate, Reutersgate, and now, less importantly, Memorial-Gate.)

Where is this lack of accuracy they're always on about, precisely? An opinion isn't really "true" or "false," "accurate" or "inaccurate" in the common senses of those words. It's just an opinion. And if Kinsley wants to argue that some opinions are less accurate than others, because they selectively use facts and don't present conflicting evidence -- well, let me refer him to the New York Times editorial staff, which maintains, for example, that Paul Krugman is permitted to use misleading data to justify his claims because, after all, it's just an opinion piece.

So Paul Krugman and the New York Times can present one-sided and sometimes deceptive and occasionally flat-out mendacious "facts" in their opinion pieces, but bloggers are to be held to a higher standard than the New York Times?

In one last bit of irony, Kinsley, as shown above, poo-poohs blogs for presenting nakedly partisan or ideological interpretations of the news, our biases worn on our sleeves, with no pretense of presenting the mythical mainstream media "objectivity" and "fairness." So what does he envision the ssalvation of the media to be? How does he think the media will begin becoming relevant again?

By emulating the facts-mixed-with-opinion naked partisanship of blogs:

But it might resemble the better British papers today (such as the one I work for, the Guardian). The Brits have never bought into the American separation of reporting and opinion. They assume that an intelligent person, paid to learn about some subject, will naturally develop views about it. And they consider it more truthful to express those views than to suppress them in the name of objectivity.

Michael Kinsely jumped the shark a long time ago. He doesn't even make sense anymore. He's so overcome with partisan bias and, in this case, guild protectivism, he simply contradicts himself within the space of mere paragraphs.

The media is better than blogs because it presents "accurate" and "objective" reportage, but that "accuracy' and "objectivity" should be jettisoned to make the media more resemble blogs.

Okay, Mike.

Remember when people actually read and respected you?

Ah, memories.

Posted by: Ace at 10:22 AM | Comments (39)
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Exerpted at Little Green Footballs.

Many commentators have pointed out the apparent hypocrisy: Muslims are outraged by cartoons satirizing Islamic extremism while in Muslim countries Christianity and Judaism are attacked viciously and routinely.

Many commentators are missing the point: These protesters — and those who incite them — are not asking for mutual respect and equality. They are not saying: “It’s wrong to speak ill of a religion.” They are saying: “It’s wrong to speak ill of our religion.” They are not standing up for a principle. They are laying down the law. They are making it as clear as they can that they will not tolerate “infidels” criticizing Muslims. They also are making it clear that infidels should expect criticism — and much worse — from Muslims.

I had exactly this thought last night. Many have observed the absurd contradiction in the implicit statement from the Islamists: "Do not call us violent, or we will kill you."

Actually, it's not a contradiction. At least not how they mean it. They're not actually taking issue with being called "violent." They are violent, as they're all to willing to declare, and demonstrate by shooting nuns and burning down churches.

What they're really saying is, "We are the Masters of the Earth, and we are violent, and we will abide no criticism whatsoever, no matter how truthful. You are dhimmis, and must accept your inferior station, or we will kill you."

The argument is not over whether what the Pope said was true or not. Truth doesn't enter into it. The argument is really about whether or not we have the right to criticize at all those who Allah decreed are the Rulers of the Earth.

They say we don't, and we'd better get comfortable with our dhimmis status posthaste or there will be... problems.

Posted by: Ace at 09:51 AM | Comments (14)
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A google search to this site was for "my wife turned into a lesbien [sic] video."

I was obviously intrigued.

No idea what video they were looking for, but I came across this foreign video, feautring punk muppets, singing, in the chorus, "My Wife Is A Lesbian."

Posted by: Ace at 09:43 AM | Comments (4)
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It's the home stretch now, and anyone thinking of donating to a campaign had best do it soon if it's to have any effect at all.

Hugh Hewittt offers his "Big Four" of the most important campaigns to donate to. Mike DeWine's on there, but because his candidate is, Hewitt says, slightly to the left of Nancy Pelosi.

Here's the RNC's donation site, letting you know where your money will buy the most Evil.

Related: Dean Barnett critiques a Time article claiming the power of the "netroots" has plateaued and it's only downhill from here.

The article is largely about Kos, of course. The media only seems to care about liberal bloggers; such is life.

The money-raising potential of the rightroots has never really been tapped-- at least not like the Kossacks have exploited it. I'm not sure why, but I suspect it's due to the structure of the dextrosphere (less heirarchical, less follow-the-one-undisputed-big-leader), and partly due to our different temperament (I think most on the right feel a little like sell-outs about boosting politicians, as we think even the ones we like are incompetent cowardly sell-outs, and we recoil from the designation "political activist.")

I also think it's a function of emphasis, and where our efforts are most needed.

What does the sinistrosphere most need to do for the Democrats? Raise money. Especially hard money, which the Democrats have trouble raising. They have less of a problem getting their numerous millionaires and bazillionaires to write out huge soft-money checks.

What does the dextrosphere most need to do for the Republicans? Push stories into a liberal media almost entirely unwilling to cover any story perceived as aiding a Republican candidate. The Kos crowd hardly has to worry about the media helping Democrats; it's more or less built for that function. The "stories" the Kos crowd winds up pushing are the unhinged conspiracy theories that pretty much no one will touch, but they do so largely because their stronger, less lunatic stories are already being dutifully covered by the media, often with "flood the zone" coverage.

Still, while pushing stories into a hostile liberal media environment may be our most important contribution, there's no rule that says we can't also raise money for candidates in a critical election.

JackM. thinks it would be a good idea for several bloggers to start up a soft-money PAC. I'm all in favor of such an effort, as soon as he explains to me how I can skim 95% of the money from the PAC as "administrative costs."

Posted by: Ace at 09:20 AM | Comments (6)
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A long time ago I asked Allah how the hell he got so many stories so quickly.

He used a news aggregator, he told me. RSS Bandit, specifically.

I tried to set it up before but was confounded by the fact that most of the sites I tried to add couldn't have their RSS feed "autodiscovered." So I gave up.

Well, I think I've finally figured it out, and have a small number of sites now feeding me headlines. I'm not sure it's the be-all end-all yet, but it certainly is helpful. My primary research tool before was my gmail box. Now I can more easily find stuff myself.

If you know of good feeds that I should add, let me know. I want this sonofabitch cooking with news. So far I just have a few of the bigger blogs and CNN's ticker and some Australian feeds and the Guardian UK (always good for a laugh).

Bonus: WIth so many stories, the long-dormant "Headlines" sidebar is being updated again.

Posted by: Ace at 09:14 AM | Comments (18)
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They just needed a nudge.

I think there was memorial burn-out after the "Crescent of Embrace" affair in Shanksville, causing some people to turn off to this story. But when you've got the leftwing, MoveOn.org-approved, anti-American sloganeering shown in the pics at Michelle's and at HotAir, you really don't need a protractor, compass, and polar-projection map of the earth to see what's wrong with this "memorial."

Len Munsil, Republican candidate for governor, will have a press conference tomorrow, and will play the audio of Gov. Napolitano's (D) exuberant praise of the "educational" anti-American "memorial."

Napolitano has, last I checked, a significant lead over Munsil. We'll see if this changes the dynamic. She's either going to have to confess error or defend the memorial; either way she loses.

What was she thinking?

I don't think she was thinking. I think she made a Kinsley gaffe on this, defined as "a mistaken utterance or action which actually reveals what a politician truly believes."

Posted by: Ace at 09:02 AM | Comments (8)
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The good news: A likely GOP pick up in the Senate. 44-38.

The better news: the lead is not quite so insurrmountable as to cause the regularly-scheduled New Jersey Senate Candidate Switcheroo. We sort of don't want the lead to grow more than eight points or so, or else we'll have a new candidateo on hour hands.

The bad news: This merely offsets what is now likely a Democratic pick-up in Virginia, thanks in large part to George Allen's "macaca" slur.

More Bad News: Maryland, a great place for a GOP Senate pick-up, is not going according to plan. Cardin, who employed a racist blogger obsessed with "Oreos" and "Jewish noses," is leading Michael Steele by 11 points among likely voters, according to Potomac, Inc. poll.

I guess racism is only a problem for those on the right.

Posted by: Ace at 08:52 AM | Comments (7)
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There are two other witnesses, but the guy who provides the most detail seems to be politically compromised.

This may be bullshit, it may be overstated -- hey, I've said "nigger" myself, almost always ironically or for shock value -- but this should pretty much end any chance of a serious presidential run. The claim is that he used the world quite casually, and in an unambiguosly racist sense.

He can recover, though, enough to hold his Senate seat. Given the shelf-life of this charge, and the dubious sourcing, I think a plausible case can be made that it's time to move on from it.

Then again, I also can't strongly argue with liberals or blacks that they too should give Allen a pass.

Based on the "macaca" imbroglio, I'd have to say this fits a pattern. Which isn't to say it's true; but it does seem to be more likely to be true.

Tough call. But if Elvis Costello can be forgiven a more recent use of the word -- calling Ray Charles a "blind, ignorant nigger" in 1979 -- I guess it comes down to one's capacity to give prior signs of racism a pass.

The "macaca" slur -- made just a month ago -- doesn't aid his case very much, though.

Update: The chief accuser -- the one who began taking notes about a 30 year old utterance when he realized Allen had a shot at the presidency -- is also, of course, an environmental activist.

Posted by: Ace at 08:41 AM | Comments (44)
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