Ummm... are you insane, dude?

McCain fears such protection will interfere with his "intimate" style of campaigning. I certainly don't wish harm on anybody but John Lennon once enjoyed an "intimate" relationship with his fans outside the Dakota Hotel.

This doesn't make McCain more manly. It makes him stupider. Which is a type of manliness but not a good type of manliness.

Update: Via DrewM, McCain will take a Secret Service detail soon.

Posted by: Ace at 08:15 AM | Comments (44)
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Everything in this Goldfarb post is old but it's still funny. Particuarly the Walken/Tim Meadows Census sketch, one of the most random and funny sketches of recent memory.

Tim Meadows seems to have been involved in a lot of these off-the-wall Pythonesque nonsense sketches. Pretty sure he wrote the bizarre game-show parody sketches Name That Dog! and Old French Whore, too. I wish they'd done more of this stuff instead of six bazillion Mango sketches.

Posted by: Ace at 08:11 AM | Comments (9)
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I'm not buying it.

Gun control groups have condemned a new “bullet-proof hoodie” which claims to protect against street violence.

The £300 Defender hoodie makes the wearer’s upper body invincible to every bullet up to a high velocity rifle, its makers claim.

It was developed by Bladerunner, a London based company which also makes stab-proof tops.

...

But gun control groups said today that the company was practising “exploitation at its most grotesque”. They predicted a rise in gang violence, saying children would buy the hoodie as a status symbol.

Raymond Stevenson, a spokesman for Don’t Trigger, an international anti-gun campaign based in Brixton, London, said: “It’s not helping kids to provide them with bullet-proof armoury. These companies are just encouraging the escalation of the urban warfare.

“It’ll give people the false impression that they’re protected and will encourage more aggressive behaviour.”

And of course they just increased sales of this dubious product one hundredfold.

Posted by: Ace at 08:02 AM | Comments (43)
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This is all just further evidence that the earth is boiling over. Note: Link changed. This BBC version of the story is fuller and discusses the warming El Nino and cooling La Nina. Interestingly, it also states that El Nino warmed the world through the eighties. El Nino, La Nina, fucking up world temperatures. Build that wall, Mr. Bush.

Average global temperatures in 2008 are forecast to be lower than in previous years, thanks to the cooling effect of the ocean current in the Pacific, U.N. meteorologists say.

The World Meteorological Organisation's secretary-general, Michel Jarraud, said it was likely that La Nina, an abnormal cooling of sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, would continue into the summer.

If the forecast holds true, global temperatures will not have risen since 1998, prompting some to question climate change theory.

A small number of scientists doubt whether this means global warming has peaked and the Earth has proved more resilient to greenhouse gases than predicted, but Jarraud insists this is not the case and notes that 1998 temperatures would still be well above average for the century.

"When you look at climate change you should not look at any particular year," he told the BBC. "You should look at trends over a pretty long period and the trend of temperature globally is still very much indicative of warming."

"La Nina is part of what we call 'variability'. There has always been and there will always be cooler and warmer years, but what is important for climate change is that the trend is up."

"Variability," in quotes, like he's using some arcane term of art.

Here's my problem: La Nina (or as it used be called, "El Nino," or am I misremembering?) used to be used as a general explanation for unexpected trends in global weather. If it gets hot, it's La Nina. If it gets cold, it's La Nina.

But that was before the Global Warming craze (and I use that word in its literal meaning). Since the Global Warming craze, we have been informed that the eighties/nineties cooling could not be due to any natural factor, such as La Nina, and that such natural factors were all inadequate to explain such "major changes" in the climate. Only man-made effects such as CO2 (The Invisible Killer) could possibly explain the eightes-nineties warming trend.

Now we have what seems to be a decade long trend in cooling and suddenly La Nina is back with a vengeance. Now La Nina is the convenient natural explanation of not only why the world is cooling, but in fact for why all of the predicted warming is not only not taking place but in fact entirely overwhelmed by the natural forces of cooling.

So I guess my question is this: If La Nina is a handy explanation for the 10 year drop in global temperatures, why is La Nina or a similar natural effect not also a perfectly adequate explanation for the 15-20 year increase in temperatures? Why are natural forces sufficient to explain drops in temperature but only CO2 (The Invisible Killer) can explain any increases?

And why is it that yet again a one or two (or ten!) year record of cooling is too short a span from which to draw any conclusions, but a twenty year record conclusively establishes global warming?

Anyone get the feeling the AGW lobby is, like Indiana Jones, "just making this up as [they] go along"?

Via Hot Air.

El Nino vs. La Nina: Robert tells me they're different phenomena, one causing warmth (I guess) the other cooling.

Same difference. If La Nina can not only offset greenhouse gas warming but push temperatures lower than long-term averages, why is it that El Nino or other natural warming effects cannot be responsible for the warming we're all supposed to be so worried about?

Posted by: Ace at 07:26 AM | Comments (75)
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Ed Morrissey at Hot Air has the story.

Aside from putting the lie to Obama’s misrepresentation of McCain’s “100 years” comment, I think the title of the paper it self is remarkable, “Stay on Success: A Policy of Conditional Engagement.” Success? In Iraq? Can the Obamassiah himself commit such heresy?

It should be amusing watching the Obama camp tangle themselves in knots trying to explain how this policy is any different than what McCain and President Bush advocate.

I think itÂ’s pretty clear that no serious minded person honestly thinks we can pull out of Iraq in they way Clinton and Obama say they will. Not even Clinton and Obama.

Naturally, that wonÂ’t stop either one of them from lying to their lunatic base about it. Quite the profiles in courage these Democrats cut.

Posted by: DrewM at 06:57 AM | Comments (19)
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Via Kaus. So, it appears that a tomato farmer in Pennsylvania is having problems recruiting enough [ahem] migrant workers (at an average of $16 / hr!) to bring in a tomato crop. HeÂ’s being put out of business, right? The fascists are putting the squeeze on good ol' American farmers!

This year, he is planting about 45 acres of sweet corn, and 1,200 acres of corn for grain.

Oh. Of course, thatÂ’s the next to last sentence in the original piece, and isnÂ’t mentioned at all in the new piece. He's being forced to do it, however, because corn harvests are easier to mechanize and require far fewer workers. Could there be any other explanation for the fact that this poor American hero is being forced to switch from tomato to corn farming?

As Kaus notes:

So let's see: Corn prices soar. Farmer decides to plant corn. It's the yahoos fault!

Oh. I wonder why that's not suggested anywhere in the source articles. (And why there's no mention at all in the newer report that he's not, in fact, being put out of business.) Thanks, deciders.

Posted by: Open Blog at 06:15 AM | Comments (30)
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Hmmm...

Enacting city smoking bans appears to increase drunken driving, a study of arrests conducted by Wisconsin researchers asserts.

A national study to be released by the Journal of Public Economics found an increase of fatal accidents involving alcohol after communities prohibited smoking, compared to arrests in communities without a ban.

The authors attribute that to people driving to places without a ban, and also to driving farther to find a place within a ban area that has an outdoor smoking accommodation, such as a patio.

"The increased miles driven by drivers who wish to smoke and drink offsets any reduction in driving from smokers choosing to stay home after a ban, resulting in increased alcohol-related accidents," the study says.

The authors, Scott Adams of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Economics Department and Chad Cotti, currently at the University of South Carolina, call the results "surprising."

"We thought we would see a reduction," Adams said. "Our first thought was, 'Throw it away, it must be wrong.' "

However, Adams said the claim is backed up by the data.

Eh, most studies are wrong but this is annoying.

Posted by: Ace at 06:11 AM | Comments (25)
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NAIROBI (Reuters) - Tanzania's President Jakaya Kikwete has condemned witchdoctors who kill albinos and harvest their body parts in the hope it will bring prosperity.

He said 19 albinos had been murdered since March 2007, and another two were missing presumed dead in the east African country.

"Sometimes, word spreads around that body parts of people with certain physical attributes like bald people or albinos contribute greatly to attaining quick prosperity," Kikwete said in a monthly state of the nation speech late on Wednesday.

He added* that the ritual harvesting of hobos and Scandis were acceptable alternatives, although in the case of hobos, it must occur in regulated hobo preserves by the most humane methods available.

*or I added -- sometimes these things get garbled in the translation.

Posted by: Open Blog at 10:14 PM | Comments (42)
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At least, that's how I'm reading the situation. Tomorrow, Howard Dean and the Michigan Democratic Party will announce that there will be no re-vote in Michigan. Dean says that the only way the delegates will be seated at the convention is if the candidates can agree on a way to split up the votes.

Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean and four top Michigan Democrats who have been trying to work out a way to get the delegates seated are expected to put out a statement Friday after the executive committee vote.

In the statement, theyÂ’re expected to say the DNC is committed to seating MichiganÂ’s delegates at this summerÂ’s convention as long as any agreement is supported by the partyÂ’s two presidential contenders.

Dean made a similar statement earlier this week after meeting with Florida Democratic leaders.

Obama and his supporters have been pushing for an even 50-50 split, while Clinton maintains that if there can't be a re-vote she somehow deserves at least 55% of the delegates since she received that much support in the primary for which she was the only named major contender.

Any way it goes, he wins as far as the delegate count goes. He sticks with his suggestion of a 50-50 split and she can either accept a wash or forget about seating the delegates. The only real decision she has to make is which option plays better: (1) gracefully agreeing that the delegates be seated in the name of fairness and democracy and the franchise (as she's been arguing all along); or (2) going down guns blazing in a barrage of accusations about Obama refusing to compromise or refusing to recognize the primary voters' decision, the "will of the people."

Every time Clinton has faced one of these situations during the last year I've said she should go with the graceful option because it will get her farther than an ugly scene (and I think, given how things are turning out, that I've been right). But every time it happens she goes the other way. So this time, no bet.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 09:51 PM | Comments (17)
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This is too delicious for words. more...

Posted by: Open Blog at 09:37 PM | Comments (18)
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