Comments will be back at some point so in the meantime, get your picks in.

Posted by: DrewM at 06:55 AM | Comments (35)
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Et tu, Mav? But of course!

"I think that the Obama campaign should and will give all information necessary,"

...McCain suggested the Republican National Committee's calls for the Obama team to publicly release their conversations with Blagojevich and his people aren't helpful.

"With all due respect to the Republican National Committee, we should try to be working constructively together," McCain said.

"I have some confidence that all of the information will come out. It always does it seems to me," he said.

Yeah, the RNC is being unhelpful here. Funny how it's always the Republicans fault in McCain's mind.

I thought McCain rewrote the 1st Amendment because we had to worry about the "appearance of corruption". Yet now that we have actual corruption on the part of a sitting governor, we must not ask any questions of Obama but rather just sit and wait for Him to tell us what He thinks we need to know.

Oh and Mav? It's not the 'Obama campaign', it's The Office of The President Elect. Didn't you see the logo?

And before McCain decides this is a partisan witch hunt, he might want to consider that even writers for the LA Times are starting to notice that the silence of The Office Of The President Elect on the matter is a legitimate matter of inquiry.

WhatÂ’s puzzled some people and raised suspicions among others is EmanuelÂ’s refusal to talk about it (reportedly physically pushing one reporterÂ’s tape recorder away and having a verbal altercation with another) and the delay on ObamaÂ’s part in releasing the promised diary of contacts.

From a practical point of view, if everything is above board, whatÂ’s to hide?

I can't wait for the youtube video of McCain crying and demanding that we "Leave Obama Alone!"

Added: I did see the whole show and can't find a transcript yet but I think this video from the RNC is what McCain was talking about as being 'unhelpful'. more...

Posted by: DrewM at 06:44 AM | Comments (112)
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Sorry for the mess-up, we're having a bit of "server maintenance" right now. Yeah, that's right; when the comments go down, we call it "server maintenance." Of course, we will gladly credit your accounts for the loss of service. The changes will be reflected in next month's billing statement.

Pixy Sez: Comments back now. Remember folks, call help@mu.nu for all your server maintenance needs.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 09:57 PM | Comments (5)
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Just started (8 p.m. Eastern) on ESPN. This year is predicted to be one of the closest votes in Heisman history. All three finalists had insanely good seasons.

Update: Oklahoma QB Sam Bradford wins the Heisman. Good luck to all three finalists in their bowl games. (Well, except Tim Tebow...please have a mediocre game for once.)

Posted by: Open Blog at 04:11 PM | Comments (71)
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Probably best not to get too agitated yet. Suspicious doesn't always mean criminal, and a lot of times these are inside jobs by some disgruntled dimwit.

Posted by: Ace at 03:26 PM | Comments (57)
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Amazing:

After jumping out of helicopters at daybreak onto jagged, ice-covered rocks and into water at an altitude of 10,000 feet, the 12-man Special Forces team scrambled up the steep mountainside toward its target -- an insurgent stronghold in northeast Afghanistan.

"Our plan," Capt. Kyle M. Walton recalled in an interview, "was to fight downhill."

But as the soldiers maneuvered toward a cluster of thick-walled mud buildings constructed layer upon layer about 1,000 feet farther up the mountain, insurgents quickly manned fighting positions, readying a barrage of fire for the exposed Green Berets.

A harrowing, nearly seven-hour battle unfolded on that mountainside in Afghanistan's Nuristan province on April 6, as Walton, his team and a few dozen Afghan commandos they had trained took fire from all directions. Outnumbered, the Green Berets fought on even after half of them were wounded -- four critically -- and managed to subdue an estimated 150 to 200 insurgents, according to interviews with several team members and official citations.

I don't know why the Washington Post says "subdue." Are they resorting to euphemism to make the victory more palatable to their readers? Later on we find out what "subdue" means:

By the time the battle ended, the Green Berets and the commandos had suffered 15 wounded and two killed, both Afghans, while an estimated 150 to 200 insurgents were dead, according to an official Army account of the battle. The Special Forces soldiers had nearly run out of ammunition, with each having one to two magazines left, Ford said.

Posted by: Ace at 03:23 PM | Comments (35)
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Anthony Watts noticed something interesting in the Arctic ice data. As you know, 2008 was widely touted as the year when the North Pole would be ice-free. That turned out not to be the case (not even close!), and reported ice levels recently returned to about normal after 2007's below-average level.

Until, without comment or explanation, the data was changed retroactively. Below is a comparison of the chart provided by Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center, which records the sea ice data, on December 10 and the chart provided on December 11:

Anthony writes that this could be a simple computer error or an "undocumented adjustment" but, whichever it is, NANSEN needs to make an explanation.

My only issue with the idea that this is nefarious adjustment is that it is too obvious, owing to the size of the change. People were bound to notice and wonder what happened. I think we can all agree that this is a data issue; the Arctic did not in fact suddenly and retroactively lose 500,000 square kilometers of ice.

Click on over to WattsUpWithThat for additional comparison gifs and commentary. Hopefully an explanation or correction will be made by NANSEN on Monday.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:26 PM | Comments (43)
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Back in January, 2006, I noticed a bit of paranoid conspiracy-mongering in an article by chronic BDS-suffering movie watcher Roger Ebert about the goings on at the Sundance Film Festival. That's nothing new, of course, coming from Democrats or Kos diarists or Andrew Sullivan, but just this morning, I remembered something special: the source of this particular bit of paranoid conspiracy-mongering was none other than President-Elect Barack Obama's Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. more...

Posted by: Open Blog at 01:26 PM | Comments (31)
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At least, no Division 1-A games. But here's a reminder that we've set up a College Bowl Pick Em group over at Yahoo for any of you who want to play.

Go here. Select Over 60 Fantasies Join a Group.

Group id is 35232. You'll have to have a Yahoo id, password is "paulanka".

I don't know why I was keeping that hushies. If you're a jerk troll and you want to play, we can make as much fun of you over football as we do your politics and disgusting personal habits. Big deal.

The bowl games are all set. Little twist on this one, it's a Confidence Point arrangement. You can set a point value to your pick, 1-34 based on your confidence in the pick. You set the confidence points to 20, you win that pick, it's worth 20 points.

Deadlines are 5 minutes before each game, first game is Dec. 20.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 01:27 PM | Comments (7)
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As usual.

Lifted from Hot Air's headlines: Is broadcast television about to die?

Posted by: Ace at 01:10 PM | Comments (20)
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