tmi3rd asks whether Ralph Nader will have much of an impact in the race.

I think not. He got only 500,000 votes last time, when so many Democrats were angry at President Bush and disaffected about John Kerry. They were still irritated that he'd mucked up Al Gore's chances. Do I think he has any chance at all of peeling of voters from feel-good, change-engine Obama? No, not at all.

MORE: The thing that amazes me about Nader is just how long he's been around. Are there people who don't know who he is? For example, in the mid-90s, I came across Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's excellent book Lucifer's Hammer. It was written in 1977. Ralph Nader gets mentioned. Actually, it pulled me right out of the book. I had to stop and think about it: "Same Ralph Nader? Yeah, sounds like him. Okay."

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 01:57 PM | Comments (66)
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more...

Posted by: Open Blog at 01:13 PM | Comments (40)
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Hey, I know the site is now well and truly fucked, and I've been working most of the day to finally get it fixed.

Pixy has the new site ready to go, more or less... it just doesn't look like Ace of Spades site, but at this point I figure I'll just convert as soon as possible and then do the banner/font/color/layout stuff later. The new Pixy code should run smoothly and have lots of functionality... including New Comments that actually update and trackbacks and searches that actually work.

However, it will not look particularly good. (Sorry, Pixy-- what's with the orange, man? Just kidding, thanks so much.)

But I figure, no problem, can soldier on with a site that doesn't really look like I want for a time as I hammer out the layout/design changes with Phin and Jen.

Anyway, I know I've been promising this for a while but Phin couldn't do it for a time, and it's a fairly massive undertaking for Pixy to convert everything over. But right now, I'm trying to get the new site code up and running, ASAP, and I'll worry about prettying it up later.

It's going to be a little basic for a while. And a little cluttered. And a little... orange.

But it should, at least, work.

UPDATE [Dave in Texas]: I did not suggest burnt orange and I had nothing to do with that. Also, anything that's goobered up is JackM's fault.

UPDATE [Pixy]: We seem to be having two problems. One is that we are getting hit with something - probably spam floods, but I haven't been able to prove that - that grinds the server for an hour or so and then stops before I can track it down. The other is that right now the PJM ad server is playing up, and that's causing loading problems particularly with the comments pages. For some reason, the new system doesn't care whether the ads load or not, which is great.

And while I don't know what's so bad about orange, Ace will be comforted to know that it's history.

Oh, and in answer to a couple of questions: Ace will be staying at mu.nu, just getting new and better software. The new system has been in use for about six months, though not with sites this big, so I may have a few issues to shake out in the first couple of weeks, but it should go pretty smoothly. All the posts and comments are already loaded up, so we just need to check off a few last items and switch over.

Posted by: Ace at 01:08 PM | Comments (56)
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A heartwarming story for you on a lovely Sunday.

Within weeks, Nubs was greeting Dennis during routine patrol stops along border communities. The Marines fed him bits of their food and by November, the Marine and his unit were keeping an eye out for the dog, which routinely chased their Humvees when they departed.

Life on the run, however, was taking a toll on the dog. He had lost a tooth and been bitten in the neck. In late December, Dennis found Nubs near death in freezing temperatures. The dog had been stabbed with a screwdriver.

Dennis rubbed antibiotic creme on the wound and slept with Nubs to keep him warm.

"I really expected when I woke up for watch he would be dead," Dennis wrote. "Somehow he made it through the night."

Dennis thought he had seen the last of the dog days later when his squad headed back to its command post some 65 miles away. He couldn't take the dog with him and watched as it tried to follow the Humvees away from the border.

Two days later, while Dennis and a comrade were working on a Humvee, he looked up and saw the dog staring at him.

A dog knows his best friend when he meets him. Go on and click the link if you'd like a little something sweet with your coffee this morning.

h/t Scott.

Posted by: LauraW. at 07:23 AM | Comments (30)
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The New York Times' Patrick Healy documents the continued unraveling of the Clinton campaign. Think if it as the practical reason to expect a withdrawal soon after her March 4 losses to go with the political reasons I described earlier.

Morale is low. After 13 months of dawn-to-dark seven-day weeks, the staff is exhausted. Some have taken to going home early — 9 p.m. — turning off their BlackBerrys, and polishing off bottles of wine, several senior staff members said.

Some advisers have been heard yelling at close friends and colleagues. In a much-reported incident, Mr. Penn and the campaign advertising chief, Mandy Grunwald, had a screaming match over strategy recently that prompted another senior aide, Guy Cecil, to leave the room. “I have work to do — you’re acting like kids,” Mr. Cecil said, according to three people in the room.

Others have taken several days off, despite it being crunch time. Some have grown depressed, be it over Mr. ObamaÂ’s momentum, the attacks on the campaignÂ’s management from outside critics or their view that the news media has been much rougher on Mrs. Clinton than on Mr. Obama.

And some of her major fund-raisers have begun playing down their roles, asking reporters to refer to them simply as “donors,” to try to rein in their image as unfailingly loyal to the Clintons.

One of the problems Clinton will have when this is all over is dealing with the disappointment of the truly devoted. The ones who have invested so much money, time, or heart in her candidacy that they hear her cackle and think how kind and genial she is. They think she won this week's debate. And they think that she can still win the nomination without some kind of catastrophe at Obama HQ. The true believers.

Those are the folks most like to stay angry long enough to truly hurt her future in politics. Betrayal and heartache are powerful motivators in the short term and lots of these people are going to feel it. More than that, the frustration of defeat is going to be a long term deterrent. Clinton's failure, and for a good portion of these people it will be seen as her failure and not just something that can be blamed on some mythical anti-Clinton media, will hang around her neck for a long time.

Democratic constituencies are especially bad about this. It's why Democrats end up putting up a fresh face every four or eight years (whereas Republicans happily go with a paid-your-dues-nows-your-turn model). They get close and then they get burned and then they don't want to take a risk like that on a proven loser. Clinton's exit strategy is to figure out how to escape the usual pattern. I think she should be thanking her lucky stars she's losing in a primary and not the general, because that really would be the end.

Still, Clinton's got her work cut out for her. Let me put it this way, I left a note on the Facebook wall of a good friend saying that it didn't look good for her candidate. We used to argue like crazy during Election 2000 when we lived together and she just recently changed her Facebook photo to a picture of Clinton. After I left my note, she not only deleted the message. She un-friended me. We'd been friends all the way through high school and college. I introduced her to her husband, my first college roommate. Now she's so pissed that I pooh-poohed Clinton that we've become un-friends?

She's going to be even angrier on March 4th or 5th.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 10:41 PM | Comments (46)
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I'm not sure if this is an upside or downside of global warming.

...Andrew Wetzler of Natural Resources Defense Council...with some of the animals starving, turning to cannibalism and drowning...

When called for comment, seal representatives applauded global warming and its contribution to the demise of their long time lethal nemesis the polar bears.

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 08:05 PM | Comments (37)
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On Thursday I wrote that the next week and a half is going to be a face-saving exercise for Senator Clinton, because she's done and she knows it. Given the proportional allocation rules of the remaining primary states she cannot catch Obama's delegate lead unless she beats him in a twenty-plus percentage point landslide in each remaining state, something that we know isn't going to happen. Clinton supporters are keeping hope alive by rumbling about the Florida and Michigan delegations, but I have news for these folks: if those two delegations are seated at the convention it will be as a courtesy...because Clinton will have already dropped out.

I wrote that because Clinton's final answer at the debate sounded an awful lot like a concession speech:

You know, the hits I've taken in life are nothing compared to what goes on every single day in the lives of people across our country.

And I resolved at a very young age that I'd been blessed and that I was called by my faith and by my upbringing to do what I could to give others the same opportunities and blessings that I took for granted.

That's what gets me up in the morning. That's what motivates me in this campaign.

And, you know, no matter what happens in this contest -- and I am honored, I am honored to be here with Barack Obama. I am absolutely honored.

Whatever happens, we're going to be fine. You know, we have strong support from our families and our friends. I just hope that we'll be able to say the same thing about the American people, and that's what this election should be about.

So if she's all done, what is she doing making new plagiarism claims against Obama? Why is she leafleting in Ohio? Why is she making appearances in Texas? Is it that she's hoping for a miracle? Does she know something about the superdelegates or even the pledged delegates that we don't?

No. Clinton wants to hang on and make a dramatic, forward-looking exit, one which will put her in a position to continue in Democratic politics after she drops out. For starters, she wants to stay a New York senator. She honestly likes her job and--as far as getting her way on the Hill goes--she's good at it. And if she keeps on doing it, she may just get another shot at the White House.

Right now she's walking a fine line: she doesn't want to look like she's giving up, but she also doesn't want to get beaten so bad she can't ever show her swollen face in public again. She wants to exit with a little flair, so the New York Times can write glowing puff-pieces about what a good sport she is and what a great campaign she ran. "No, no, friends," the op-eds will read in the Nation and Huffington Post, "You haven't seen the last of Hillary Clinton." Pity.

What this means is that she can't call off the dogs just yet. Any sign of hesitation or weakness will be exaggerated and magnified into stories that she gave up in the middle of the home stretch. Some fools will even write about how Clinton just wasn't tough enough for presidential politics. And that just won't do; not if she wants another shot at the big house with the cushy commuter jumbo jet and people screaming her name every second of the day and night.

No. Clinton goes on because she has to. She told her campaign that they're not done until they're really done. She has no other choice: the campaigns--especially on the Democratic side--are so intertwined with the press that if she were to try and quietly shift gears, it'd be on CNN about five minutes later. I think she called in her husband, her campaign chair, and a few select friends and told them that it's time to figure out how to pack up the circus and move back to New York.

And they are poised to pull that trigger. An email went out from President Clinton to her campaign mailing list today, which echoed his comment from earlier in the week: that the March 4th primary would be make-or-break for Hillary. He wrote that "We're just 10 days away from a monumental day of voting, one that will decide the outcome of this remarkable contest between two history-making campaigns." And then he asked for money. Heh.

"It will decide the outcome," he wrote. Believe it.

No, Dave, she's quite dead...for now.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 07:36 PM | Comments (29)
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Not quite but almost as noteworty Clark Hoyt, the Public Editor of the New York Times (doesn't that almost sound like some sort of cheap detective series?), called Bill Keller on the carpet for publishing the McCain / Iseman story.

Yes, this is the same Clark Hoyt, who when Ed Whelan pointed out that Linda Greenhouse, the NY Times Supreme Court Reporter, was reporting on cases in which her husband or his law firm were participating managed to keep a straight face while proclaiming that charge a personal vendetta. To me this indicates that this story was the journalistic equivalent of finding a turd in the punch bowl at your daughter's 400 person wedding.

Given this development I have a feeling the fall out on this story isn't quite over.

Edit: I originally named Linda Greenhouse as Jan Grossman. I fixed it but I couldn't just do a strike out so I had to delete the original name.

Posted by: Open Blog at 06:45 PM | Comments (12)
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Russian Expobank. I'll be in my bunk. more...

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 06:23 PM | Comments (10)
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Ok. She is really, she's just pitching a Christopher Lee fit as the stake is driven deeper, and honestly, who can blame her for that? Spitting blood, being miffed. Hissing. Normal stuff.

In Cincinnati Ohio tonight, home of one thousand global climate change ice storms this year (sorry Ohioans..Ohians.. Ohi-yo-yans. Whatever), her Supreme Assholiness ripped Obamarama on his "false and misleading campaign leaflets" and "Republican tactics" that criticized her health care plan. "Shame on you Barack Obama! Shame. Shame shame shame. Shamety shame-dy shame shame. Shamalama ding dong".

Shame = lame.

"Senator Obama knows it is not true that my plan forces people to buy insurance even if they can't afford it," Clinton said. "It is blatantly false and yet he continues to spend millions of dollars perpetuating falsehoods. It is not hopeful. It is destructive, particularly for a Democrat to be discrediting universal health care."

Obama said the content of the leaflet was correct. He said he was puzzled by the sudden "change in tone" by his rival because the leaflets Clinton referred to were sent out days or weeks ago. He suggested there was something "tactical" about her attacks now.

"The notion that somehow we're engaging in nefarious tactics I think is pretty hard to swallow," he told reporters. "There's nothing in there that's factually inaccurate."

"And even if there was" he continued, "we'd throw it out there with the rest of the crap cause she's toasty toast toast and I'm having a crap on her big ugly face"

Who's hammering on the stake? You know who, and you know what?

He's loving it.

bestest Hillary photoshop ever: more...

Posted by: Dave In Texas at 05:54 PM | Comments (14)
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