Yesterday I blogged about a release from the Hillary! campaign charging that Obama had been planning his presidential campaign for many years. Among the quotes Clinton sited as evidence were excerpts from essays Obama wrote in grade school.

Today, Hillary’s pollster Mark Penn says it’s all a joke thrown in as a joke at the end of a long release and everyone is so gullible for falling for the Obama spin. Riehl World has the video.

Well, here's the intro to the release.

Today in Iowa, Senator Barack Obama said: "I have not been planning to run for President for however number of years some of the other candidates have been planning for."

Oh really?

"Senator Obama's comment today is fundamentally at odds with what his teachers, family, classmates and staff have said about his plans to run for President," Clinton spokesperson Phil Singer said. "Senator Obama's campaign rhetoric is getting in the way of his reality."

The first group the spokesman points to is ‘teachers’ and the only teachers quoted in the release are the kindergarten and third grade teachers. It seems the school angle was presented as more than a throw away joke 'at the end of a long thing".

There are ways to include the teachers as a joke but prefacing them by saying their recollections are ‘fundamentally at odds’ with Obama doesn’t strike me as particularly humorous.

Maybe I just don’t get the nuances of liberal “humor”.

In the grand scheme of things this is of no importance except as another example of the Clinton's inability to simply admit a mistake and tell the truth.

Posted by: DrewM. at 10:31 AM | Comments (27)
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Bear in mind, the College Democrats joined with the College Republicans to sponsor this and keep it apolitical. This is probably fairly dated, but it's worth watching.

For what it's worth, they're organizing a protest against the nasty leftist professor Phillip Klasky in 29 Palms, California, on December 14.

Posted by: Ace at 10:21 AM | Comments (40)
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This time it's just a moth's brain, but what happens when they use a chimp's brain, thus combining humanity's two worst enemies -- robots and damn dirty apes -- into one cybernetic killing machine?

A scientist who successfully connected a moth's brain to a robot predicts that in 10 to 15 years we'll be using "hybrid" computers running a combination of technology and living organic tissue.

Charles Higgins, an associate professor at the University of Arizona, has built a robot that is guided by the brain and eyes of a moth. Higgins told Computerworld that he basically straps a hawk moth to the robot and then puts electrodes in neurons that deal with sight in the moth's brain. Then the robot responds to what the moth is seeing -- when something approaches the moth, the robot moves out of the way.

Higgins explained that he had been trying to build a computer chip that would do what brains do when processing visual images. He found that a chip that can function nearly like the human brain would cost about $60,000.

"At that price, I thought I was getting lower quality than if I was just accessing the brain of an insect which costs, well, considerably less," he said. "If you have a living system, it has sensory systems that are far beyond what we can build. It's doable, but we're having to push the limits of current technology to do it."

This organically guided, 12-in.-tall robot on wheels may be pushing the technology envelope right now, but it's just the seed of what is coming in terms of combining living tissue with computer components, according to Higgins.

"In future decades, this will be not surprising," he said. "Most computers will have some kind of living component to them. In time, our knowledge of biology will get to a point where if your heart is failing, we won't wait for a donor. We'll just grow you one. We'll be able to do that with brains, too. If I could grow brains, I could really make computing efficient."

While the moth is physically attached to the robot at this point, Higgins said he expects that one day only the brain itself will be needed. "Can we grow a brain that does what we want it to do? Can I grow an eye with a brain connected to it and have it do what I need it to do? Can I engineer an organism and hook it into my artificial system?" he asked. "Yes, I really think this is coming. There are things biology can do so much better. Think of a computer that can be both living and nonliving. We'd be growing tissue that has no more intelligence than a liver or a heart. I don't see ethical issues here."

Of course you don't, darling. You're a Mad Scientist. You never see any ethical issues.

Thanks to dri, via Instapundit.

Posted by: Ace at 10:07 AM | Comments (35)
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Demands riots, death, mayhem for the infidel blasphemers.

Well, not exactly.

The writer apparently wants us to understand the priest is very angry. I have no doubt the priest found the ad offensive, as would many Christians. He uses strong language like "sacrilegious" and "pokes fun".

It just seems like such a tame kind of anger, as contrasted with, say the Religion of Perpetual Outrage™. A kinder, lighter degree of offensensitivity*.

* pretty sure I stole this word from Berkeley Breathed, at least I think I remember it from a Bloom County cartoon.

Posted by: Dave In Texas at 10:05 AM | Comments (14)
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...or at least working hard to appease their liberal friends and families by making sure this time there will be no causus belli for a pre-emptive attack.

How absurdly naive does one have to be to claim that Iran has suspended its nuke program, given their weekly bragging about how many uranium enriching centrifuges they now have up and running?

Oh, right. Those are for nuclear power. Uh huh.

Thanks to CJ.

Posted by: Ace at 10:00 AM | Comments (16)
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Just ahead of Fred Thompson and John McCain.

Huckabee is a smooth talker and charismatic. But I'd like to know why the Republican base is getting so enthusiastic over an unrepentant pro-amnesty guy and a dude who wants to shut down Guantanamo and outlaw waterboarding. And raise taxes, of course.

True enough, Giuliani, Romney, and McCain might split the party were they to gain the nomination. But wouldn't Huckabee do so as well and perhaps much worse? I really can't support a guy who takes the liberal position on several of my top issues.

Posted by: Ace at 09:36 AM | Comments (57)
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Over at NewsBusters they ask if the eastern elitist liberal media referee corps throw last night's game to the Patriots.

I'm a fan of the Pats but wow, talk about some clutch playmaking officiating. I guess it was just two timely defensive holding calls (plus a miraculous late time-out by the Ravens themselves) that gave the Pats their desperately needed first downs, but they sure seemed to come in bunches when the Pats needed them most.

Oh Yeah: That game-winning touchdown by Gaffney was pretty sketchy too, wasn't it? I suppose I agree with the call -- barely -- but everything sure seemed to break the Pats' way on that last drive.

Posted by: Ace at 09:01 AM | Comments (44)
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I had this in the sidebar before I saw Lou Dobbs' response, calling him a "little liberal lily" and a "hack liberal."

Kaus notes that Rutten's claim that immigration was not an important issue and thus did not warrant 35 minutes of debate time was belied by the very poll Rutten cited in making this remarkable claim.

Lou Dobbs responds here.

Tim Rutten is a hack liberal indeed, and his partisanship is showing. Immigration is indeed a critical issue this coming election cycle -- and Tim Rutten wants the issue to go away because it has the potential to kill his beloved Democratic Party.

Immigration was, until recently, an issue likely to cause only Republicans political heartburn. With the partyÂ’s Big Business factions battling its increasingly vocal secure-the-borders grass-roots advocates, immigration looked like an internal GOP squabble that had little electoral upside.

That now seems like ancient history.

Immigration is emerging as an issue that is resonating with independent voters — the very ones who carried Democrats to landslide victories in 2006, winning control of the House and Senate. And it’s presenting Democratic candidates with the challenge of how to discuss an issue they’re not used to being defensive about.

Immigration is now viewed as an issue that affects key domestic areas long considered Democratic turf: health care, crime and education.

...

Forty percent of respondents to a newly conducted, Democrat-sponsored Democracy Corps poll said the main reason the country is going in the wrong direction is that “our borders have been left unprotected and illegal immigration is growing.” Immigration was easily voters’ top priority, beating out concerns over the Iraq war, health care and the economy.

Republican pollster Rob Autry said the immigration issue polled near the top of the list among independent voters in last monthÂ’s surprisingly competitive special election in a solidly Democratic Massachusetts district, where he polled for Republican Jim OgonowskiÂ’s campaign.

For Democrats, the issue is just as much a double-edged sword as it is for Republicans, prompting the party to increasingly voice its own internal debate.

The well-educated, white-collar professional elements of the party generally favor less restrictive immigration policies. And most Hispanic voters, one of the fastest-growing voting blocs, are strongly opposed to greater enforcement of illegal immigration.

But blue-collar workers, union members and African-Americans — all key parts of the Democratic coalition — have traditionally been more hostile to unfettered immigration, given that greater (and cheaper) job competition leads to depressed wages and a tighter job market.

Tim Rutten is a liar. He doesn't object to the immigration debate because it's unimportant to the public. Rather, he objects to the debate because it's critically important to the public, but he thinks it shouldn't be. Once again the media continues mistaking itself for "The Deciders," those who choose on our behalf which issues shall concern us and, of course, what we shall think about the issues they've carefully selected on our behalf.

Bob Schieffer Too: CBSNews' Bob Schieffer whines that we're talking about issues that may cut against Democrats, rather than chatting endlessly about media-approved topics that may cut against Republicans.

Awwww. It's so sad when The Deciders are forced to cover the news reactively rather than getting to decide the news proactively.

Posted by: Ace at 08:51 AM | Comments (61)
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In past posts about the candidacy of Mike Huckabee, I said I didn't want to become the anti-Huckabee blogger.

Allow me to recant that statement. We simply have to stop this man from getting any further in his quest for the presidency. Mike Huckabee is simply unqualified to be the commander in chief in a time of war.

Go to Hot Air for the video and the Washington Post story, but here's the statement.

MIKE HUCKABEE: IÂ’ve been to Guantanamo, I was there, I guess itÂ’s been about a year and a half ago. I think the problem with Guantanamo is not in that its facilities are inadequate. ItÂ’s the symbol that it represents. ItÂ’s clearly become a symbol to the rest of the world as a place that has become problematic for us as a nation. I was quite frankly impressed with the quality of the facilities and even the attention to care that was given to the detainees, but that aside, it doesnÂ’t alter that Guantanamo to the rest of the world is a symbol that is not in our best interests to continue pursuing.

Powerline wonders if Huckabee is "too moralistic" to be president. Personally, I think it's a combination of moralism and misguided optimism, with a healthy dose of inexperience in world affairs. Comparisons have been made to a former U.S. president from the south, and I've always thought those comparisons were a bit harsh.

Now I'm not so sure.

Huckabee is bad on taxes and immigration. He's got overly-statist views on the limits of government power and now we find out that he lacks the fortitude to withstand international criticism of our foreign and military policy. The Huckabee boomlet has got to stop.

Posted by: Slublog at 08:36 AM | Comments (26)
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It's almost as if the surge is working.

But Harry Reid says not so. The surge "hasn't accomplished its goals," he claims, apparently under the misapprehension that the 20,000+ additional US troops were tasked to capturing and holding the Iraqi Parliament.

Catching Up: Pardon the unscheduled absence. Thanks to everyone who open blogged, and of course the cobloggers who keep this moronblog going.

The Big Buts: Mudville Gazette notices that members of a certain political party can't credit US forces without throwing in the Magic But and then explaining that US forces had nothing at all to do with the recent fall in violence. This time it's Jim Webb.

Except, you know, to the extent they exhausted the jihadis by fighting them tooth and nail for three and a half long years.

Thanks to CJ.

Posted by: Ace at 08:17 AM | Comments (7)
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