Yes. Yes, I am.

I am not going as a quest of the First Lady, however. Sadly, my attempts to impress Miss Barbara Bush (the twin, not the grandma) have proven less than successful to date.

Which is OK. Sena wasn't too keen on the idea anyway. Suzanne doesn't like to share.

Want to know who did get a coveted Laura Bush invite though? I have the list.

It's long, so I've placed it beneath the jump.

One question, though. Donna Shalala and Bob Dole??? Really???

Sigh. That's SOOOOO HAWT! more...

Posted by: Jack M. at 01:35 PM | Comments (9)
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Many of you have written to tell me the site frequently locks up, requiring you to kill the program with the Task Manager.

If you have this problem, please let me know what script the site is getting bogged down on. I have been writing Pajamas Media (who runs the ads here, the likely culprit) and they keep telling me that they can't find anything wrong with the ads or the Nielsen-meter traffic counter.

If you have this problem and can tell what ad or routine is causing the lock up, I may be able to get this fixed. At the moment, there seem to be too many suspects to identify one as the problem.

Thanks, and I apologize for this. I've been trying to get this fixed for a while.

UPDATE [Dave in Texas]: I had this problem for a couple of days last week, had not happened before (I use IE7). In this case, it happened every time I viewed the site, but only my work PC (ahem) and not home. Pixy suggested clearing my browser cache, that some goobered up file (my technical description, not his) was causing the lockup. FWIW, that cleared it up right away.

Posted by: Ace at 01:33 PM | Comments (21)
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There is some criticism here, but not all that much. Hoyt seems to be holding out hope that the bogus "trend" presented in the story will turn out to be fake but accurate.

The Times made some missteps at the beginning of the series, and critics have pounced, accusing it of demonizing veterans and exaggerating the problem even as some mental health professionals have thanked the newspaper.

The first part, which dominated the top of Page One on Jan. 13, featured a photo montage of 24 young men, some in military uniform, some in prison garb. The article began with the story of Matthew Sepi, a 20-year-old plagued by nightmares from Iraq, who went looking for beer to help him sleep and wound up killing a gang member and wounding another with an AK-47 in a dangerous neighborhood.

“Town by town across the country, headlines have been telling similar stories,” the article said. “Taken together they paint the patchwork picture of a quiet phenomenon, tracing a cross-country trail of death and heartbreak.”

The article said the newspaper had found 121 such cases, many of which appeared to involve “combat trauma and the stress of deployment — along with alcohol abuse, family discord and other attendant problems.”

The Times was pointing out terrible examples of something the military itself acknowledges: large numbers of veterans are returning from Afghanistan and Iraq with psychological problems. And, as the initial article said, a Pentagon task force found last year that the military mental health system was poorly prepared to deal with this wave of distress.

The Times was immediately accused — in The New York Post and the conservative blogosphere, and by hundreds of messages to the public editor — of portraying all veterans as unstable killers. It did not.

But, the first article used colorfully inflated language — “trail of death” — for a trend it could not reliably quantify, despite an attempt at statistical analysis using squishy numbers. The article did not make clear what its focus was. Was it about killer vets, or about human tragedies involving a system that sometimes fails to spot and treat troubled souls returning from combat?

Finally, while many of the 121 cases found by The Times appeared clearly linked to wartime stresses, others seemed questionable. One involved a Navy Seabee accused of arranging her ex-husbandÂ’s murder during a bitter child custody battle, and another involved a soldier who was acquitted of reckless homicide in a car crash after a jury concluded that his blood alcohol level was below the legal limit and that many other accidents had happened on the same stretch of road.

Some readers wanted to know how the rate of homicides by veterans compared with the civilian rate. Several bloggers did back-of-the-envelope calculations and said the homicide rate for returning veterans was lower than the rate for the general population. So, whatÂ’s the problem, they wondered. I asked Martin T. Wells, a professor of statistical sciences at Cornell University, to take a stab at a comparative calculation. The homicide rate for returning combat veterans could be better or worse than the civilian rate, he determined, depending entirely on how many of the 1.6 million military personnel who have been deployed in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars actually saw combat, a number the Pentagon does not have.

Ah. More statistical analysis is apparently necessary before presenting this as a "trend" or something to even bother writing about. It could just turn out that that statistical analysis -- to be done later -- saves the story.

Sure.

More: Patterico notes that Hoyt's defense follows the Dan Rather model -- attacking the messenger as partisans.

Posted by: Ace at 01:18 PM | Comments (27)
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"The ultimate betrayal!"

Women have just experienced the ultimate betrayal. Senator KennedyÂ’s endorsement of Hillary ClintonÂ’s opponent in the Democratic presidential primary campaign has really hit women hard. Women have forgiven Kennedy, stuck up for him, stood by him, hushed the fact that he was late in his support of Title IX, the ERA, the Family Leave and Medical Act to name a few. Women have buried their anger that his support for the compromises in No Child Left Behind and the Medicare bogus drug benefit brought us the passage of these flawed bills. We have thanked him for his ardent support of many civil rights bills, BUT women are always waiting in the wings.

“And now the greatest betrayal! We are repaid with his abandonment! He’s picked the new guy over us.

Heh.

Posted by: Ace at 01:01 PM | Comments (42)
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At the Corner:

I know a lot of people who are a political or are lifelong Democrats who will vote for McCain over Hillary or Obama. Has it ever occurred to "conservatives" that they might sit out and McCain might still win? What happens then? If there is a surer path to irrelevancy I can't think of one. I will tell you what, if Hillary slimes her way past Obama and it is McCain versus Clinton, I am not sure McCain will need the conservatives. Something for the right wing punditocracy to chew on as they declare jihad against McCain.

This warning is entirely empty, as McCain will take a victory as a mandate for McCainism -- anti-conservativism -- no matter what true conservatives due.

If he wins without us, then we are fringe "agents of intolerance" (as he said of Falwell and Robertson and, by extension, most social cons) and he takes it as a mandate to govern as an anti-conservative liberal-leaning moderate.

If he wins with us, then we have been persuaded by his righteousness and the soundness of his program, and he takes it as a mandate to govern as an anti-conservative liberal-leaning moderate.

In what fantasy world does this guy lives in in which conservatives have any influence over McCain at all? He doesn't treat us as constituents, allies, or friends. He treats us as whipping boys to be denigrated and thwarted for the purposes of goosing his appeal to moderates and liberals and of course his friends on the New York Times editorial board.

The fact is that if McCain had bowed to the conservative majority on a single issue -- immigration -- he would easily win the nomination. He refuses to do so. So appeasing and reassuring conservatives is not a priority.

Posted by: Ace at 11:59 AM | Comments (50)
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A true Reagan conservative:

“Mr. McCain bruised his standing with conservatives on the issue when in 2005 he became a key player in the so-called gang of 14, which derailed an effort to end Democratic filibusters of Bush judicial nominees.

“More recently, Mr. McCain has told conservatives he would be happy to appoint the likes of Chief Justice John Roberts to the Supreme Court.

“But he indicated he might draw the line on a Samuel Alito, because ‘he wore his conservatism on his sleeve.’

“Therein lies the problem that many conservatives have with John McCain.

“It is the nagging feeling that after all of his years of chummily bonding with liberal reporters and garnering favorable media coverage from them that the Arizona senator is embarrassed to be seen as too much of a conservative. …”

At Hot Air, a McCain staffer claims that McCain fought for Alito's confirmation. But he doesn't deny the quote ascribed to him by John Fund.

Related is this new ad for Giuliani:

Many Republicans continue to write Giuliani and Romney as "RINOs" while supporting a man who has done more to thwart the conservative agenda than any Democrat alive, including Bill Clinton.

The Real Clear Politics average, by the way, continues to show McCain with a small lead in Florida. Although a new one showing Romney with a seven point lead hasn't yet been factored into that average.

Update: At the Hot Air link, McCain provides a stronger denial.

I guess we'll soon see if John Fund has proof of the McCain quote.

McCain, Conning Voters Into Thinking He's Changed His Position On Immigration: Obviously he hasn't, as he admitted on MTP yesterday.

Kaus notes this about McCain's lying on Romney's statements about timetables and withdrawal:

McCain seems to believe his wartime heroism entitles him to an unlimited moral bank account that he can withdraw from whenever it's in his self-interest to do something dishonest.

He likens it to McCain's admission of dishonest pandering in 2000 over the South Carolina Battle Flag controversy. He lies when necessary, then maybe apologizes later, and the press fawns over his remarkable Straight Talk.

Posted by: Ace at 11:13 AM | Comments (105)
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Allah has the background.

Posted by: Ace at 11:03 AM | Comments (17)
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It looks like investors might be starting to get restless with the performance of Pinch Sulzberger.

Given the structure of the Times Company board, Pinch and his family are in no danger of losing control of the company but it seems that declining stock prices and lack of growth are starting to get the attention of investors.

Firebrand Partners' founder Scott Galloway said in his letter that he and Harbinger had no intention of changing the Times' two-class share structure, which allows the Sulzberger family to maintain control of the company.

But Galloway added that the current board, "while impressive in stature, has not been effective in inspiring the requisite bold action this media environment demands."

Galloway said in his letter that he wanted to meet with Times managers to discuss an "optimal capital structure" for the company and to find a way to transform the Times "from a low growth company to a robust firm that is both the newspaper of record and the most trusted starting point on the Internet."

Over the past 52 weeks it traded as high as $26.90 last February and as low as $14.01 last week.

Of course, a proxy fight made me think of the movie "Other People's Money" but I couldn't find a clip talking about that on Youtube. But below the fold is a great clip, mostly because Penelope Ann Miller looks really hot in it.

There are a few bleepable words, so use your judgment before playing it at work. more...

Posted by: DrewM. at 10:08 AM | Comments (8)
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We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and 'slipped the surly bonds of Earth' to 'touch the face of God.

President Ronald Reagan addressing the nation that night.

I can’t believe it’s been that long. I was a junior in HS and was cutting school to go to my ‘after school’ job when my boss told me what happened. At first I didn’t believe him but alas it was all too real.

Thanks to my friend Dave, who lives in Texas but is not related to our friend here at AoS Dave in Texas, for the reminder.

Posted by: DrewM. at 08:58 AM | Comments (37)
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As I wrote on Saturday, I'm pleased by Barack Obama's stomping of Hillary Clinton in the South Carolina primary. The myth of Clinton's inevitability is done, the Democrats will keep tearing themselves up on the issue of race, and Clinton will get nastier as she gets more desperate.

However, the Wall Street Journal writes that Obama is still behind in some key big states:

The sheer diversity of the states in play -- racially, regionally, geographically -- means that no candidate will have the cash or the leisure to engage in anything approaching the old-fashioned whistle-stop campaigning that has defined the races in most states so far. Mr. Obama had more than three weeks to build on his Iowa victory to chip away at Mrs. Clinton's lead in South Carolina and ultimately to overwhelm her. That will be much harder over the coming week.

"Clinton is harvesting her long-term campaign investment," says Cole Blease Graham Jr., a professor of political science at the University of South Carolina. "The Democratic establishment seems to be more behind her."

Despite all of Obama's gains, Clinton started in the lead nationally and continues to hold that position. She has widespread support among Democratic women and Latinos, while his key support is coming from blacks and young men. It's beyond trite now to point out that the contest that started with such optimism, wherein race and gender were ignored in favor of issues, has ended up grotesquely pitting identity groups each against the others in a national melee. With the Clintons involved, everyone saw that one coming.

Check out the rest of the WSJ article for more discussion of the race as it lead up to Super Tuesday including this gem:

Exit polling also showed that around 60% of voters said Mr. Clinton's presence affected how they voted; of those in that category, about two-thirds voted for Mr. Obama or former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, who finished a distant third.

Red-faced lectures about fairness, rants about bad reporting, and protestations that his and his wife's comments should not be seen as aimed at Obama's race apparently did not play well with Democrats.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 07:53 AM | Comments (36)
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