Sadly, I don't have a clip of it yet (those Newsbusters are slacking), but ArthurK. saw it last night.

Just as predicted -- including a substitution for the printing-presses-rolling-off-currency part.

Watched ABC network news. They had a mini-montage.

1) Cash registers beeping and cash register drawers popping open, filled with cash.

They showed cash being counted - twice.

2) The ding-ding-ding at day's end on Wall Street, to the cheers of traders.

Check.

3) Government printing presses rolling off millions of dollars in $100 bills.

Housing, for sale signs. Happy people in car showrooms.

Actually that's not a mini-montage, that's the full montage. The Prosperity Montage only lasts, like, five or six seconds as they read a couple of sentences about the super-duper growth numbers meaning that we're all rich.

I'll keep looking for the clip.

Ah. Hello again, old chum.

Posted by: Ace at 06:58 AM | Comments (86)
Post contains 149 words, total size 1 kb.

The numbers:

Fifty one percent said they preferred the public option; 37 percent said they preferred a bill with some support from Republicans in Congress. Six percent said neither and seven percent expressed no opinion.

Thank goodness for the WaPo/ABC polling unit, or we never would have known that voters who intend to vote Democrat are supportive of Democrat policies.

Posted by: Slublog at 06:00 AM | Comments (125)
Post contains 108 words, total size 1 kb.

Doug Hoffman, Bill Owens, and Dede Scozzafava had their one and only debate last night. Says one viewer:

Owens and Scozzafava are obviously more comfortable in public speaking than Doug Hoffman as would be expected from their professions of politician and lawyer as opposed to HoffmanÂ’s career in accounting. For myself it was substance over presentation that was important and I thought Hoffman did well, a B+. Scozzafava did very well on the background issues facing the district, but since it is her judgement and liberal leanings which are in question, one has to ask whether knowledge of the issues, without a strongly principled background, would lead to the best solutions.

Anybody else see it? Let us know what you thought in comments.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 05:28 AM | Comments (87)
Post contains 129 words, total size 1 kb.

This time aimed at Edmunds.com, who pointed out yesterday the Cash for Clunkers program was a clunker.

We're being governed by a bunch of emo pukes.

From the White House blog:

On the same day that we found out that motor vehicle output added 1.7% to economic growth in the third quarter – the largest contribution to quarterly growth in over a decade – Edmunds.com has released a faulty analysis suggesting that the Cash for Clunkers program had no meaningful impact on our economy or on overall auto sales. This is the latest of several critical “analyses” of the Cash for Clunkers program from Edmunds.com, which appear designed to grab headlines and get coverage on cable TV

MOM! THE CAR GUYS TOOK THE LAST PIECE OF BIRTHDAY CAKE!

I suppose this is the kind of reaction you'd expect from people whose job is to make shit up and sell it as something it most certainly is not. And a lot of numbskulls who buy into any Obama plan (because it's from His Awesomeness) will surely pump their little fists in the air and say "Yeah!", but they really don't need convincing, do they?

I'm just a moron, but I think Shakespeare's point was something along the lines of protesting too loudly kinda makes you look bad.

MISSED THIS: LauraW and techie point out the sophisticated high-brow rhetoric in the piece really shows those Edmunds guys they're all wrong.

In other words, all the other cars were being sold on Mars, while the rest of the country was caught up in the excitement of the Cash for Clunkers program..

Edmunds.com, on the other hand, is promoting a bombastic press release without any public access to their underlying analysis.

So put on your space suit and compare the two approaches yourself:

Whining truth to power.

via eddiebear over at H2, where the MOM! thing is a bit of a running gag, which I'm more than happy to swipe.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 05:28 AM | Comments (87)
Post contains 340 words, total size 2 kb.

Friday!

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 05:22 AM | Comments (46)
Post contains 9 words, total size 1 kb.

Dede Scozzafava, Newt Gingrich hardest hit.

As someone personally engaged in the way of life in the Adirondacks and Northern New York, IÂ’m deeply concerned about the course of our nation and the outcome of the election in the 23rd Congressional District.

Simply put, we cannot afford to give another vote to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid we cannot afford another vote for higher taxes, we cannot afford another vote for government run health care and we absolutely cannot afford another vote to take away from hard working men and women the right to secret ballot.

That is why tonight, IÂ’m proud to endorse Doug Hoffman, a Republican, running on the Conservative line for Congress in the 23rd Congressional District.

Posted by: Slublog at 08:16 PM | Comments (117)
Post contains 138 words, total size 1 kb.

Alright, that's not news. The news is that the judge wrote what will probably be the most in-depth discussion (30 pages) of the issues that have plagued the Birther lawsuits: standing, separation of powers, and the political question doctrine.

First, for the first time a court has suggested that failed presidential candidates like Alan Keyes might have standing to sue the President over constitutional eligibility. This is the argument that Ace has been making for a while. As Ace said long ago, somebody out there should have standing. The court in this case considered several possible plaintiffs and found each lacking: active military, retired military, state representatives, taxpayers, and distant Obama relatives (!!!).

When it came to presidential candidates, though, the judge noted "the political candidate plaintiffs are the only category of plaintiffs who potentially satisfy the injury-in-fact requirement[.] [T]he Court will turn to whether the political candidates can satisfy the redressability requirement of the standing analysis."

That's where the plaintiffs failed. As I have been arguing all along, the Constitution does not commit any authority to the courts to depose Presidents. Sole constitutional authority to remove sitting presidents rests with Congress. Thus, there is no remedy for the courts to provide.

So the lawsuit was dismissed. Oh, and lest I forget, Orly Taitz took it in the teeth (again). The judge was not amused by her antics. I LOLed at this observation:

While Plaintiffs removed Mueller in their First Amended Complaint following the CourtÂ’s suggestion that they narrow and focus their claims, they insisted upon the continued inclusion of the First Lady, Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, and Vice President as Defendants. [FN2]

FN2. The inclusion of the First Lady in this lawsuit, considering she holds no
constitutional office, is baffling.

But seriously, Taitz is probably facing a bar complaint over several of her claims, which the court called "inexcusable", and for some possibly criminal behavior. I've tucked that portion of the decision below the fold. more...

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 06:13 PM | Comments (219)
Post contains 861 words, total size 6 kb.

Welcome all M&Ms. It's Thursday night and all downhill from here. In a good way.

British Thug Gets a Comeuppance
Here a 'chav' (a UK hybrid of wigger and white trash) taunts a man in his own yard. Finally at around 2:17 the punk gets laid low. You see what he didn't know is that the man, Jason Smith, was a Gulf War veteran with black belts in karate and jiu-jitsu. And he had complained to police 50 times(!) in the last year about harassment like this.

Frankly I'm surprised Smith let the confrontation go on this long but then given Britain's current legal state, it's not clear you're even allowed to physically defend yourself when threatened and assaulted on your own property. Sadly the UK is coming to resemble the first acts of Mad Max or any Death Wish movie. But unfortunately in real life the second and third acts never seem to come.

Posted by: Open Blog at 06:10 PM | Comments (1172)
Post contains 336 words, total size 3 kb.

It's about Sarah Palin, so that makes it cool I guess.

Consider this headline: "Iowa Republicans wince at Sarah Palin's $100K speaking fee"

The Politico story starts...

A conservative Iowa groupÂ’s effort to lure Sarah Palin to its banquet next month has had an unintended effect: Rather than exciting conservatives about the prospect of a visit from the former Alaska governor, the groupÂ’s plan to raise a six-figure sum to bring her to the state has GOP activists recoiling at the thought of paying to land a politician's speaking appearance.

The Iowa Family Policy CenterÂ’s effort to cobble together $100,000 for Palin would represent a striking departure from customary practice in the first-in-the-nation state, these Republicans say, noting that a generation of White House hopefuls has paid their own way to boost their party and presidential ambitions.

Then way down on page 2, in the 24th paragraph of the article we find this little nugget.

There is no indication that the former governor has requested a fee or that her decision whether to attend is being influenced by whether sheÂ’ll be paid.

Hello? What's that again? You spend 23 paragraphs telling us how odd it is for a candidate or prospective candidate to charge for an appearance, how some people are put off by this highway robbery and then you get around to mentioning, Palin never asked for the money and there's no reason to believe it will impact her decision to show up?

Jayson Blair emails to say, "Dude, have some integrity".

Can we start doing posts about how writers for certain online publications might be engaged in illicit behavior? Maybe we could fill up the post with quotes from people about how disappointed they are that some political reporters are having, say, intimate relations with, oh I don't know, farm animals. Then after a few hundred words of this I'll drop in something like, "Of course, there's no evidence any of this happening".

Hey Politico, would that make it ok?

Here's a hint...no it wouldn't.

But I'm not talking about making up stories about Sarah Palin so a whole different set of rules apply. You know, the rules that require you don't make stuff up and hit 'publish'.

Let me admit something...I'm agnostic at best on Palin but if the leftists keep acting like she's Holy Water and they are vampires, I'm gonna have to rethink my position.

See what I did there with the "gonna" and not "going to"...I can fit in.

To be clear...she did not ask for the fee according to her people.

It seems some folks wanted to bring her to their event and have heard her fee is 100K. Well, that's apparently for her speaking gigs, like the one in China. He political efforts are separate and funded by her PAC.

But then "Palin Speaks For Free To Conservatives" isn't exactly an earth shattering scoop.

I don't know how much Jonathan Martin makes but if I were his boss I'd wince every time I signed his check. Unless they want to pay for fiction.

h/t Jim Treacher

*I accidentally linked to the second page of the article. I've fixed that.

Posted by: DrewM at 02:44 PM | Comments (226)
Post contains 545 words, total size 3 kb.

This story says they're charged, but a later story say they were arraigned today.

Three minors — 15, 16 and 17 — are each charged with felony rape with a foreign object. The charges all carry an enhancement that they acted in concert, which could make them eligible for life in prison if found true, Deputy District Attorney Dara Cashman said.

The 16-year-old also has been charged with robbery. Cashman charged a fourth suspect, 19-year-old Manuel Ortega, with robbery, assault causing great bodily injury, rape in concert and an enhancement that also makes him eligible for life in prison.

The youths were charged as adults "because this crime speaks to a high degree of callousness and viciousness," said Contra Costa Deputy District Attorney Dan Cabral, head of the office's juvenile division

Cashman and Richmond police detectives said Wednesday that they expect to make more arrests in the case. A fifth suspect arrested Tuesday night, 21-year-old Salvador Rodriguez, remains in custody but has not been charged.

Here's a dumb opinion piece by, I guess, a local columnist:

They laughed. They snapped pictures. For two hours, they took turns beating and raping a drunk, defenseless girl. Fine Saturday night fun.

The details of the brutal gang rape outside the Richmond High School homecoming dance last weekend chill my soul. The 15-year-old was lured to a "party" by a "friend" only to find out she was to be the evening's entertainment. Dozens of people wandered by and thought it was funny.

I wonder what sort of twisted young people would get their kicks out of participating in such an attack. I wonder what kind of callous young people would stand by and watch, or see what was going on and hurry away, but never try to stop it or even call police. Surely they must have precious women in their lives. Mothers, sisters, grandmothers. Yet no one cared what happened to the victim, who had to be airlifted to a hospital in critical condition. How could young people be so cruel and inhuman?

One of the young women who called the cops as soon as they heard about the attack tried to offer an explanation: "They think it's cool," she told our reporter. "They weren't raised to respect girls."

They weren't raised to respect girls.

Is that it?

We do not, as a society, respect girls. We teach them from birth that sexy is cute, sexy is beautiful, sexy is the way to get attention. From baby shirts that say "Hot Chick" to preschool dance classes where little girls learn to bump and grind, there's no escaping it. By the time they're in middle school, girls know that sexy gets more attention from boys than brainy or athletic or tough.

And it goes on like that, eventually mentioning video games or something.

Look, I understand women's horror at this. I happen to share it. But, just to be accurate about this, one is underinclusive when one says these thugs did not "respect women."

They did not respect humans, period. They are animals lacking the most basic empathetic spark that typically restrains human beings from beating or raping each other brutally -- the empathy that makes such monstrous behavior difficult to even contemplate, let alone perform.

For two hours.

In front of an apparently entertained crowd.

On Twitter, Greg Pollowitz says "Death penalty for all of them, including the spectators." I agree. And I know there's no law to get to such just punishment, but then, as they say, no jury in the world would convict you.

The problem isn't that we're raising boys who don't respect girls. Or, rather, that is a problem too, but not really the problem here. Yes, they targeted her because, as a girl, she had what they wanted. But it's hard to imagine that a vulnerable, lone man who had something they wanted -- including simple humanity that they could shatter for their jollies (stuff like this is, as they say, also about dominance and pure cruelty rather than sex alone) -- would get better treatment from these vermin.

"Respecting women" is a lesson they need to learn. But that's kind of nuance they could only appreciate after a long lesson in Why it's a bad thing to prey upon human beings as if you're brutish jackals.

Actually, the hell with learning. Kill them in prison. And yeah, rape them in prison. With my blessing.

We have monsters in our society and no one much seems to care.

One local article notes that "interest in the case in cyberspace" is high.

In cyberspace? Um, why not in the leftwing media? Is this story somehow not interesting enough?

We know why. It's not that this story doesn't have national policy implications. The trouble for the leftwing media is that it obviously, incandescently does have national policy implications about which they wish to keep silent. As it's impolite.

Well, the crime rate among blacks and Latinos is viciously high. Lives are shattered, and snuffed out, every day because of this.

Can we perhaps get over our political correctness and treat this as a problem, maybe?

I don't know if spotlighting the problem would help. As I mentioned in my previous post*, the Kitty Genovese murder shocked the country out of complacency about crime, and cowardice in the face of crime.

But for that to happen, people have to know about it.

* Which I put into draft because some idiot decided it was the perfect time to let loose a torrent of racial animus. I would appreciate if this does not happen again.

Posted by: Ace at 02:09 PM | Comments (266)
Post contains 943 words, total size 6 kb.