Outspoken-- that's how CNN puts it. High-profile -- that's how Reuters describes him.

AllahPundit, on the other hand, describes him as a beheading enthusiast.

I really don't like the blog triumphalism talk, but honestly, is there really any doubt who has more credibility?

Can the MSM just please stop with the bullshit?

Posted by: Ace at 12:43 PM | Comments (28)
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Some good news from Iraq.

Coalition forces in Iraq have delivered a series of stunning blows to al Qaeda in Iraq in the last 48 hours.

A key aide to Abu Ayyub al-Masri, the man who replaced Abu Musab al Zarqawi as the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, has been captured south of Baghdad. As A.J. Strata notes, the trail to the al Qaeda leader is fresh: the captured aide admitted to meeting with al Masri yesterday.

Since Taji is north of Baghdad, these two al Qaeda IED cell leaders captured by the U.S. in West Taji are not the same as those above. That's four al Qaeda leaders captured.

But four is such a lonely number. A facilitator of foreign fighters was captured by the Iarqi Army on the Syrian border. And foreign fighters tend to mean al Qaeda.

Not to be outdone by the IA, the U.S. struck two houses where foreign fighters had gathered---13 jihadis dead. An "individual" associated with foreign fighter facilitation was in the targeted area.

But wait, that's not all...

Sweet.

Important Action Alert: I just got word from Josuha Micah Ezekiah Boutros-Boutros "Shecky" Marshall -- he "questions the timing" of this entire offensive, as it's plainly designed to "distract" from the nutroots' scary-important victory in getting a blogger hired by a lefty candidate.

Posted by: Ace at 12:12 PM | Comments (20)
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I'm sure they had pretty vicious rants lined up had he fired them.

The New York Times does Edwards a solid by pretending that this was all about potty-language:

Some of their work contained profanity and vulgar language, which did offend some on the right and the left.

No mention of divine loads or abortions for the Virgin Mary, notice.

Nice. The New York Times is really good at this, huh?

Goldstein's Take: Is a hot, sticky load of analysis:

As I wrote yesterday, I donÂ’t care one way or the other, personally, about whether or not Marcotte and McEwan are allowed to keep their josb. ThatÂ’s EdwardsÂ’ call. And from a blogging perspective, I suppose EdwardsÂ’ decision is good news.

But let’s not confuse the effect with the rationale—which is both risible and insulting. Because were it really never Marcotte’s intent to malign anyone’s faith, she probably wouldn’t have dedicated so many hate-filled blog posts to, you know—maligning anyone’s faith.

Of course it was her intent. Just as it was McEwan’s intent. And worst of all, Edwards knows it. That he has pretended to take the two at their word, in an ostentatious gesture of “trust,” is precisley the kind of staged treacle that makes people doubt the sincerity of politicians; and that both Marcotte and McEwan have assured their own personal Patriarch that they’ll behave, now that he’s promoted them to the grownups’ table, is, to put it bluntly, one of the most pathetic public surrenderings of personal integrity I’ve ever seen.

Seriously. We should feel bad for them.

That is, were we to actually believe they meant any of it. Because how this plays out for the netroots is this way: either they are cheering on an ideological sellout, or they are knowingly and happily embracing an opportunistic liar. So. Congrats to them. Once again, theyÂ’ve covered themselves in white hot sticky glory!

Edwards and Marcotte deserve each other, as far as I’m concerned. A presidential candidate who tries to sell me on the fact that Marcotte and her group of shrieking ill-tempered character assassins had no intent of maligning anyone—all for a bump in the DailyKos straw poll—is a charlatan and a waffling opportunist.

LGF: puts it pithily:

Hey, Nutroots bloggers! Want to work on a big-time political campaign? All you have to do is publicly repudiate everything youÂ’ve written for the past five years!

It's also amusing that Marcotte and McEwan resorted to that hoariest of lies -- "We were just being satirical."

Barnett: Doing that "Numbered List" thing he does to make himself sound all important and shit:

3) But won’t it be a great tragedy for Edwards if he loses the support of the Nutroots? After all, Chris Bowers of MyDD has pounded his virtual shoe on a virtual table threatening, “We will bury you!” if Edwards goes through with firing the angry blogresses.

There’s a lot that the Nutroots and the blogosphere don’t get, but this is the most important: In 2004, Howard Dean enjoyed the unified support of the Nutroots and angry “progressives” everywhere. What did it get him? A fourth place finish in Iowa. If a candidate is going to play to the blogosphere as his or her main constituency, that’s the ceiling on how well he or she will perform. Let’s not forget that Dean finished behind an unimpressive roster of Dick Gephardt, John Kerry and John Edwards. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are both a lot more formidable than any of those guys.

4) But wonÂ’t it look really bad if Edwards caves to the demands of knuckle-dragging wingnuts like you and cans Marcotte and whatÂ’s-her-name?

Oh lord. This is the biggest myth of this whole melodrama. I can’t think of a single right-wing blogger who has called for Marcotte’s termination. Read my commentary, read Allah’s, read Ace’s, read Glenn’s, read MKH’s – we don’t care whether Marcotte stays or goes. Really, take the challenge – find me a single prominent blogger who has said, “I demand Amanda Marcotte be fired.”

We do, however, care that Edwards be judged by the company he keeps. If a campaign hired Ann Coulter as a message massager or speech writer, no one on the left would be sympathetic to the defense that Ann’s incendiary past-writings have nothing to do with her ability to perform the functions that the campaign hired her to do. And make no mistake – while I have often found Ann’s writings to be needlessly juvenile and offensive, compared to Amanda Marcotte she is a national treasure.

Edwards Embraces The Nutroots-- Not Just The Mutants Marcotte and McEwan, But Their Twisted, Paranoid Worldview As Well: Edwards won't let himself be "distracted," Allah notes:

It wasn’t their intention to malign anyone’s faith? By referring to religious conservatives as “godbags” and “Christofascists”? Quote:

Q: What if Mary had taken Plan B after the Lord filled her with his hot, white, sticky Holy Spirit?

A: YouÂ’d have to justify your misogyny with another ancient mythology.

Either heÂ’s a gullible moron or he takes us for gullible morons. Bad news either way. HereÂ’s the big finish:

WeÂ’re beginning a great debate about the future of our country, and we canÂ’t let it be hijacked. It will take discipline, focus, and courage to build the America we believe in.

That’s vintage nutroots newspeak, on the same paranoid continuum as questioning the timing, and I’m sure it won’t be lost on his target audience. Their answer to every right-wing challenge, policy or otherwise, is to look for an ulterior motive that we’re allegedly attempting to distract them from. Opposing abortion isn’t “about” protecting innocents; it’s about “controlling women’s bodies.” Opposing affirmative action isn’t “about” fairness and meritocracy; it’s about reinstituting Jim Crow. The Iraq war isn’t “about” trying to reduce the incentives towards terrorism by introducing democracy; it’s about oil, Israel, Halliburton, colonialism, or any/all of the above. And criticizing Edwards’s bloggers isn’t “about” the fact that they’re offensive wretches whose brand of discourse has now been mainstreamed; it’s about conservatives trying to hijack the debate about which of the two Americas Lionel Hutz purchased to accommodate his palace."

Yes, there's always a subtext, and the subtext is always a metanarrative about power relationships about race, class, gender, and sexuality.

They learned that in college. And that's pretty much all they learned in college.

The nutroots is taking this as vindication, that they've whipsawed the Democratic Party into finally "standing up and fighting for its principles."

Really?

These are your principles?

Duly noted.

The New Face Of The Edwards Campaign:

I'm comfortable with that.

The Shannon Elizabeth pic is there, by the way, apparently because some computer program supposedly analyzes your face and tells you which celebrity in its database you most closely resemble. This is posted on Marcotte's own photostream, inviting comparisons.

I haven't seen a computer go this beserker-nuts since WOPR in Wargames.

In related news, six Soviet ICBMs just hit McGill Air Force Base.

Would you like to play a nice game of chess?

Amanda, it's not so much as we'd like to control women's bodies, so much as we'd like to do a little policing of their Flickr accounts.

Posted by: Ace at 11:34 AM | Comments (173)
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Iowahawk gets a juicy leak-- the emails between Marcotte and John Edwards.

To: Senator John Edwards


From: Amanda Marcotte


Re: Job Offer

Dear Senator Edwards:

I am fucking delighted to accept your offer of the position of Official Blogger for the Edwards 2008 presidential campaign. Please find attached my fucking W-2 form.

I would like to express my heartfelt thanks for this totally fucking awesome opportunity to help you take America back from fucking BushCo and the other fucktard bible-humping extremists that have turned this once great nation into a goddamn rape factory for their snakehandling Jesus Camp hatebots.

In closing, I am so fucking proud to be a part of this campaign, and fucking gratified to know that I'll be working for someone who fucking understands the importance of reaching out to progressive bloggers like myself. I look forward to contributing in any way I fucking can. You won't be fucking sorry!

Fucking Sincerely,
Amanda Marcotte, "Pandagon"

And Hot Air has CNN's extremely soft-pedaled pseudo-coverage of the anti-Catholic charge hurled against the freak Marcotte. They definitely did not get into the nastier quotes -- about God's "white, sticky Holy Spirit" knocking up the Virgin Mary and all that. Instead, CNN included only a wordbite from McEwan about "Chirstianist fascist wingnuts" -- which most Catholics would take (proably correctly) as a slam on Evangelical Protestants, not themselves.

So any Catholic watching the report would be left wondering, "What's the big deal?"

Which is precisely the way CNN wanted it.

Posted by: Ace at 08:22 PM | Comments (90)
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I heard Chris Bowers is preparing a vicious rant and an important action alert if that stupid robot tape recorder appears in the Transformers movie.

I also heard Chris Bowers is preparing a vicious rant and an important action alert if McDonald's doesn't bring back the McRib Sandwich -- posthaste.

As we all know politics -- nay, nearly the entire scope of human endeavor -- is animated primarily by Chris Bowers' vicious rants and important action alerts, please let me know if you've heard similar rumors.

I need to plan for the upcoming weeks and/or decades.

Judd's dashed off a couple of his own Important Action Alerts, to good effect:

Hey, just threatened my wife with an important action alert (IAA)...Boom, guess who's getting laid tonight?

I told my boss that he better give me a raise or I would be issueing an important action alert....Boom, 20K more a year. That shit works, bitches.

BumperStickerist has looked into Chris Bowers' Important Action Alert Secret Files:

1. By threatening a vicious rant and important action alert Chris Bowers was able to have his Papa Johns pizza delivered five minutes earlier than promised.

2. By threatening a vicious rant and important action alert was able to gain the attention of the waitress, who then brought Chris his check.

3. By threatening a vicious rant and important action alert, Chris Bowers convinced his large intestine to let go of that impacted stool, saving himself the cost of a Fleet enema and a six pack of beer as a courtesy payment to Jerome Armstrong.

I heard that Adolf Hitler was prepared to fight to the last man in the last bunker... until, ba-zing, and Important Action Alert from Chris Bowers was handed to him, along with a pistol, two bullets, and a short missive from Eli Wiesel reading, simply, "Scoreboard."

Just Got... An email from an occasional tipster, "Ozymandias." He's a bit egotistical, but hear him out:

"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings!

Look upon my works, Ye Mighty, and despair!

I know this crap looks pretty busted-up right now

But I've got a vicious rant and an Important Action Alert lined up,

and believe you me, Chief,

I'm going to have this shit straightened out by Wednesday,

if not sooner. My brother knows a really good landscaper."

Update: Many leftwingers say the Salon report about Marcotte's and McEwan's firing cannot be confirmed. This does seem to be the case, as a source tells me the MSM is becoming annoyed by the Edwards' campaign failure to definitively answer questions. He writes:

You may report that your sources in the Beltway media establishment are getting pretty f#$%ing tired of waiting for the patriarchy at the John Edwards campaign to issue a statement making the oppression of Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan an official matter of public record.

Nearly 7 hours after the Salon report, and still no confirmation.

If Edwards can be frozen into inaction by the threat of a Chris Bowers Important Action Alert (TM), is Edwards really ready to be Leader of the Free F#%&ing World?

Snark aside, that's a good point: The Shiny Pony wants us to believe he can stare down Ahmadinejad, and he can't even manage to handle Amanda Friggin' Marcotte?

More: Chris Bowers Puts The "MyDD Primary" On The Line! An incredibly important threat:

I've been spending all day working behind the scenes on this, and I will continue to do so this evening. With 100 comments in the first open thread about this subject, here is a new one.

I also wish to make something else clear. While there is no way I will support Edwards with Amanda and Melissa are fired, I will immediately become a staunch Edwards supporter if they are not fired.

Now, I had to check: MyDD, living large on Kos and Atrios links, manages 24,000 uniques a day, whereas I manage about 20,000.

So... Look, I didn't know this, but apparently I'm entitled, pretty much, to issue Important Action Alerts and threaten candidates with a withholding of support myself.

Which means, of course, I'm going to start doing so. A lot. Pretty much every damn blog post from now on will be an Important Action Alert of some sort, and I am going to threaten to withhold the coveted Ace of Spades HQ endorsement from everyone in the field unless they start sending me some money.

Not Marcotte-money, either. I want Instapundit money.

Posted by: Ace at 03:49 PM | Comments (481)
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A tip sent to me:

John Kerry, who said “We're going to build an army of truth-tellers” in 2004 and complained long and loud about the tactics of the Swift Boat Veterans, today held a press conference with a veterans organization to criticize the handling of the Iraq war. After complaining long and loud about the tactics of the Swift Boat Veterans, which group did John Kerry stand beside?

VoteVets.

Time Magazine called VoteVets “Swift Boat 2.0”. New York Magazine called them “the Democratic version of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.” John Soltz called himself “the Swift Boat Captain of ’06." Judge for yourself just how upset John Kerry really is about “swift boat tactics”.

MEANWHILE: the fellow Democratic Senators are standing with? He says Republicans “aid the terrorists."

Jon Soltz, an Iraq war veteran who chairs VoteVets.org, a political action committee critical of President’s Bush’s war policy, told reporters at a Wednesday press conference that Senate Republicans were “cowards” for their role in procedural maneuverings this week that have prevented a vote on resolutions on the troop surge, reports Politico's Carrie Budoff. “They aid the enemies of this country,” said Soltz, flanked by four Democratic senators – John Kerry of Massachusetts, Patty Murray of Washington, and Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse, both of Rhode Island. “They aid the terrorists that attack this country.”

Capitol Hill can be an endless parade of press conferences, where talking points are repeated over and over and over again. So the comments stood out, and a reporter pounced, asking the senators whether they agreed with Soltz’s assessment. “I would probably choose a different way of saying it,” said Kerry, the only senator who stepped to the microphone. But veterans – and in the case of Soltz, someone who fought in Iraq – “have earned the right to express those feelings,” Kerry added.

But didn't John O'Neill earn the right to express his feelings about you, Senator? Seems to me he was in Vietnam a lot longer than you -- he didn't phony up three magic "wounds" to get his ass home after three and a half months.

I have trouble being too outraged by Kerry's shabby hypocrisy. He is a poltiician, after all -- he is a partisan, and hypocrisy is his stock in trade.

What annoys me more is that media is supposedly nonpartisan, and a vigilant watchdog against hypocrisy, but gives this sort of hateful speech a pass.

The speech itself is hateful, but it's political hardball -- look, if you believe your political opponents are acting against the American interests, and aiding Al Qaeda, you ought to say so.

And yet when Republicans say so, the media has a stroke.

When Democrats say so, they just nod in quiet approval and think to themselves, "You go, girl."

Sorry, cocksuckers: You have to impose a single standard on all, not a strict prohibition on such speech by Republicans and a great deal of "nuanced" latitude when it comes from your ideological fellow-travellers. Decide now-- is this sort of speech out of bounds or not?

If it's out of bounds, then I expect Chris Matthews to devote six segments on his next ten shows to exposing the Democrats' "smear and fear" strategy.

If it's legitimate speech, then stop bashing Republicans when we say, quite sincerely, that we believe the actions of Democrats are directly contrary to the interests of this country and yes, indeed, do "aid the terrorists."

And if you won't settle on a single standard: then at least have the candor to admit you are partisan political actors with a very heavy rooting interest in the Democrat Party's electoral fortunes.

More Tippage: John McCain, aka Mr. Rightwingsparkle, spoke out on behalf of the troops, and said that the troops had told him they did not believe it possible to "support the troops" while attempting to undermine their mission.

How did Harry Reid respond? By calling the troops liars -- by saying they had been dishonest in their remarks to McCain for fear of... I don't know, maybe being retalliated against by being reassigned to a dangerous billet or something. Like Germany.

So-- the troops are liars, according to the troop-supportin' "Majority" Leader of the Senate.

Question for Mr. Kerry: Have these men, enduring physical hardships and hazards that few will ever experience, also "earned the right" to express themselves without being branded cowardly liars?

Posted by: Ace at 03:36 PM | Comments (32)
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So childish. So, so childish.

It's all my team/your team with these guys. This crazy cat-lady is one of theirs, so they're going to gut Edwards if he makes the perfectly-understandable exercise in damange control in firing her.

I thought about what I'd do if a candidate was so dopey as to offer me a job. I realized that, if it were someone I liked, like Giuliani, I'd be compelled to turn it down in order to protect him from his own lapse in judgement. (If it were McCain, on the other hand, I would have to accept.)

On the left, though, such a move is just showing you're a "coward" who won't "fight" hard enough for, well, lunacy.

So, here's the Astrological Investment Counselor's partner, Chris Bowers, on John Edwards:

I have a pretty vicious rant and an important action alert lined up, but I am waiting to hear from the Edwards camp about the fate of Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan before doing anything. The Salon story is not credible and cannot be verified at this time. The campaign is still involved in internal discussions.

The Edwards camp faces a series simple choices right now:

* Are you with the people who work their asses for you, or are you with right-wing extremists who hate you?
* Are you willing to point out the double standards and hypocrisy behind this story, or will you cave to even the mildest pressure from the Republican Noise Machine?
* Do you have any loyalty to the netroots, or was it all just sweet talk, where loyalty actually only flows uphill and shit actually only flows downhill?

But like I said, I am waiting before letting loose. This is a big opportunity for his campaign. Whether he stands up or backs down will be a turning point for his campaign online. Either way, he won't be tied with Barack Obama in Dailykos straw polls anymore. It will be hard in one direction or the other

Uhhh... getting a big head on yourself there, ain't ya?

The "reality-based community," indeed! The dextrosphere understands it is primarily of interest to its readership to the extent it helps Republicans get elected.

On the other hand, the sinestrosphere seems to think the tail wags the dog -- that lefty readers aren't primarily interested in how lefty bloggers can help a candidate like Edwards, but how a candidate like Edwards can help lefty bloggers.

Guys? I know the Democratic establishment is throwing all sorts of flattery your way, but don't believe the hype. People -- regular people, I mean, not you mutants -- are going to be voting for or against John Edwards, not "The Guy With The Courage To Employ The Pandagon Freak."

A minority of people read blogs at all -- and alot of those blogs are stuff like sports-blogs associated with a major magazine like ESPN.

Do these idiots really think America has even heard of Amanda Marcotte, much less gives a fig about whether this mutant gets to post on a candidate's blog?

Oh, PS-- no one reads those anyhow.

Posted by: Ace at 02:33 PM | Comments (52)
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Which puts him well ahead of you homos in the Hetero Derby.

Where do I get my Heterosexual Certification Card? Because sometimes I'm walking down the street and some hooligans call me a fag. I sure would like to bust out that laminate and shut them up. It would make my weekly pilgrimmage to Bed Bath & Beyond a lot more pleasant.

Citing the Book of Ruth, Ted Haggard explains
that King David had "an ass you just want to grab
and go absolutely apeshit on."

Posted by: Ace at 02:01 PM | Comments (80)
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Update/Correction: Contrary to the implication of the headline, Airbus already suffered the two year delay. It's now finally past it. In fact, the superjumbo's maiden voyage was today.

...

Kind of interesting article about Airbus' woes, all due to different design and production teams using slightly different versions of the CAD program Catvia -- and six billion dollars lost in translation.

Boeing is making sure that everyone involved in the Dreamliner launch is using the exact same program to avoid this problem.

Using the CAD software, manufacturers can create detailed 3D models of their products and run those designs through a battery of virtual tests, such as stress, vibration, noise, wind and even crash tests, long before a cent is spent on manufacturing. Using the digital manufacturing software, companies can explore how those parts or components can be produced by simulating the process. Products like Dassault's Delmia help manufacturers determine how many people, robots or other manufacturing resources will be required, whether existing machinery can be utilized or new purchases will need to be made, and whether processes can be automated or will need to be performed manually.

...

Potential cost savings vary depending on the complexity of the product being manufactured, but some analysts, like AMR Research's Michael Burkett, estimate that the time and cost savings on more complicated products can be as much as 50%. That has translated into PLM becoming a hot software category, growing at an annual compound rate of about 8.3%, according to research firm CIMdata of Ann Arbor, Mich. In a report released in October, CIMdata forecast that investments in PLM would grow from about $19 billion in 2006 to $27 billion by 2010.

But underlying that promise are very real dangers. By relying so much on software, and by eschewing real world mock-ups or trials in favor of virtual models and tests, companies may not catch errors until late in the manufacturing process. And the potential pitfalls, such as compatibility problems between different CAD packages, are more common than most chief information officers might think, according to Kubotek COO Bean.

In related news, while Airbus engineers, working with programs simulating real, tangible objects and physical laws which are nearly perfectly understood cannot manage to simply model the correct length of wires for its lighting without making small errors that result in catastrophic setbacks, climatic scientists have nevertheless created absolutely perfect models for the world's weather patterns extending 100,000 back and forwards in time.

And yet, of course, they still can't tell you if it's going to rain on the weekend.

I'd like to invoke the Oral Roberts Rule on them. Long-range predictions, which speak conveniently to conditions so far in the future that they cannot be proven or disproven, are pretty frigging easy to make. It's that damnable short-term -- where prognostications can be checked empirically -- which are so difficult, eh?

By the way, some old aeroporn: Dr. Reo Symes previews the 787 Dreamliner, and here's the "blended wing" 797, which will one day carry 1000+ passengers.

Thanks to Ogre Gunner.

Posted by: Ace at 01:56 PM | Comments (33)
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Further support for my lifestyle choice of Never washing my junk.

Wyart and her team designed their study around androstadienone, a nonhormonal, steroidal constituent of sweat, which Wyart refers to as the molecule most studied because of its effects on psychophysiology in women. ...

The results: smelling the androstadienone increased positive mood, total physiological arousal and sexual arousal, which grew with longer exposure. The researchers also found a significant rise in cortisol levels from the sweat component, as compared with the yeast, beginning within 15 minutes of exposure and continuing for up to an hour.

Wyart notes it was particularly interesting that there was apparently no correlation between the intensity of the scent and magnitude of the effect. "It's something very intriguing about these molecules that you don't necessarily consciously smell the odor to actually [get] a response," she says.

Note that it doesn't have to be male sweat, either. So, you can set your woman out to clean the garage and gutters and then, theoretically, expect her to become sexually aroused off her own sweat and give you a wettie.

In theory.

In practice? Doesn't seem to work.

But science may engineer a way around this.

Posted by: Ace at 01:17 PM | Comments (39)
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