"Stop pining" for the past, he advises, and stop trying to act as "gatekeepers" of which information the public should have and which it shouldn't.

PS: Latest circulation audit shows a bloodbath for the daily papers, with the NYT down 4.5%. The NY Post was also down 5.2%. Only four papers in America posted gains.

Posted by: Ace at 10:58 AM | Comments (12)
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Have they been doing this for long? I've never read of it before, but then I avoid the NYT.

It appears the Nutrootification of the NYT is complete:

ecretary of State Condoleezza Rice refers to the lack of legal accountability that allows mercenaries working for the American government to kill Iraqis without fear of prosecution as “a lacuna” in our law.

...

The administration should withdraw all of these private armies from Iraq, and while it does that, Congress must act swiftly to ensure that American justice applies to all those who remain.

Am I to understand that when a NYT reporter actually bothers himself to leave his hotel, his security is being provided by -- as his paper terms them -- "mercenaries"?

Posted by: Ace at 10:21 AM | Comments (24)
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Some good ones in here. I like the gifs:

Thanks to dri.

Posted by: Ace at 09:24 AM | Comments (10)
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It wasn't him.

A mother cremated a body she thought was that of her dead son, only for him to turn up alive later, police said on Friday.

Gina Partington's 37-year-old son Thomas Dennison was reported missing last month and a body was found in Rusholme, Manchester, three days later.

The 58-year-old mother, from Urmston, Greater Manchester, formally identified the body as that of her son and, following an inquest, the body was cremated on October 30.

But police had actually found Dennison, living rough in Nottingham, four days earlier.

The case has been referred to the Independent Police Complaints Commission to discover why Partington was not told of her son's discovery in the days before she attended the cremation.

Quick, let's put them in charge of health care.

Thanks to Hwa.

Posted by: Ace at 09:10 AM | Comments (12)
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Belatedly, it was nice to meet all the morons who showed up. They were an interesting and varied bunch, ranging from writers to dot-com "content directors." Engineers and lawyers were also well-represented. (My apologies for not shouting out to everyone by name. I was bombarded by too many people with "real" and moron names in the space of an hour.)

Also showing were notables Patterico, Baldilocks, Breitbart, Little Miss Attila, Ex-Liberal in Hollywood, and Dafydd ab Hugh.

I think everyone had a pretty good time. I especially enjoyed chatting with Dafydd and Ex-liberal. Steve_in_hb had some pretty good stories about Ace.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 08:40 AM | Comments (14)
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What other ‘Best Conservative Blog’ nominee gives you what you really want? (Hint: It ain't Malkin)

And don’t forget fellow morons Nice Deb in the ‘Best New Blog Category’ and Slublog, who is pretty much the New England Patriots of the ‘Best of the Rest’ category. Help him run it up on the SOBs.

Posted by: DrewM. at 08:37 AM | Comments (18)
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Is the lesson I am learning today.

Remember when HotAir featured some posts about Ron Paul's supporters setting November 5th (Guy Fawkes Day if you are gay British) as the day in which they hoped to raise a great big chunk o' change?

Their original goal was to have 100,000 people donate a combined $10,000,000 today.

How are they doing? Well, they aren't likely to meet their goal.

But they are raising an impressive amount of money.

As of 11:05 this morning, they have raised $1.3 million dollars.

Further, they are projecting that they will reach over $7.6 million dollars in fundraising this quarter alone. (The Paulbots are attempting to raise $12 million in the 4th Q).

For comparisons sake, I looked up the GOP candidates 3Q fundraising efforts. Here is how they did.

Giuliani: $11 million.
Romney: $10 million + an $18.5 million loan to himself
Thompson: $9.3 million
McCain: $6 million
Paul: $5 million

Which gives you some perspective on how Paul has been doing. Credit, where credit is due, peeps. He may be a fringe Bircher lunatic, but he is a well-funded fringe Bircher lunatic.

And it validates Ace's theory that there really is "crazy blog money" to be made on the intertubes.

Who knew that so much of it existed in the basement of shut-ins and social misfits, though?

UPDATE As of 2:30, the Paulnuts have broken the $2,000,000 barrier in today's fundrasing.

You know, if Allah would just shill for the loon, I'm pretty sure he could afford to buy an Iphone pretty soon. I mean, today's ongoing fundraising success proves people are willing to give to lamer causes.

Posted by: Jack M. at 08:23 AM | Comments (17)
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I spotted this unusual report on waterboarding when several big Lefty sites started complaining about it. Their complaint is that it isn't serious enough. I have to admit, it is entertaining (you may have to sit through a commercial to see the report).

JEANNE MOOS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It's one thing to see an animation of water boarding and another to see the real thing. Sounds like the Bush administration's nominee for attorney general hasn't seen a demo.

MICHAEL MUKASEY, ATTORNEY GENERAL NOMINEE: I don't know what's involved in the technique, if water boarding is torture, torture is not constitutional.

MOOS: It depends what the definition of water boarding is, but this reporter didn't define it, he demonstrated it, on himself.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What do you have to say? What do you have to say?

MOOS: Kaj Larsen is a reporter for Current TV, Al Gore's outfit. He used to be special ops and once had to undergo water boarding as part of military training, but this time he paid other professional interrogators.

KAJ LARSEN, REPORTER: I weaseled him down to $800.

MOOS: To waterboard him so folks could decide if it amounts to torture.

LARSEN: It start to create the sensation of drowning.

MOOS: They stuffed a rag into Larsen's mouth. They began pouring and then the shaking began.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think he's getting ready to say something.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You can end this now, just talk.

MOOS: Larsen's producer actually ended it telling the interrogators to stop after 24 minutes. Normally a person breaks after two or three.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You OK?

The report leaves viewers with one impression of the technique: "What's the big, f**kin' deal, man?"

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 08:18 AM | Comments (17)
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Senator John McCain has given up talking about features of his comprehensive immigration reform act now that he's realized how unpopular it is. He got the message.

Now, the Republican presidential candidate emphasizes securing the borders first. The rest, he says, is still needed but will have to come later.

"I understand why you would call it a, quote, shift," McCain told reporters Saturday after voters questioned him on his position during back-to-back campaign appearances in this early voting state. "I say it is a lesson learned about what the American people's priorities are. And their priority is to secure the borders."

This is not a flip-flop in the mold of Kerry, where a politician changes his convictions depending on his audience. McCain still believes in his comprehensive solution. He's just realized that neither Congress nor his constituents are in the mood to hand out amnesties while the borders are wide open.

Republicans should take note of that. It's a good thing that McCain has learned from this summer's errors. But he hasn't really changed anything aside from the order in which he will accomplish his goals.

"I said, OK. We'll secure the borders, but after we secure the borders, we'll have a temporary worker program, we'll have to address the 12 million people here illegally, and I think the best way is the proposal that we had. But we've got to secure the borders first," McCain said.

The rest of his comprehensive immigration reform plan is still on the way.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 08:02 AM | Comments (12)
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And here I thought all we were doing in Afghanistan was killing women and children at weddings. Who knew?

Six years after the Taliban's ouster, medical care in Afghanistan has improved such that nearly 90,000 children who would have died before age 5 in 2001 will survive this year, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Sunday.

Saddled for years with one of the world's worst records on child health, Afghanistan has seen access to health care rise dramatically since the U.S.-led invasion.

Thousands of health clinics have been built across the country, and the Afghan government and aid agencies have trained tens of thousands of doctors, vaccinators and health volunteers who now reach into some of the country's most remote areas.

Access to health care for Afghans has jumped from 8 percent of the population in the 1990s to close to 85 percent today, thanks in large part to efforts by USAID, the World Bank and the European Commission.

Keep this sort of thing in mind when you hear so much about how we are loosing in Afghanistan. Yeah, thereÂ’s poverty and violence. In other words, six years of American led efforts havenÂ’t reversed centuries of tribal traditions and problems. And yet in that short amount of time, things like this have happened. Pretty amazing if you ask me.

Posted by: DrewM at 07:59 AM | Comments (6)
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