Obviously MSNBC, which runs little but serial-killer crapumentaries on weekends, decided to change up its programming due to Palinmania.

But if Jon Stewart can snicker when FoxNews' chyrons accidentally identify, say, Mark Foley as a Democrat (something other news networks due on occasion, too, and of course the media never mentions party affiliation at all when a Dem's been caught dirty), then we can snicker at this.

I'll do my Jon Stewart impression here. Cute look on. Now I say in a booming voice, "But how would 'fair and balanced' MSNBC cover this insurgent candidate?"

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Posted by: Ace at 04:05 PM | Comments (55)
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Wow.

Okay, technically it's not over yet. But no time outs, 90 yards to go, and 20 seconds left.

And... It's over. Refs screwed SD.

Posted by: Ace at 03:33 PM | Comments (77)
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Respectful? The one where Greenberg says she deliberately allowed McCain to have as much red-eye as possible?

Big big update at the American Digest (scroll down for the most recent news, including a biting attack on Jill Greenberg from The Atlantic's PR agency).

Gay gossip site and antisemitic conspiracy newsletter The Atlantic is happy, at least, that Andrew Sullivan is no longer its most prominent deranged employee.

However, it's still bullshit. They knew what they were doing. They hired Greenberg to do exactly this. The picture they ran was unflattering in the extreme, under the headline "Why War is the Answer" (or whatever-- I don't care enough to get the quote right).

What they're angry about is that she outed them.

And that -- and only that -- is the reason they now call her "unprofessional," and it is only that provoking their anger.

It wasn't that she committed a crime. They hired her to commit a crime. They were her accomplices.

Her sin is that she squealed on her confederates.

The problem isn't that she's a deranged liberal -- it's that she's a deranged liberal that doesn't have the discretion to maintain the pretense.

Key Quote: Which I missed the first time.

"Some of my artwork has been pretty anti-Bush, so maybe it was somewhat irresponsible for them [The Atlantic] to hire me.” - Jill Greenberg

BTW: Vanderleun has a different take on this than I do. He seems to know more "facts," but so what? I'm more confident in my assertions. That's all that really matters.

He puts the blame on Greenberg. I say nuts to that. There was no "betrayal" of The Atlantic here. She did what her masters wanted. She only betrayed them by letting the cat out of the bag.

Posted by: Ace at 03:20 PM | Comments (60)
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Rightwingsparkle, the Sarah Palin of the blogging world and a regular contributor to the Ace of Spades HQ emailed to say that she has survived hurricane Ike. Her trampoline took a direct hit from an Obama inspired tree limb seeking change to the topography of her backyard but she is otherwise unharmed. She is blogging via battery power and may be down for a week. Please let her know she is not alone.

http://rightwingsparkle.blogspot.com/

Posted by: Open Blog at 03:12 PM | Comments (12)
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How did Obama's time on the Annenberg Challenge board go from being a key bullet-point in his resume -- by his own accounting -- to one the media refuses to even mention?

Thanks to Uncle Milty.

Posted by: Ace at 02:23 PM | Comments (59)
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The only shocking thing is that he admits it.

Of the Cold War he said, "The right side lost, but the wrong side won." Huh?

And yet, ambivalent as he was about the fall of his precious Soviet Union, he could never quite move his pampered ass from the West to his spiritual heartland.

I guess he didn't have the courage of his lack of convictions.

Thanks to Maetenoch (not a maniac).

Posted by: Ace at 12:26 PM | Comments (39)
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Ruined.

It's annoying because now I'm going to have to switch to someone else, and "lose" the record of my past visits. Not a big deal, I suppose, but annoying.

I cannot begin to explain how awful Sitemeter is now. Stuff I used to be able to access I can't. And it takes multiple clicks to see even the most basic information.

I have news for programming geeks: There is a learning curve to using applications and, unlike you guys, who seem to get off on learning new menus and the like, the rest of us do not have the time or inclination to re-learn this kind of thing. We do not find the prospect of sitting for hours pushing buttons in frustration to see where information is now hidden (and how it has been renamed) exciting or even interesting. At all.

Where are my weekly stats? Yearly? Monthly? No idea. Oh, I do have a big pie chart telling me that 45% of my visitors enter the site at ace.mu.nu, and smaller numbers of people enter into various individual-post pages. Thanks for that. I had no idea.

You guys seem to have the idea: "Oh, it's like a little game. It'll be fun for them to learn where we've hidden stuff." Why do you believe this?

My suspicion is that they're trying to monetarize Sitemeter and force us to pay the subscription. I can't fault them for that -- however, I damn sure am not paying for this crap.

Let me have the old system back and maybe I'd be willing to pay $3 a month for it.

Not $7.

And there's no way I'm paying a dime for this crap in its current incarnation, where stuff that ought to be simple to find is now a fun little mini-game for me.

Debacle.

Rollback: Reacting far more quickly than Coca-Cola, Sitemeter is rolling back to its old implementation.

Here's the thing: If you want to add gadgets and doohickeys, or offer a new interface, fine. But don't lose the old functionality, for God's sakes. Some strange people may prefer the new interface -- fine, let them select it. Or even make it default, and let me select old-school.

But what is the deal with losing nearly all the old functionality and replacing it with unusable nonsense?

It cannot be stressed enough that bloggers want to see how their traffic is doing and, especially when it spikes, where that traffic is coming from. The new system did not have, as far as I could tell, any report about referring sites.

None. Nada. Zip. The second-most important feature (possibly the first) was just zapped, for no particular reason.

In exchange for that, I get to see pie charts telling me that most people are viewing the site on Windows XP operating system.

Sitemeter is doing the right thing by going back to the old system. Again, add all the bells and whistles you want, but don't change the basic layout. Add a few more buttons -- trust us, we can find buttons, and we can click on them if we find the new information useful.

Posted by: Ace at 11:38 AM | Comments (63)
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No, really. 47-45. Percentage of Republicans queried: 26%. Democrats: 35%.

I'm not going to link it. Take my word for it, or just to to Kos. I've never lied to you. Much.

Newsweek Magazine

Our polls are substantially confirmed by the Daily Kos Tracking Poll.

In the Ace of Spades Tracking Poll, McCain-Palin lead by six points and three boners.

In a more reputable poll, McCain-Palin now have a majority at 50% and it's knotted up in Minnestota.

And that may understate the lead. Rasmussen weights by party, and they've pegged Republican representation at under 34%. This isn't an awful guess -- but it may be quite wrong. Other polls are showing a big swing towards Republican identification.

Gallup tracking still has it at that pipsqueak 2 point lead.

Thanks to BillM.

Question: How long will it be before liberal bloggers -- and even liberal columnists at newspapers and magazines -- begin citing the Daily Kos Tracking Poll?

Posted by: Ace at 10:53 AM | Comments (49)
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In 2004, besides Bush's "security moms" and the "evangelicals", one of the touted reasons for Bush's win in the election was what I like to call "the beer factor".

The "beer factor" is that certain something that tells the electorate that, yeah, actually, they could feel comfortable to a sit down, drink a beer and shoot the breeze with the candidate. They could talk to him (or her) and he (or she) would be interested in what they had to say. More importantly, since the candidate was "like them", they believed he or she would govern like the electorate would want.

Bush had the "good ol' boy" thing going on. If you invited him to beer and barbecue, you'd expect him to spend his time telling stupid stories about this one time he and some other fellas went huntin' and ol' what's his name tripped over a pile of cow crap and nearly blew Dick Cheney's big toe off. They ended up scaring all the game away, driving into town, ordering a steak and drinking beer. Then he'd take another swig of beer and laugh like that story was still funny fifty times later.

Of course, he had that endearing way of saying "new-kew-lar" that everyone had a good laugh at including Bush.

McCain has been lagging a bit in that area and Obama is starting to feel what it's like to be last year's news at the family barbecue. Palin has re-injected the "beer factor" by a factor of 10 into the election.

So, if we had a barbecue today, what would our candidates look like?
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Posted by: Open Blog at 10:53 AM | Comments (85)
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I hate to post this silly video so soon after hurricane Ike made landfall. The storm has caused serious damage but it appears it is less than was initially feared. Instapundit reports that refineries in the area have avoided serious damage. Do any AoSHQrs out there have any first hand knowledge of conditions in the Houston area?

Posted by: Open Blog at 08:44 AM | Comments (54)
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