...and of course entirely embargoed by the national media.

What's worse than videos of the rape/torture of children?

How about videos of the rape/torture of infants and toddlers?

Whenever the media needs to explain away its rather excessive coverage of scandals that hit the right, the claim they neutral principle that outrage, interest, and sex appeal (even a disgusting sex appeal) dictate that amount of coverage. Thus the nonstop coverage of Ted Haggard and Mark Foley.

Well, those elements seem present here -- actually, they're here, but raised to the ninth power. And so the media's claim of a neutral principle in deciding what's newsworthy is exposed as a sham yet again.

Thanks to larwyn.

Posted by: Ace at 01:10 PM | Comments (51)
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Well, not the second part. He explains his decision:

It wasnÂ’t as easy a decision as it was when I worked on BushÂ’s campaigns, primarily because of RudyÂ’s positions on certain social issues. I know IÂ’m not the only conservative that feels this way. But I met with Pat Oxford, chair of RudyÂ’s Exploratory Committee a few weeks ago and he assured me Rudy is by no means a pro-abortion, gay-marriage loving liberal in sheepÂ’s clothing. Rudy is staunchly Catholic and very anti-abortion personally. He also believes marriage should be defined as between one man and one woman.

But what of his policies? His track record would seem to indicate something different. Or does it? In the 8 years Rudy was Mayor of NYC, abortions in NYC declined at a greater pace than they did nationally.

In related news, the Giuliani campaign has generously invited me to join Romney for President.

Meanwhile... A new poll of registered Republicans has it 59-34 Rudy over McCain.

On the Democratic side, Hillary! continues losing ground to Obama:

Meanwhile, a Newsweek poll of registered Democrats showed Democratic Sen. Barack Obama chipping away at front-runner Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's lead in the past month.

Clinton enjoyed the support of 52 percent of registered Democrats in the latest poll to Obama's 38 percent. That compared with 55 percent for Clinton and 35 percent for the Illinois senator in late January, Newsweek said.

Meanwhile, Kirsten Powers is knocking Giuliani -- for not being hardcore conservative enough, sorta -- which is a good sign the Democrats are a bit worried about him.

It is true that social cons (and most Republicans) aren't aware that Rudy isn't a social con. On the other hand, that little misleading factoid about Rudy appoint liberal judges as mayor -- a key Democratic Talking Point and key talking point among Rudy's opponents -- has been pretty thoroughly debunked by this point:

I asked [Bill] Simon about the recent issue with judges. The Politico posted an article on Rudy's track record on judicial nominations, and reported that Giuliani appointed more Democrats than Republicans to the bench as Mayor. Hower, Simon called this misleading. The mayor does not have a free hand in judicial appointments in New York City. An independent panel gives the mayor a choice of three candidates for each open seat, and the mayor has to select from those three. Rudy did not choose the candidates; he had to select one of three locked-in choices.

I'm surprised to see a generally-fair Democrat like Powers pushing something that simply isn't true (or isn't true like they'd like it to be true); I'll chalk it up to her not simply not having read this yet. Hopefully she'll drop this talking point in the future.

And On Romney: Dick Morris wrote of the Republican nomination process as a series of playoffs between bracketed opponents, like the NCAA's. In his analysis, there's a playoff for the center right (Rudy vs. McCain) and a playoff for the more social-con right (Romney vs. ... well, Gingrich if he runs, or else a lesser known candidate like Brownback).

Only one candidate in each bracket will suvive for long, he thinks, which makes sense. McCain seems to have all but lost his contest, making Mitt Romney (as of the current moment) Rudy's real challenger for the presidential semifinals. (The true finals come following the Hillary!/Obama playoff, which Obama's going to win.)

Posted by: Ace at 12:38 PM | Comments (15)
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according to a Drudge linked story about the CPAC Straw Poll.

Here are the numbers for you:

Romney 21%
Giuliani 17%
Brownback 15%
Gingrich 14%
McCain 12%

Interestingly, the article contains the number from last year's conference. Here is what they were last year:

Allen 22%
McCain 20%
Giuliani 12%
Rice 10%
Gingrich 5%

A year is a long time in politics, isnt it?

It is interesting to see how much the numbers have moved, however. I can assure you that the composition of the CPAC audience doesn't change significantly from year to year.

Well except when reprobates like Ace and me crash the party.

Anyway, since Rightwingsparkle was so generous as to post the fact that McCain won the Spartanburg County, South Carolina straw poll by 2 whole votes in multiple threads, I figured this result deserved some blog attention as well.

That's just the way I roll.

Posted by: Jack M. at 06:33 PM | Comments (68)
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3000+ dead terrorists in Afghanistan and Iraq, that is.

If Coalition KIA's are a useful metric for guaging the success of the terrorists (and failure of American policy), why is it that terrorist KIA's are never cited by the MSM as a metric of guaging the success of American troops?

Thanks to cd.

Posted by: Ace at 12:46 PM | Comments (113)
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Althouse thinks this line of critique will be ineffective, as everyone already knows where Giuliani stands on these issues.

Not so. A majority of Republicans, for example, either don't know Giuliani's position on abortion or incorrectly believe he's pro-life.

The attack will be somewhat less effective due to the fact that Romney himself held these views just a few years ago. Giuliani can suggest he may "evolve" as Romney did in just a few short years.

Social con candidates like Brownback and (presumably) Gilmore are entering now as dark horses, in case the front-runners falter.

But Giuliani may not falter after all. I hope this isn't telling tales out of school, but Eric Erickson of RedState related a story about his wife's Bible study club. His wife is strongly pro-life, as are the other ten women in the group. And they're all supporting Giuliani -- enthusiastically, in most cases. Why? Well, they think he'll win the war.

The plural of anecdote is not "data" and all that, but still, Giuliani pretty much seems to be the talk of CPAC, and even strong social cons aren't rabidly against him. In fact, most of them seem to approve of him as a candidate, if not enthusiastically so.

On the other hand, there's the hapless John McCain.

Here's an NYT piece on yesterday's speeches.

Spot the lie:

Mr. Giuliani focused on what has been one of his electoral strengths: his performance as mayor after the attacks on the World Trade Center. Mr. Giuliani departed from a standard criticism of President Bill Clinton by Republicans, who have faulted him for not recognizing the emerging terrorist threat after the first attack on the World Trade Center and the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole.

“I don’t blame people for that,” he said. “ I don’t think it’s instructive or helpful to do that.”

The deliberate deception here is that Giuliani immediately followed this statement up by saying (paraphrased), "But for those who continue to support the same pre-9/11 law-enforcement responses to terrorism after 9/11 -- they can and should be blamed for that."

But the NYT reporter apparently only caught the part of the quote that seemed to absove his heroes for their sleepwalking through the escalation of 90's megaterrorism. How he managed to miss that this entire passage was about the Democrats' desire to go back to the pre-9/11 Clinton paradigm of law enforcement plus half-hearted and haphazard missile strikes is beyond me.

But then, I guess we all hear what we want to hear.

They're simply dishonest. And they wonder why their subscription base is dropping so precipitously.

Not Sure If This Is True:

Mr. Giuliani arrived to a rousing reception, but the room grew silent and restless as Mr. Giuliani wandered through a speech that lasted 40 minutes. By contrast, Mr. Romney arrived to a much more subdued reception but left to rousing applause.

I can't tell, because I wasn't in the room, alas. Certainly the applause kept coming for Giuliani -- I noticed no "restlessness," and everyone in the auditorium was glued to the TVs -- but it did seem that Romney delivered a livelier, more rousing speech.

But the speeches were different -- Giuliani's speech wasn't a full-blown stump-speech; it was more of a discussion of issues as other, noncandidate speakers delievered. Romney's speech was also SRO, but not everyone in the joint was glued to TVs to watch him speak.

NYT Full of... It: So says Fausta, who was in the room when Giuliani delivered his speech. She notes the speech ended with a standing ovation.

JackStraw points out that most people spoke glowingly of Romney's speech. It was a strong, rousing speech. I certainly thought it was miles away better than his NR speech. Eric from Red State is one of those greatly impressed by Mitt, and has a transcript of his full speech.

I still think I preferred Giuliani's -- partly because of my obvious bias, but also partly because I'm still kind of annoyed the presidential campaign has already begun, and preferred Giuliani's more low-key, I'm-not-really-a-candidate-just-giving-a-talk-here style, at least at this point in early March 2007.

By the way, the whole Red State crew is covering this thing amazingly well.

Posted by: Ace at 12:25 PM | Comments (40)
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For fans of Stella or Michael Ian Black and David Showalter: The David Showalter Showalter.

Posted by: Ace at 11:25 AM | Comments (6)
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The limits of inEVITAbility.

Posted by: Ace at 11:10 AM | Comments (10)
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"There is no Dark Side of the Moon, really. As a matter of fact, it's all dark."

The above quote is courtesy of Pink Floyd's 1973 album "Dark Side of the Moon".

Which just goes to show...even Roger Waters can be right. It just takes an unusual astronomical alignment of heavenly bodies to make it happen.

In any event, should you choose to step outside to observe this celestial event, watch out for the lunatics on the grass.

Because they will be out in force tonight. What with all their barking and protesting and what-not.

Me? I'll just stay in and sync up "Dark Side" to the "Wizard of Oz".

It's lame and goofy, I know.

But I'll take any excuse I can to dress up like Judy Garland, I didn't just shell out for this new entertainment center for nothing.

And at least I can now claim to have Saturday Night plans. Unlike you shut-ins. And you know who you are (*cough*Harrison*cough*).

AoS Lifestyle Update: Mesablue tips me on how to use my knowledge of current events to score with the ladies:

Tonight's the night that I bet some really stupid hot (drunk) chick that she has to sleep with me if I can make the moon disappear.

Actually works, they like the effort and think that it's kinds cool when the moon really does disappear -- after the confused look goes away.

Posted by mesablue at March 3, 2007 03:09 PM

Thanks Mesa! That probably would work better than my plan of inviting them back to my place to meet the "Tin Man".

Update 2: Link should be fixed. Thanks for letting me know it was broken 5cats.

Posted by: Jack M. at 10:47 AM | Comments (20)
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An emailer to Mickey Kaus notes that networks simply don't have the staff, money, or time to cover two open-seat primary races at once, and so are biased -- simply due to strapped resources -- to artificially cull the field as soon as possible.

They've got two front runners and one wildcard on each side, and they figure that's tolerable, but still too many. So they'll attempt to use Iowa and New Hampshire as pretexts to appoint their own candidates by denying anything but the most perfunctory, asterisk-starred coverage to anyone but the media annoited.

Posted by: Ace at 10:34 AM | Comments (5)
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But this proves nothing, nothing at all about the unhinged left.

Allah says he's the libertine version of Ann Coulter. One difference: The right actually takes Coulter to task for her increasingly irresponsible jokes."

And also: What Maher said wasn't a joke.

Just at a blogger lunch and someone asked, "Why does CPAC keep inviting Coulter?" Well, obviously, she's a superstar, if an inconvenient one.

For another, someone said, she plays well to the college crowd, which is mostly, as regards politics, shallow stunts and slogans.

Posted by: Ace at 10:27 AM | Comments (50)
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