McCain's Veepstakes BBQ
— Ace

Meh.

Jindal is exciting but can't be the pick. Dude, he just got elected governor like last week. As talented and honest as he is, damn, quitting that job after so short a stint would raise a lot of questions about him.

Crist is... I have no idea. Florida seems strong for McCain so far (all those racist Jewish retirees, you know) so it seems pointless to add someone unknown outside of a state you're probably going to win anyway.

If Crist is some sort of amazing guy, let me know. I have no idea.

Leaving Romney as the default choice. But he's not really default. I like Romney for the top of a ticket. At the bottom he seems to bring nothing but negatives. He'll have to adopt (or re-adopt) McCain's liberal positions, further convincing voters he's a panderer with no real core or beliefs, and furthermore anti-Mormon bigotry becomes an issue again.

Lieberman is looking better to me. If he becomes more conservative.

Giuliani would be a great VP pick, if he'd accept it, which I don't think he would. And as for making the ticket more liberal... sheesh, I don't know if you can.

CQ's Readers... have picked Huckabee.

Huckabee makes sense, I guess, except for the fact that he's a naif who seems to not know what the hell he's talking about when he strays from his comfort zone of folksy humor and aphorisms.

Would actually make an already-bad ticket 50% worse from my POV.

So why not. Let's do this. Let's not mess around with half-measures. Let's officially make this the Election Where I Strain Mightily to Give a Crap Who Wins.

Tony Blankley on the Veepstakes: He also finds none of the big three to be an asset to McCain, and suggests Tom Ridge or Joe Lieberman.

I've been hearing about Tom Ridge for eight years and he really hasn't shown me a damn thing in that period.

Posted by: Ace at 10:35 AM | Comments (119)
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OPEC can't put this horse back in the barn
— Purple Avenger

Ooops, looks like people are starting to ramp their coal production back up.

...But after decades of seemingly terminal decline, Japan's coal country is stirring again. With energy prices reaching record highs — oil rose above $135 a barrel on Thursday — Japan's high-cost mines are suddenly competitive again, and demand for their coal is booming. Production has jumped to its highest in nearly four decades, creating a sensation rarely felt in these mining communities: hope...

In comments yesterday somewhere, I mentioned a 2003 DOE report on the LPMEOH Methanol production process where a gasoline gallon equivalent amount of Methanol (~2gal) can be produced for well under a buck a gallon.

When people start thinking coal seriously, they naturally start thinking synfuels at the same time. OPEC has just killed the golden goose. She'll take 5-10 years to keel over, but mark my words, she's deader than Chairman Mao.

Game over OPEC. Its just a matter of time now.

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 10:29 AM | Comments (47)
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CourtÂ…State Was Wrong To Seize Kids From Compound
— DrewM

Just breaking....A Texas appeals courts says state had no basis to take hundreds of kids.

The Third Court of Appeals in Austin ruled that the grounds for removing the children were "legally and factually insufficient" under Texas law. They did not immediately order the return of the children.

Child welfare officials removed the children on the grounds that the sect pushed underage girls into marriage and sex and trained boys to become future perpetrators.

The appellate court ruled the chaotic hearing held last month did not demonstrate the children were in any immediate danger, the only measure of taking children from their homes without court proceedings.

Since they havenÂ’t ordered any of the children returned, I am not sure what the practical implication of this ruling will be.

Presumably this will be appealed by the state but assuming no rationale turns up and the decision is upheld, thereÂ’s going to be huge lawsuits against somebody, right?

Update [Gabe]: A copy of the court's decision can be downloaded here. I can't cut 'n' paste (it's a scanned fax), but the gist is that the state failed to show physical danger to the children. The court notes that "even if one views the FLDS belief system as creating a danger of sexual abuse, there was no evidence that the danger was "immediate" or "urgent" enough to justify taking the children into state custody as required by Texas law.

More [Gabe]: So what happens now? The appellate court has ordered the trial court to vacate its custody order. That custody order is what took the children from their parents and placed them with Texas Department of Family protective Services. At least as far as the 38 children involved in this case are concerned, they will no doubt be rejoined with their parents shortly.

There are a few important things about the ruling:

(1) It only applies specifically to the 38 "Relator" children, not all 463 that were taken. No doubt, however, the reasoning will quickly be adopted by the other courts considering the custody orders and any which are currently being appealed.

(2) The opinion notes that five pregnant minors were found in the compound and that their marital status was not known to the court. It is not illegal for a man to have sex with a minor woman in Texas so long as she is legally married to him. Given the FLDS practice of "spiritual marriage," we'll have to keep waiting to see if these five pregnant minors were legally married.

(3) The court has absolutely crushed the Texas DFPS claim that the entire compound constitutes one "household" for purposes of child protection laws. Writes the court:

The notion that the entire ranch community constitutes a "household" as contemplated by section 262.201 and justifies removing all children from the ranch community if there is even one incident of suspected child sexual abuse is contrary to the evidence."

The single household claim was central to the Texas DFPS's justification for taking all the children on the ranch.

Posted by: DrewM at 10:14 AM | Comments (41)
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Ted Kennedy to Massachusetts: Take My Wife, Please
— Ace

...as your new Senator.

Ted Kennedy has made clear to confidants that when his time is up, he wants his Senate seat to stay in the family - with his wife, Vicki.

Multiple sources in Massachusetts with close ties to the liberal lion say his wife of 16 years has long been his choice to continue carrying the family flame in the Senate. Kennedy won the seat in 1962; his brother John held it from 1953 to 1960.

"There's no question that he'd like Vicki to continue in his seat," said one Massachusetts Democrat with ties to the Camelot clan who spoke to Kennedy recently, before his health crisis.

"She's smart, and smart politically."

The 54-year-old Victoria Reggie Kennedy, a former hotshot Washington lawyer, is a Louisiana native and the daughter of a politically active judge.

People talk about the Kennedy dynasty as if that's a good thing, and without apparently considering the literal meaning of that word.

Of course this will work. They should just officially divide Massachusetts senators into the Senator from Massachusetts and the Senator from the Kennedy Compound.

Thanks to Michael K.

Posted by: Ace at 09:08 AM | Comments (50)
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Researcher Says He Can Predict Violent Behavior by Youngsters Based on a Complex Analysis of Their Writings; Stuff to Look for Includes Seething Anger, General Derangement, and Statements Like "I'm Going to Kill Everybody"
— Ace

Props to a Fark.com poster for pouncing on the absurdity of this. The "I'm going to kill everyone" thing isn't mentioned by the researcher; that's a Fark exaggeration. But the word "kill" is.

"Groundbreaking research," the psychiatrist says of his own dubious "discovery."

A psychiatrist and university researcher says he's analyzed the writings of two Colorado killers and believes it is possible to predict who could be a mass murderer in the future.

"This is groundbreaking research," said University of Minnesota researcher Dr. Jerry Ronning, who has analyzed writings of Colorado religious shooter Matthew Murray, Columbine High School gunman Eric Harris and Red Lake, Minnesota school shooter Jeffrey Weise.

...

Ronning uses a computer program that measures the frequency of words that pertain to emotion and thought.

"Of the kids who are violent, we find that they have the capacity and tendency to use much more emotional terms. They seem able to translate their feelings into words to a much greater extent than perhaps the average (person,)" said Ronning in an interview with 9NEWS at his office in Minneapolis.

According to Ronning, examples of emotional words are: happy, sweet, nasty, kill and grief. Thought words such as: consider, maybe, because and effect. Ronning says thought words keep emotional outbursts in check.

Ronning says a balance between the two indicates a stable person.

Two points: First, I think we can exclude the "emotion words" happy and sweet from predicting violence. I'm going to focus on nasty, grief, and kill. Actually, the hell with nasty and grief, I'm going to focus laser-like on kill.

Second: He's discovered that people who cannot control their violent emotions may be more dangerous than those who can.

Do they award Nobel Prizes for stupid?

Ronning found a high level of emotional words in Murray's writings and a declining level of thought words. His research looked at writings starting about 18 months before Murray went on his shooting rampage in Arvada and Colorado Springs.

An excerpt from Murray's writings, believed to have been written on Aug. 5, 2007: "You raped the soul from the child in me. Crying all alone, the tears flowing down my face in a beautiful stream, the lovely misery and lonely darkness surrounding me as I see everyone going on with their meaningless vain fake lives, all the posers and wannabes, all the abusers."

Ronning says the passage is an example of descriptive emotional words.

Before this groundbreaking research I never would have figured that violent and morbid thoughts were a sign of violent and morbid temperament.

Then in a passage written just days before the shootings, Ronning says Murray's writings dramatically change and become less emotional and more thought oriented.

"Just because I'm not one of the 'beautiful people,' just because other people don't understand or because I'm not 'popular' does not mean I need to take any more (expletive) from anyone," wrote Murray on Dec. 1, 2007, approximately eight days before the shooting sprees.

Ronning says the change would appear to be a dramatic improvement in a person's mood, but is really a grave sign of impending trouble.

Ummmm... actually I read it as a "grave sign of impending trouble." Who would see a threat to "not take any more shit from anyone" as a "dramatic improvement in a person's mood"? Do we need Doc Ronning to tell us that a passage like, say, "God, I'm so happy and contented with the brand new duct tape and ether bottle I got for my lucky Murder Kit!" is really not as "positive-sounding" as it may first seem?

Is this for real? Am I being punked?

I have to think -- I hope -- that this psychiatrist's findings focus more on subtle statistical analysis than stuff like "kill" and "rape" and "dying," and that the reporter just got it wrong, or oversimplified it because he's a retard.

Posted by: Ace at 07:51 AM | Comments (53)
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The House Calls Do-Over; Republicans Get a Second Chance
— Gabriel Malor

Yesterday, President Bush vetoed the $290 billion farm bill for exceeding his budget request. Democrats were poised to triumphantly reject that veto (with the aid of helpful congressional Republicans), but it turns out he didn't veto the right version of the farm bill.

Action stalled, however, after the discovery that Congress had omitted a 34-page section of the bill when lawmakers sent the massive measure to the White House.

That means Bush vetoed a different bill from the one Congress passed, raising questions that the eventual law would be unconstitutional. Republicans objected when Democrats proposed passing the missing section separately and sending that to Bush.

In order to avoid those potential problems, House Democrats hoped to pass the entire bill, again, on Thursday under expedited rules usually reserved for unopposed legislation. The Senate was expected to follow suit. The correct version would then be sent to Bush under a new bill number for another expected veto.

Senate Democrats are trying to avoid passing the whole bill again for fear that their Republican colleagues will have grown some balls since the original vote. Instead, they want to override the veto and then pass separate legislation for the omitted portion.

I wouldn't worry too much about Senate Republicans getting their acts together. They seem completely unable to understand why they're losing the support of voters, especially voters who cannot be bought with food stamps or farm subsidies. In November they will be scratching their heads wondering what they did wrong.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 07:38 AM | Comments (15)
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New York Times: Any Florida Jew Who Doesn't Vote for Obama Is Just a Damned Racist
— Ace

Jews (and non-Jews) concerned with Mid-East foreign policy would seem to have quite a few good, rational reasons to disfavor Obama. Jews would also seem to have the bonus reason that Obama's "spiritual mentor" counts anti-semitic Jew-conspiracy lunatic Louis Farrakhan as a good friend and important intellectual hero.

Not in the NYT's telling. It's all about the racism, "false" rumors about Obama being a Muslim (he was, once, of course), and other sundry "distractions."

The name-calling has begun early. Vote the way we want or we will write mean things about the people of this country. Um, you were doing that already, guys.

Posted by: Ace at 07:33 AM | Comments (52)
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Whoops!
— Pixy Misa

Sorry, a bit of server glurpage there, had to reboot.

Back now.

I think...

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:23 AM | Comments (21)
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Christian Bale Signs Up To Play John Connor in Three Terminator Sequels
— Ace

Or prequels, I guess. Well, I don't know. They happen in the future but actually in the past from the point of view of the original characters and...

Oh, whatever. He's going to do three of them, whatever they are.

I've been meaning to review (and recommend) the overlooked-but-now-achieving-minor-cult-status Bale film Equilibrium for months. I have some sort of mental block against reviewing it.

So I'll just link this Siskel & Roeper review. They give it two thumbs up, but be aware, the critics savaged this movie. They hated it.
more...

Posted by: Ace at 07:31 PM | Comments (97)
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Superstar!
— Slublog

Cool.

By no means did Reuters’s action bring a reduction in blog scrutiny of the war photojournalism. To the contrary, fresh questions arose about many other images on the next day, August 8. An anonymous blogger named Slublog assembled a montage of photos from AP and Reuters,26 each a close up of a child’s toy amidst the rubble of a damaged building. Giving the post the ironic title of “The Passion of the Toys," he/she suspected the shots had been staged, from the composition of the images and the lack of dust on the toys.

The post referenced is here. Never heard of the "American Communication Journal." Still, that article is bound to be read by college students forced to look it up by professors interested in how the blogosphere acts as a watchdog on the media. I link it for two reasons: one, the obvious bragging rights of being in an...er...academic journal and two, it's actually a good example of how the blogs are slowly making their mark on the history of mass communication.

And for the record, I'm a 'he.'

Thanks again to Ace for telling me to write my own blog post on this topic when I emailed him with the 'passion' idea. (h/t: Hot Air)

Posted by: Slublog at 07:03 PM | Comments (47)
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