..for hitting the tip-jar, sincerely, and thanks to the cobloggers for doing that. As Andrew Sullivan once said, you know, it takes $120,000 a year just to pay for the bandwidth here.

It is unfortunate, however, that the day LauraW announces "Ace is on a pretty good roll lately" is the day I flake out until 3pm and then don't post until 2pm the next day, and then post erratically and lightly.

I meant to thank everyone yesterday but was too embarrassed about that late start. It really is incredibly helpful, especially with advertising rates so in the trashcan right now.

Posted by: Ace at 12:44 PM | Comments (295)
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I haven't noticed this, but I find it so interesting I want to put it out there to see if there is, indeed, the pattern Rocks has suggested:

[Quoting Obama:] "It is important though to recognize if we keep on adding to the debt, even in the midst of this recovery, that at some point, people could lose confidence in the U.S. economy in a way that could actually lead to a double-dip recession," he said.

Anyone else notice Obama has a habit of saying I, like in his speeches, when speaking of good things but uses WE when speaking of bad things?

'Everything is better since I was elected but WE need to stop spending so much money."

"My administration will save us from the depths of despair but WE need to do more."

Who the hell signs the checks anyway? Hello?

I passed the stimulus that saved the world; we need to stop spending so damn much.

It seems to me it's gotta be what's going on here. Hopefully someone with a Lexis/Nexus account can do a little digging and see if it's a real pattern.

Posted by: Ace at 12:35 PM | Comments (139)
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Like the Flash. Lightning smashed through his window and mixed his various drugs just so.

This is only the second time in its nearly ten-year history that the Dish has gone silent. The reason now is the same as the reason then. When dealing with a delusional fantasist like Sarah Palin, it takes time to absorb and make sense of the various competing narratives that she tells about her life. There are so many fabrications and delusions in the book, mixed in with facts, that just making sense of it - and comparing it with objective reality as we know it, and the subjective reality she has previously provided - is a bewildering task. She is a deeply disturbed person which makes this work of fiction and fact all the more challenging to read. And the fact that she is now the leader of the Republican party and a potential presidential candidate, makes this process of deconstruction an important civil responsibility. We take this seriously as we always have. We want to be fair to her, and to her family, and to the innocent people she has brought into the spotlight. And we are not reporters. We are merely analysts trying to make sense of evidence already in the public domain, evidence that points in all sorts of directions, only one of which can be true.

Since the Dish has tried to be rigorous and careful in analyzing Palin's unhinged grip on reality from the very beginning - specifically her fantastic story of her fifth pregnancy - we feel it's vital that we grapple with this new data as fairly and as rigorously as possible. That takes time to get right. And it is so complicated we simply cannot focus on anything else.

There are only three of us.

I suppose I can't do any better than he has done himself. Sarah Palin, with her tenuous grip on reality and tendency towards delusion, telling us about her "fantastical" fifth pregnancy.

It is amusing that the self-proclaimed purveyor of the "most popular one-man blog on the internet" finishes by announcing "There are only three of us."

Indeed.

Pics from McGurk and AllahPundit.

Incidentally... The other time "the Dish" went dark it was because The Atlantic's editors had told him to chill out on his nuttery about a faked pregnancy, and he got himself into a little snit about it and protested by taking a few days off. Either that or his editors told him to take a few days off and get his head on straight.

This is only the second time in its nearly ten-year history that the Dish has gone silent. The reason now is the same as the reason then. When dealing with a delusional fantasist like Sarah Palin, it takes time to absorb and make sense of the various competing narratives that she tells about her life.

... seems to be a bit misleading about the cause for "the Dish" going dark. Seems to not really get across the point "I was told to cool it and take a few days off to reconsider my lunatic mindthoughts and soulpatterns."

Dial M for Maternity: I originally passed on linking this funny Iowahawk piece because I thought it was a little too mean and edgy.

But this lunatic deserves it.

Something Else Odd: Andrew Sullivan is the only blogger I'm aware of who has had guest-bloggers post about his own lunacy, engaging in apologism for that lunacy, basically saying something like "Well, you have to admit, he's a brave and candid man to reveal his psychological defects in such a public forum," and then the only blogger who then thanked that guest-blogger for handling his obvious madness in such a kind-hearted manner.

Anyone else know of a blogger whose guest bloggers come in to say "Please excuse the insanity demonstrated by my host, he means well enough and he is, as far as we can tell, not a threat to himself or others"? Gotta be a first, right?

And yet here s/he is squawking about Palin's "unhinged grip on reality" (nice wordsmithing there, by the way: Don't you hate it when your grip becomes unhinged? I hate when my grip comes off its hinges).

And of course also engaging in extraordinarily tasteless, oblivious self-revelations about his/her twisted psychology. I have never in my life heard a man/woman rant so angrily about a woman's vagina.

Palin's vagina, in Andrew Sullivan's telling, is a member of the Bavarian Illuminati. They're all there -- the Bildergsbergers, the Medicis, the Pope and the Jesuits, the Ghost of Richard Milhouse Nixon, and, of course, Sarah Palin's genitalia.

You would just think that a professional homosexual like himself would have the good sense to refrain from unhinged-grip (whatever) pronouncements like "it's the worst form of torture for interrogators to pretend to smear a suspect with fake menstrual blood" and "Sarah Palin's vagina is the font of all evil in the galaxy."

Just, like, whoa, dude. Maybe better to keep that mask on, eh? Maybe better to be a little more self-aware, and self-protective, than to keep on with this too-much-information jihad against female genitalia.

We get it. Girl parts are icky and apparently capable of well-nigh-superhuman levels of fecundity. They're just sort of low-brow and workin' class. Crude and boorish and devious things, these female genitals.

We get it. Please stop. Please stop.

Flashback: "I never stated anything about Palin's pregnancy and took her at her word." So claims Sullivan now in an email.

But here is Dr. Sullivan, founder of Gynecologists Without Boundaries, on the suspected Tribble Sarah Palin.

Let's add up three bits of data:

1. It is widely suggested that an element of sexual jealousy creeps in when liberal (and "conservative") women rip into Sarah Palin.

2. Liberals became enraged at Sarah Palin not due to any policy position (she is claimed to be an "extremist" based on... nothing) but because she dared to not merely criticize the left's messiah, but to openly ridicule him, doing, to liberals, the absolute unthinkable: Committing blasphemy without consequence. They never got over her ridicule of Obama, reminding him a mayor was like "a community organizer, but with actual responsibilities" or for snarking that Obama's "voyage of personal discovery went through the Oval Office."

3. Christopher Hitchens' uncontradicted assertion that Andrew Sullivan wants to "have Barack Obama's baby." If I remember right, he went on to emphasize: "I mean it, he wants to have Barack Obama's baby."

Add those three data-points up and what we seem to have here is a man having a delusional love-affair with Barack Obama who perceives Sarah Palin as both a threat to his pretend "husband" as well as a source of painful sexual jealousy that she, unlike he, is the right gender to actually convert this pretend husband to real one.

This isn't a Freudian slip -- this is the whole damn Freudian marina.

Posted by: Ace at 12:30 PM | Comments (304)
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You know, you really have to hand it to the Mullahs. For a bunch of Jew haters, they really have some chutzpah.

First, they say "maybe we'll send our low grade nuclear fuel out of the country in exchange for fuel that can't be weaponized. Then, they say "nah, we don't want to do that".

Now they come back with a new offer and it's quite the deal.

Iran ruled out on Wednesday sending enriched uranium abroad for further processing, but would consider swapping it for nuclear fuel provided it remained under supervision inside the country, the ISNA news agency said.

The decision is expected to anger the United States and its allies, which had called on Iran to accept a deal which aimed to delay Tehran's potential ability to make bombs by at least a year by divesting Iran of most of its enriched uranium.

..."Surely we will not send our 3.5 percent fuel abroad but can review swapping it simultaneously with nuclear fuel inside Iran," Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told the ISNA students' news agency.

The United States has rejected Iranian calls for amendments and further talks on the deal. President Barack Obama said time was running out for diplomacy to resolve a long standoff over Iran's nuclear program.

Wait, we get to give you new fuel and you get to keep the old stuff that might be used to make weapons? Where do we sign up for this deal?

Actually, maybe this is a stupid idea on the part of the Mullahs. Right now the "West" under the "leadership" of Obama is pretty much willing to give them a bomb at this point, so why not just sit quietly and let Obama bid against himself?

Of course the only real way to avert a crisis is for Obama to keep is campaign pledge to meet with Ahmadinejad and bow to him (or whatever the equivalent Persian gesture is). Once he's awed by Obama's weakness cultural sensitivity, surely he will forswear his country's nuclear ambitions.

Below the fold, a visual representation of Iran's strategy for dealing with Obama. more...

Posted by: DrewM at 11:57 AM | Comments (79)
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As anyone who watched, and then stopped watching, L&O knows, about ten years back the show got jaded and bored with the whole "murder" thing. The show stopped being about the murders themselves -- who cares about murder, anyway? -- and almost always turn into a liberal soapbox as McCoy went beyond the murder itself, to the real malefactors, the people whose corrupt system caused the murder due to their greed. And those Evil Republican Types became the show's real villains, week after week, as murderers were excused as being essentially dupes of "the real killers."

So here we go again. Now, we are told, the "real killers" are drug-makers selling life-extending but very expensive drugs. And we need a little ObamaCare, a little rational rationing, to keep the scourge of life-extending drugs away from an abused public.

Posted by: Ace at 10:55 AM | Comments (168)
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Not So Much

You'd think that a guy who looks like this

"...and when I awakened, my balls were swollen up like pomegranates..."

and who maintains a rather fetish-y all-female security team, would be an unserious sort, given to hedonism and self-indulgence.

Well, yeah, but not full-time, apparently. 200 Italian women responded to this ad:

"Seeking 500 attractive girls between 18 and 35 years old, at least 1.70 meters (5 foot, 7 inches) tall, well-dressed but not in mini-skirts or low cut dresses,"

Ooo-la-la.

Most had expected to attend a party, according to ANSA, but instead were invited to wait in a large hall until the arrival of Gaddafi, who gave them a lesson on Libya and the role of women in Islam.

After around two hours the lesson, including questions and answers through an interpreter, concluded with an exhortation by Gaddafi to "convert to Islam" and with each woman given a copy of the Koran and a book of sayings by Gaddafi.

Mo has turned over a new leaf. He's on a religious mission. Reaching out, trying to save a few souls.

But Allah says no fat chicks.

Posted by: LauraW at 10:23 AM | Comments (91)
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Unmentioned here in the article: His insistence that the way to get a handle on asymptotic spending curves is to spend more on health care.

Gotta spend to save.

President Barack Obama gave his sternest warning yet about the need to contain rising U.S. deficits, saying on Wednesday that if government debt were to pile up too much, it could lead to a double-dip recession.

...

His administration was considering ways to accelerate economic growth, with tax measures among the options to give companies incentives to hire, Obama said in the interview with Fox conducted in Beijing during his nine-day trip to Asia.

"It is important though to recognize if we keep on adding to the debt, even in the midst of this recovery, that at some point, people could lose confidence in the U.S. economy in a way that could actually lead to a double-dip recession," he said.

I read this as a first tentative justification for raising taxes generally. He speaks in terms of a "tax measure," I suppose along the lines of the idea floated months ago by conservatives, to cut the payroll tax temporarily. But of course he refused to do that before. Now, if he does so, it will be presented as part of an initiative that raises taxes generally, with a small proposed cut in withholding taxes.

I enjoy the way this article is framed: Obama is "warning" us that out-of-control spending could lead to a double-dip recession. He's warning us, you see. All along he was the guy fighting to keep spending down and we were insisting on ballooning the deficit to trillions of dollars per year until the time-frame of near-future science fiction -- basically, he wants to run a trillion+ deficit until Neuromancer is less a science-fiction book than a slice-of-life drama of manners -- and now he's going to put a stop to our profligate ways.

What? Who the hell is he warning? Is this some kind of Gollum-like internal struggle we're witnessing?

I Wonder If This Has Anything to do with Anything: Obama's idiotic counterfactual rhetoric -- positioning himself as a deficit-fighter, conveniently on FoxNews, which may be expected to reach the most persuadable independents -- seems in line with Democrats' sudden discovery that independents are moving hard to the conservative side of things.

Mounting evidence that independent voters have soured on the Democrats is prompting a debate among party officials about what rhetorical and substantive changes are needed to halt the damage.

Following serious setbacks with independents in off-year elections earlier this month, White House officials attributed the defeats to local factors and said President Barack Obama sees no need to reposition his own image or the Democratic message.

Since then, however, a flurry of new polls makes clear that Democrats are facing deeper problems with independents—the swing voters who swung dramatically toward the party in 2006 and 2008 but who now are registering deep unease with the amount of spending and debt called for under Obama’s agenda in an era of one-party rule in Washington.

A Gallup Poll released last week offered a disturbing glimpse about the state of play: just 14 percent of independents approve of the job Congress is doing, the lowest figure all year. In just the past few days alone, surveys have shown Democratic incumbents trailing Republicans among independent voters by double-digit margins in competitive statewide contests in places as varied as Connecticut, Ohio and Iowa.

I guess we see the rhetorical adjustments in Obama's interview -- he'll "warn us" about his own ruinous spending, like Ike Turner warning Tina that she has to stop making her hit her.

Baby, you know I love you, don't you? It breaks my heart when you make me punch you in the eye.

Quinippiac finally shows Obama under 50%, at 48%. (Whoops-- 48%, not 49%. I had Rasmussen on the brain. Rasmussen has had Obama at 49% so often it just became my automatic belief, that whenever he's under 50%, he's at 49%. Nope -- one point lower than that.)

I find it interesting that the media chooses to blame this state of affairs on one piece of ambiguous evidence -- that is, they blame it on growing dissatisfaction about the war in Afghanistan. That's ambiguous, because of those expressing a lack of confidence, some will be on the right, urging Obama to stop dithering, and some will be on the left, urging defeat and surrender.

Contrast that with Obama's drooping numbers on the economy, where there is no possibility of ambiguity -- people oppose him because the economy is in the crapper and the most he seems able to do is flush more money away.

So, needing to explain Obama's fading appeal, and given two possibilities, one which tends to neutral or even support the leftist narrative, and the other which tends to clearly refute the leftist narrative, the media of course goes for the former.

You Can't Make a Red Flag Without Red Ink: 12 trillion in debt, and Obama proposes adding to this another nine trillion over, IIRC, the next ten years.

Steven Hayes, I think, had a cutting comment on the Bret Baier show last night: "When even Chinese communists are warning you about the rate of expansion of government, you're doing something wrong."

Posted by: Ace at 10:14 AM | Comments (104)
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Well this is comforting to know. The President is comfortable announcing the death penalty for KSM and not to worry about that whole pesky trial.

During a round of network television interviews conducted during ObamaÂ’s visit to China, the president was asked about those who find it offensive that Mohammed will receive all the rights normally accorded to U.S. citizens when they are charged with a crime.

“I don't think it will be offensive at all when he's convicted and when the death penalty is applied to him,” Obama told NBC’s Chuck Todd.

When Todd asked Obama if he was interfering in the trial process by declaring that Mohammed will be executed, Obama, a former constitutional law professor, insisted that he wasnÂ’t trying to dictate the result.

“What I said was, people will not be offended if that's the outcome. I'm not pre-judging, I'm not going to be in that courtroom, that's thejob of prosecutors, the judge and the jury,” Obama said. “What I'm absolutely clear about is that I have complete confidence in the American people and our legal traditions and the prosecutors, the tough prosecutors from New York who specialize in terrorism.”

Where in the Hell do we live again? Is this Putin talking? I will not have the slightest difficulty sleeping after KSA assumes room temperature, but that doesn't mean I want to start emulating the Soviet Union FFS? or Iran? I especially like the idea that even if the are acquitted we will keep them locked up. I mean that is a quintessentially American twist on totalitarian show trialing. We can't even guarantee the outcome.

Holder and Obama have stepped in it and while we will all pay in some ways, they have exposed themselves as clueless political hacks on a vital issue of national security. Bring 2010 on and let's carve away at the clowns in Congress who enable these two to play payback politics.

Posted by: Uncle Jimbo at 10:01 AM | Comments (104)
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Not to pass the thing mind you, just to start debate.

Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid scrambled Tuesday to lock down votes behind a health-care bill that he may present as early as Wednesday.

The Nevada Democrat would not confirm that he had received commitments from all 60 members of his caucus to overcome GOP procedural objections and bring the bill to the Senate floor, saying only, "I feel cautiously optimistic that we can do that. I think we're together as a caucus."

The leader was more outspoken in describing his measure, boasting to reporters: "Of all the bills we've seen, it'll be the best: saves more money, is more protective of Medicare, is a bill that's good for the American people."

But in case Democratic senators are too stupid to realize that and are hesitant to even allow a debate on the bill, the Obama administration is launching a lobbying campaign. Again, just to allow the debate to begin.

In what appears to be the administration making a a last-minute push to curry votes for health care, Vice President Joe Biden is up there lobbying as is former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, a former centrist U.S. Senator has also been spotted in the hallways, but he says he's just up there to see friends and that he's not really lobbying for health care.

...The presence of the triumverate of administration friends and officials who have lots of friends on the Hill and know the ways of the Senate, is likely a sign that Reid and the Democrats still clearly don't quite have everything they need to let the bill proceed.

Did I mention all of this is just to get the 60 member Democratic Caucus on board with starting debate?

One problem is there's still no CBO score, with all the ludicrous assumptions that go along with it.

They could still use the non partisan CMS study which says the House bill is a fraud that will cut care to seniors and won't lower costs overall.

Yeah Harry, let's talk about that one for awhile.

UPDATE/Clarification: There seems to be some confusion on what this vote is. It's only to start debate. If it passes this hurdle, there will be speeches, amdendments, maybe even a full reading of the bill.

It will then take another vote and 60 Senators voting yes, to move on to passage (which would take 50 votes+Biden).

When we think of needing 60 votes we usually are talking bout Cloture which is the vote to end debate. The start of a debate is almost always automatic. The fact that they are having trouble getting enough votes to start is hugely good news for opponents.

Posted by: DrewM at 09:05 AM | Comments (97)
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And Andy McCarthy Fisks the hell out of him.

A taste.

6. In a civilian trial, America will see KSM for the coward that he is – Holder: "I am not scared of KSM." Submitting a war criminal to a military commission is not an exercise in fear; it is an exercise in justice. We already know all about what kind of animal KSM is, thanks to the exrtraordinary information that has come out in the military proceedings and the CIA interrogations. You could fill a book a book with it, which the 9/11 Commission did. We don't need to bear the risks of a civilian trial either to learn more about KSM or so Mr. Holder can show how brave he is.

For the liberal vision of this, check out Chris Good at The Atlantic's Politics Blog (It's a "Milky Loads" free zone). Good assures us that Holder understands we are at war because, well, Holder says, "I know that we are at war". Case close, the science is settled.

Good then goes on to parse the difference between the Bush and Obama approaches.

But despite the Obama administration's attempts to get away from Bush's language, the war on terrorism is something that it can't get away from. Today we had Obama's top law enforcement official full embrace that ethos. If that tells us anything, it's that at critical moments of national security, the Obama administration will acknowledge this war, and it will verge into the national security realism that, while mismanaged and badly represented over the previous eight years, came to be a defining mark of the Bush worldview.

Here's the thing, when the President takes this portfolio from the military and gives it to his "top law enforcement official" that's a clue that he most definitely is not treating this like a war. See if Obama thought this was a war, he'd let the m-i-l-i-t-a-r-y handle it, not the AG.

Remember military commissions were not just the work of Bush and Cheney's evil dreams, they were created by Congress (something a certain junior Senator from Illinois seemed pretty happy about at one time).

War. Law enforcement. Just words.

Meanwhile, terrorists who kill thousands in an act of war are afforded the full panoply of rights and protections as any US citizen who steals a car.

Obama, Holder and the rest of the left tell us this will awe the world, make them love us and prevent future attacks. You know, just like the trial and conviction of the first WTC bombers did.

Just another example of the 'reality based community' ignoring reality.

Posted by: DrewM at 07:57 AM | Comments (170)
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