By Ewok decree...

Bumped and updated

Thanksgiving is gone and so it's time to bang the Moronpalooza drum again. If you've any events scheduled, please post it in the comments: it's too confusing now to go through all the previous threads. (OK, I'm too lazy.)

SATURDAY (12/6)

Boston, MA -- 8pm
email Andy

SUNDAY (12/7)

New York, NY -- 7pm
email someone

WEDNESDAY (12/10)

Kansas City, KS/MO -- time unknown
email Nice Deb

THURSDAY (12/11)

Atlanta, GA -- 6pm
email Francase

FRIDAY (12/12)

Sacramento, CA -- time unknown
email goat

SATURDAY (12/13)

Dover, DE -- time unknown
email Hoss Fuentes

Denver, CO -- time unknown
email Tony

Posted by: Open Blog at 06:05 AM | Comments (48)
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A tragic failure of communications:

MUMBAI - Ajmal Amir Kasab, the sole surviving member of the 10-man team of Pakistani gunmen that left hundreds dead or wounded after a bloody three day rampage in Mumbai, today blamed the mayhem on an "email mixup" that left him and his colleagues unaware that Barack Obama had won election as President of the United States.

"What? Oh bloody hell, now you tell me," said Kasab, as he was led away in handcuffs by Indian security forces.

Kasab, 21, apologized to Indian President Pratibha Patil, explaining that no one in his group had known about the recent U.S. election results.

"Boy, talk about having egg on the face," said a visibly embarrassed Kasab. "If we knew Bush was on his way out, obviously we would have called off the crazy random baby-shootings and martyrdom stuff, and signed on with the Peace Corps or Habitat for Humanity. At this point I guess all I can say is 'my bad.'"

Posted by: Ace at 04:38 PM | Comments (18)
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The Georgia Secretary of State office has updating results.

I don't know if there are exit polls for a runoff like this (I kind of doubt it), so I don't think they'll be a predicted winner (AP calls it for Chambliss with over 80% of the vote in. See Ace's post above).

FWIW, it was looking good for the incumbent Republican Saxby Chambliss heading into the vote.

The results won't mean much one way or the other as a practical matter for the upcoming Congress but after the drubbing we took in the general election, a win is a win.

Sort of related: Jeb Bush reportedly is 'seriously considering' running for Mel Martinez's Senate seat. Meh, who knows? Every politician in Florida is considering running tonight. Let's see who really steps up. Still, he's the best hope for holding the seat, so let's enjoy the thought while the rebuilding begins.

Posted by: DrewM at 03:44 PM | Comments (60)
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Or in smoke-filled back rooms prior to the convention.

Is it just me, thinking "wow, all these old Clintonistas (including the honorable Senator hersef), working for Obama now? Golly I'll bet they have his best interests and vision for the future of the country at heart."

Am I dumb? Or is he? Ok don't answer that.

Anyway, here's a Cuffy Meigs trip down primary memory lane, a la "voodoo economics" and such. Pretty sweet.

Bonus moron question: the background music, "We'll Meet Again". What's the first image it brings to mind?

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 03:20 PM | Comments (47)
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I question the timing, or something.

Posted by: Ace at 02:45 PM | Comments (27)
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Don't panic -- he's made statements like this before. Preparing the public, perhaps, for a court challenge or Senate choice of Franken over the true winner. These estimates seem based on what he expects to happen, not actual counted votes.

So discount this heavily, unless confirmed by independent sources... which still put Coleman's lead at around 340.

Minnesota Democrat Al FrankenÂ’s lead attorney said Tuesday that his count shows the comedian trailing Sen. Norm Coleman by just 50 votes with more than 200,000 left to be counted.

Attorney Marc Elias held his press conference in Washington just hours after elections officials found nearly 200 ballots that had not been counted on election night.

So far, the Franken campaign claims to have picked up 165 votes in the hotly contested recount. That number, Elias said, includes all ballots challenged by both campaigns, assuming any calls made by neutral election judges on the scene are accurate. ColemanÂ’s campaign has challenged approximately 300 more ballots than FrankenÂ’s, leaving those votes off the official tally posted on the Minnesota Secretary of StateÂ’s website, which shows Coleman leading by 340 votes.

...

Elias said the Secretary of StateÂ’s office estimates that at least 500 ballots were rejected without cause, though the Franken campaign thinks the number is closer to 1,000. FrankenÂ’s campaign intends to question the cause of those ballotsÂ’ rejection, citing some elections officials who have admitted the ballots were mistakenly set aside.

...

The uncertainty of the recount was evident again Tuesday as Ramsey County elections officials found an additional 171 ballots that hadn't been counted on election night. A broken voting machine had been replaced, but those who used the first machine never had their ballots recounted. Elias said the missing ballots were an example of why the recount needed to continue, though he refused to comment further.

The new discoveries are likely to shrink ColemanÂ’s slim lead. Ramsey County, centered in St. Paul, gave Franken a 52 percent-to-34 percent margin, with Independence Party candidate Dean Barkley pulling 13 percent of the vote. The ballots were found in Maplewood's Precinct 6, which favored Franken over Coleman, 45 percent to 39 percent on Election Day.

Posted by: Ace at 02:32 PM | Comments (42)
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Not sure what the problem was, exactly, with Firefox. Although I liked it, it has been eating up system resources like crazy. For the past month I've had trouble typing posts, as the processor often lagged far behind and couldn't keep up. I'd type entire sentences without seeing them, only to have them pop up (with typos galore, even more than usual) a couple of seconds later.

Firefox is known to be a bit of a system-hog, but it was getting out of hand. I don't know if my software was fragged or being slowed by add-ons I never intended to install or what, but my computer was always running at 50-70% CPU usage.

One neat feature is a task manager to tell you exactly how much trouble each page is giving you, so you can shut down the heavy-CPU-users.

Anyway, I read that Google Chrome is much less taxing on system resources. I don't have many tabs open yet (often I have forty or fifty open) but at the moment I'm between 8% and 12% of system resources being used.

I'll let you know if it turns out well, or turns out annoying. So far, despite my general loathing of Google, it's looking okay.

Okay... Just blitzed it by opening new tabs and the usage sometimes spikes to 50%, but doesn't sit there as a default. Either way, I'm still able to type.

Posted by: Ace at 02:11 PM | Comments (78)
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How democracies die:

Damian Green, a conservative MP and Shadow Minister for Immigration, [was] seized by anti-terrorist personnel from the Metropolitan police, held for questioning for 9 hours, and whose private papers and computer files in his home and office in the House of Commons were confiscated. The Honorable MemberÂ’s offense? Embarrassing Gordon BrownÂ’s government. How did he do this? By revealing in debate on the floor of the House of Commons and in various lapses, failures, and dirty-little-secrets about the governmentÂ’s immigration policy, e.g.,

* the fact that the home secretary knew that the Security Industry Authority had granted licences to 5,000 illegal workers, but decided not to publicise it.

* the fact that an illegal immigrant had been employed as a cleaner in the House of Commons.

* A whipsÂ’ list of potential Labour rebels in the vote on plans to increase the pre-charge terror detention limit to 42 days.

In other words, Mr. Green was doing exactly what a member of the Opposition should do: shedding light on the governmentÂ’s failures in order to make it more accountable to the public.

The ever percipient Janet Daley, writing in the London Telegraph, got it exactly right: Mr. Green’s arrest, and the government’s subsequent denial of knowledge of or responsibility for the actions of the police, represents a “grotesque breach of political freedom and constitutional principle.”

Anyone who thinks that this incident is being somehow blown out of proportion by opposition politicians and an excitable media had better think again. A senior opposition spokesman has been arrested and detained, had his personal possessions and confidential correspondence examined, and his family home occupied, without being suspected of any criminal offence.

The object of the exercise seems to have been intimidation and the flaunting of power. Short of an outright, totalitarian suspension of democracy, this is about as serious as it gets. Freedom is under threat in ways that we would not have thought conceivable a generation ago. The threat seems to be coming in various forms from a government desperate to save its own credibility and to be so convinced of its moral righteousness that it can justify the most blatant abuses of what we had taken to be the fundamental principles of democracy.

Roger Kimball casts this as creeping totalitarianism, which it of course is, but doesn't note the reason for it: Green exposed the government on policies and actions demanded, presumably, by the Religion of Peace. Britain's eagerness for dhimmitude now urges them to dismantle their own democracy in order to forestall anger from the Religion of Peace.

Posted by: Ace at 01:57 PM | Comments (48)
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Deranged.

Caution: Non-Sequitor Fall Zone.

Der Spiegel profiles a woman who has perfect episodic memory:

People say to me: Oh, how fascinating, it must be a treat to have a perfect memory," she says. Her lips twist into a thin smile. "But it's also agonizing."

In addition to good memories, every angry word, every mistake, every disappointment, every shock and every moment of pain goes unforgotten. Time heals no wounds for Price. "I don't look back at the past with any distance. It's more like experiencing everything over and over again, and those memories trigger exactly the same emotions in me. It's like an endless, chaotic film that can completely overpower me. And there's no stop button."

It's a kind of mini-version of the hell of immortality. Forgetting and dying are as integral to being human as remembering and living. And yet we cannot cherish the relief of death or the gift of receding memory. That's how far our society has strayed from true Christianity (and how far the pro-life fetishists have migrated from the message of Jesus.)

We cannot cherish the relief of death? Or the "gift" of Alzheimer's? When was Christianity every pro-"relief of death"/ Yes, the promise of the Afterlife and so on, but when has Christianity ever celebrated death merely as the escape from the misery of mortal life?

And this suddenly-discovered pro-senility dogma... Guess I really need to read the Gospel of St. Andrew of P-Town for Jesus' exultations about creeping senility.

Incidentally, Andrew Sullivan's only true claim to the "conservative" label was his own "pro-life fetishism." But he's apparently evolved on that, as he on so much.

Sullivan invented his cutesy (but dumb) slur "Christianist" to describe, he says, a politicized version of Christianity. But notice that 90% of Sullvan's own invocations of "True Christianity" feature a political attack as their main thrust.

He almost never mentions Christianity in a non-political context. He never urges anyone to, say, accept Christ as Savior and shed one's sins. He primarily mentions not Jesus the Lamb of God but Jesus the Anti-Prop-8 Agitator.

Posted by: Ace at 12:33 PM | Comments (76)
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Gary Coleman exits his monster truck as he shows up to court to answer a disorderly conduct beef.

Thanks to Andrew Breitbart.

Posted by: Ace at 12:10 PM | Comments (45)
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