Ron Paul is upset that John McCain and the GOP are ignoring him and his followers. Well, I think he is complaining. It's hard to tell with a voice like that, it sounds like he's always whining about something.

Ron Paul says the legions of newcomers his presidential campaign brought to the Republican Party are getting the cold shoulder from John McCain and from the party.

The Texas congressman says neither he nor his supporters have heard from Mr. McCain or Republican National Committee Chairman Mike Duncan since March 4, when the Arizona senator accumulated enough delegates to clinch the party's presidential nomination.

There are several reasons for that, Ron:

(1) You spent the last five years saying Republicans have abandoned the Right and the U.S. Constitution. You happily insulted the President, the leader of our Party. Then you spent the last year bashing the presidential candidates.

(2) You consort with racists and conspiracy theorists. That makes you and your followers tainted goods. When you walk down the street, people want to cross to the other side; when you enter a room, Republicans have to fight the urge to say, "Uh, he's not with us."

(3) The central themes of your campaign, foreign policy withdrawal and a suicidal rejiggering of American finance, are non-starters. Yeah, you got a whole bunch of idiots to run around clucking, "Gold Standard, Gold Standard," but John McCain isn't even going to nod politely in that direction. Same for your foreign policy plans. It's just crazy and stupid. Which means we have nothing to offer you. Stop following us around, it's embarrassing.

(4) Most importantly, you haven't quite pulled out of the presidential race, which means you are still our competitor. You make like you're going back to run for your seat in Texas, but then you keep raising money for your presidential candidacy. You announce a "refocusing of goals," but then you refuse to take your name out of the remaining contests. You need to get in or get out. But with you standing there in the doorway like that, we've all got the term "spoiler" running through our heads. We're not doing you any favors until you roll over, bub. I'm sure you understand.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 08:21 AM | Comments (28)
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Angora woof.

Thanks to Jen.

There's real news out there. I'm getting to it, okay?

Correction: RTFA, Ace. RTFA. (Read the fucking article.)

Pajama Momma:

Although I did know these were not pelts, but hair spun into yarn, the Daily Mail's hed is misleading, as is mine:

Because the couple have had his and hers jumpers knitted out of the hair moulted by the pedigree pets and spun into yarn.

I love how daily mail's headline leaves you to believe these were made from their pets dead bodies, but if you actually read the article, it says they were made from fur that fell off the animals when they were alive.

Still kinda odd however. I prefer my clothes from sweatshops.

Posted by: Ace at 08:20 AM | Comments (26)
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And yet this is the situation we find ourselves in. We'll just have to do our best to deal with it.

So, I love Kristin Davis of Sex in the City. So, someone claims to have dirty pictures of her having sex.

The pictures don't even look like her.

Hey, I can't be the gatekeeper. If people are buzzing about something, I have to post it, right?

But, again, apart from having dark hair, this woman really doesn't look particularly like Kristin Davis.

Not Safe For Work, not even a little bit. Full-on porn pics. You've been warned.

Below is the link, but not the pics. I wouldn't post the pics. Still, I'm ducking the link below the fold because this is the first time I've (intentionally) linked actual porn. more...

Posted by: Ace at 08:06 AM | Comments (49)
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From The Onion: Black Guy Asks Crowd of 4000 For Change.

Plus, a LOLbama.

And: Chris Matthews embarrasses himself dancing on Ellen, and only partly redeems himself by copping a feel off her.

Thanks to Gekkobear and Marky.

Posted by: Ace at 07:54 AM | Comments (8)
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Okay, so it's not Chris Matthews. Probably.

And sure, it's now removed as inappropriate.

But there is evidence it was posted.

Below, via LauraW, thanks to spongeworthy, the blasphemous posting in all its deophillic glory.
more...

Posted by: Ace at 07:44 AM | Comments (36)
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47/45, down from the 14 point lead he held over Hillary in February.

The March 13-14 poll surveyed 525 likely Democratic primary voters for the matchup between Clinton and Obama. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points.

Of course, this was before the magical healing speechifying, in which I have been instructed to take a hard look at myself and why I feel compelled to criticize Uncle Jerry. Whatever.

Matchups between both Dem rivals and McCain show McCain ahead (46/40 over Obama and 48/40 over Hillary, 1004 likely voters, MoE 3.2%).

"It's not surprising to me that McCain's on top because there is disarray and confusion on the Democratic side," Zogby said.

Confusion? Or clarity?

There's more work to be done I fear. Those goalposts just aren't going to move themselves you know.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 07:26 AM | Comments (22)
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Just another reminder...

Brackets need to be completed by tip off of the first game, which is about 12:20 Eastern on Thursday afternoon.

Also, there are no promises but I am trying to pull a few strings and see if we can get a certain deli section favorite to stop by and provide some tips on filling in your brackets. The intermediaries I am working through say he's considering it but won't commit yet. Apparently time traveling sandwiches are notorious for being commitment phobic.

Original Post:

In a never ending attempt to find a fantasy pool I donÂ’t suck at, IÂ’ve set one up an NCAA Basketball Tournament bracket for Moron Nation at Yahoo.

If you are interested, sign up details are below the fold.

And lets not forget, this isnÂ’t about winning or losing. ItÂ’s about coming in ahead of Dave in Texas.

more...

Posted by: DrewM at 07:22 AM | Comments (31)
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Man hires stripper to perform at father's funeral.

Cai Ruigong says he promised his father a stripper for his funeral if he lived beyond the age of 100. Cai Jinlai passed away at the age of 103 after a three mile walk into town to vote. He was the oldest person in his village and had more than 100 descendants. His son said his father was famous locally for his interest in strip clubs: “He would travel around the island with his friends to see these shows,” he added.

I hear the 21 ping-pong ball salute was especially moving.

Thanks to eddiebear.

Posted by: LauraW at 06:59 AM | Comments (37)
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I blame Iraq, personally.

Can anyone suggest any possible reasons why the data seem to show that, contra the theory and super-awesome computer models, the oceans are not in fact warming at all?

I can't. The theory says they should. The data must be in error.

Oh, there you go. Mystery solved.

Watch NPR twist itself into a shade-grown fair-wage all-organic local-food free-range pretzel:

Some 3,000 scientific robots that are plying the ocean have sent home a puzzling message. These diving instruments suggest that the oceans have not warmed up at all over the past four or five years. That could mean global warming has taken a breather. Or it could mean scientists aren't quite understanding what their robots are telling them.

This is puzzling in part because here on the surface of the Earth, the years since 2003 have been some of the hottest on record. But Josh Willis at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory says the oceans are what really matter when it comes to global warming.

In fact, 80 percent to 90 percent of global warming involves heating up ocean waters. They hold much more heat than the atmosphere can.,,,

"There has been a very slight cooling, but not anything really significant," Willis says. So the buildup of heat on Earth may be on a brief hiatus. "Global warming doesn't mean every year will be warmer than the last. And it may be that we are in a period of less rapid warming."

...

"But in fact there's a little bit of a mystery. We can't account for all of the sea level increase we've seen over the last three or four years," he says.

One possibility is that the sea has, in fact, warmed and expanded — and scientists are somehow misinterpreting the data from the diving buoys.

But if the aquatic robots are actually telling the right story, that raises a new question: Where is the extra heat all going?

Kevin Trenberth at the National Center for Atmospheric Research says it's probably going back out into space. The Earth has a number of natural thermostats, including clouds, which can either trap heat and turn up the temperature, or reflect sunlight and help cool the planet.

That can't be directly measured at the moment, however.

"Unfortunately, we don't have adequate tracking of clouds to determine exactly what role they've been playing during this period," Trenberth says.

It's also possible that some of the heat has gone even deeper into the ocean, he says. Or it's possible that scientists need to correct for some other feature of the planet they don't know about. [ed.-- psst, it's Big, Yellow, and Fiery. Some know it as "the Sun." Others call it "Geoffrey."] It's an exciting time, though, with all this new data about global sea temperature, sea level and other features of climate.

"I suspect that we'll able to put this together with a little bit more perspective and further analysis," Trenberth says. "But what this does is highlight some of the issues and send people back to the drawing board."

1) Global warming predicts additional heat, particularly in the oceans.

2) There is no additional heat in the oceans; in fact, they have cooled.

Conclusion:

The additional heat in the oceans must be hiding even deeper in the oceans, or gathering out in space, like an alien armada poised to destroy the earth.

Puzzling, indeed.

It's an exciting time in science. You can just make shit up like a screenwriter or comic book writer.

Damn, they never let you do that, the squares. Have fun, guys!

Icy skull image cribbed from T-Shirt Studios.

Previously... One year global temperature plunge wipes out almost all of the scary warming that's happened over the past century.

Gee, maybe natural forces have more to do with this than scientists (ahem) allow in their models.

Maybe the fundamental assumption of global warming alarmists -- that the earth's temperature is basically static and only anthropogenic (man-made) changes can explain any temperature deviation -- is fatally flawed.

Global Warming

Catch the (Earth's) Fever!

Posted by: Ace at 06:59 AM | Comments (46)
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I feel bad for him a bit, because this seems to be a career-ender. Of course, I feel worse for anyone who listened to his investment advice as regards Bear Stearns ("Don't move your money -- that's just silly!").

Correction: What follows appears to not be right. See the update.

It occurs to me -- but I'm an idiot; can anyone explain if this is right? -- that what has him so defeated here is that he made a colossal but very basic error. He seems to have thought the Federal government was "guaranteeing" most of Bear Sterns' value. He seems to get tripped up on this as he now allows "Well of course they don't guarantee the equity."

Is it possible he made such an error? I don't know enough to be able to say. All I know is that his explanation here seems ludicrous to me. It's not that he made a big mistake -- it's that he can't offer a good reason for the mistake, which in turns leads me to suspect he can't admit the actual reason for the mistake, as it would be too embarrassing. I mean, mistakes and bad advice are relatively common in this industry, right? Why is he unable to offer the typical sort of reasoning? Why does he seem to be double-talking? Why does he wind up essentially claiming he lied to his viewers in order to prevent a "run on the bank"?

I can only imagine making that claim if the real reason for the error is blatant incompetency.

Background first, if you don't know.

Shivering douchechills warning.

Misunderstood? I got the distinction between deposits and equity, but I thought he was actually suggesting that the government's guarantees would somehow save the company's stock value.

After a comment from TankLdr, I rewatched... He does seem to be talking about deposits, and not yanking cash from the bank. Although I can see someone being confused and thinking he meant "Hold Bear Sterns stock."

While he is unclear as to what he's talking about, I think, looking at this, it was an error in communication. He's talking deposits, (some) viewers think he's talking about equities.

So now his frustration and talk of a "run on the bank" seems to make sense-- deposits, being insured up to $125,000 or whatever it is, don't need to be moved, and moving cash out below that threshold would indeed be "silly." Or if not silly, not necessary, at least. And his frustrations seem to come from a combination of his imprecise language, plus some dunderheaded interpretation of that language by investors.

Posted by: Ace at 06:29 AM | Comments (30)
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