Chilling, real time, first person reactions to the attacks on America on September 11th, 2001. Released in time blocks synchronized to the time of day they were sent on 9/11/01. Surely a gut wrenching read but necessary to always remember the events of that day. Note: Attacks began at 8:46am EST.

Posted by: Open Blog at 04:17 AM | Comments (36)
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Harsh, bwaaa, ha, ha.

H/T TH more...

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 06:48 PM | Comments (89)
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Yesterday Ace mentioned the two Republican primary candidates out here in California competing for the chance to unseat Senator Ma'am Boxer. He wrote that his impression based on limited facts is that DeVore is the true conservative and Fiorina is closer to the squishy moderate.

That's what DeVore wants you to believe, but it's far from clear that it's the truth. DeVore wasted no time attacking her for being pro-choice...even though she says she is pro-life. I asked Chuck's campaign consultant to explain where he got the idea that she was pro-choice and his explanation was less than convincing (I discuss it at "BTW").

And so it has gone since August. I haven't really come to a preference for either candidate so far. I like DeVore and I think he's a good guy. He'd make a good senator. He's been at this longer and his campaign is certainly better organized and better positioned to win the primary than Fiorina's. But I'm disappointed at the sleazy campaigning.

On the other hand, I don't have much of an idea what Fiorina is about. She doesn't have a political track record and she's made some bone-headed moves of her own. And that's why DeVore's attempts to brand her as a moderate gain traction. She mostly can't do anything but say, "I am not a witch!" while he exhorts the crowd to see if she floats in water. The more she protests, the guiltier she looks.

Still, the success of DeVore's strategy thus far has him overreaching a bit, as he did yesterday when he sent a press release claiming that Fiorina supported the spendulus.

In fact, she made her opposition to that budget-busting boondoggle crystal clear. He says she can’t decide whether or not “she opposes cap-and-tax.” The week she announced for U.S. Senate, she called the bill a “job killer for small businesses [and] farmers.” Last week, she repeated this description of the legislation on the Kudlow Report, saying she would not vote for the bill.

Look, itÂ’s entirely fair to criticize Carly for the stands she has taken. I, for example, have taken issue with her for voting for Proposition 8. But, the DeVore campaign, in its eagerness to make this a liberal versus conservative race, has made claims about their rival that could be dismissed with a couple of keystrokes. Simply put, theyÂ’re not doing their homework.

And while Devore suggests Carly has equivocated on Obamacare, she has said she is “adamantly opposed” to both the House (Pelosi) and Senate (Reid) legislation to overhaul our healthcare system. Indeed, she slammed Barbara Boxer’s vote to open debate on the latter bill, saying that Ma’am “put partisan politics over the interests of the people of California. This $2.5 trillion bill creates a government-run healthcare bureaucracy that will increase taxes and not improve the quality of healthcare for Californians.” That ain’t no equivocation.

Look, 2010 is shaping up to be a good year for Republicans. If it was clearer that DeVore rather than Fiorina could take Barbara Boxer down, I'd support him. But that's not how this race is shaping up. At this point it looks like either of them could do it.

And when you get down to it, I will vote for a dancing monkey with an (R) behind its name before I vote for Barbara Boxer. So I'd like to see better behavior out of DeVore's campaign before I choose him over Fiorina. I'd like to think I can shake a politician's hand without it feeling slimy.

Update: One thing that the DeVore campaign has been very, very good about is outreach. Josh Treviño, the campaign's comm director (who set up my interview with DeVore in September), has responded below. Check it out. Check out the links.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 06:23 PM | Comments (98)
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Good evening morons and welcome to early hump day. The turkeys, vegans, and hobos are already running scared so tonight might be a fun time to sharpen your knives on the front porch.

Where the Jobs Are and Aren't
You know maybe it's time to set up a resettlement program for Detroit residents and treat them like any other refugees from an impoverished third world country.

Posted by: Open Blog at 06:00 PM | Comments (740)
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First statement, "no one is forced to go on the public option. If someone can tell me how they are forced to go on the public option, no one, it's a choice they would have". (video at the link)

A constituent gladly explains precisely how by asking the following questions:

1) Do you agree with Nancy Pelosi that itÂ’s fair to throw the uninsured in jail? and

2) If the public option is just an option and no one is forced to take it, why are people going to be thrown in jail if they donÂ’t?

Whooaaa, that's quite a leap. Car insurance... blah blah.. the same lame answer (not the least of which, it isn't "forced to buy car insurance, it's a requirement to show proof of financial responsibility for damages you cause to someone else as a result of your negligence).

This particular "blue dog" doesn't seem terribly bothered with the concept of a public option. He seems rather in favor of it.

Doesn't seem too worked up about that whole jail thing either.

Nancy owns this punk.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 04:06 PM | Comments (81)
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I know Ace does not like red on red and I respect that, so I will leave the beatdown portion of this at BLACKFIVE. Allahpundit posts about how a fat lip is the kind of reason we should ruin the careers of SEALs. Go there if you wish, I won't link. And for the record I end up w/ Allah on most topics, but this is not even close.

Even so, the fact that this turd got the Iraqi authorities involved may have left Central Command with little choice here. The last thing the military needs right now is another detainee-abuse headache, especially with some Iraqi pols already leaning on them about withdrawal. Giving the SEALs a zero-tolerance wrist slap reminds other troops not to do anything more seriously stupid that might be exploited politically. And it will be a wrist slap, IÂ’m sure: The last thing The One needs after shipping KSM off to NYC for his close-up is the image of SEALs being hauled off to prison for busting some jihadi in the face.In fact, according to Fox, the SEALs requested a court-martial rather than nonjudicial punishment, presumably because they know full well how awful this looks for the military. Prediction: Wrist slap.

Just for the beta male's edification, a wrist slap is a career-ender in the Spec Ops community.

Posted by: Uncle Jimbo at 03:42 PM | Comments (450)
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Just got this via his email list.

Dear Friends,

Today, Tuesday, November 24, 2009, it is with a heavy heart that we declare this election over. We will formally end this election and not ask for a recount. This was a difficult choice to make because so many people have put their faith, hope and aspirations into our campaign.

Yes, there seem to have been many vote counting problems, missed vote counts and, as was recently reported by the Gouvernour Times, software problems in the computerized voting machines. Despite these incidents, I do not believe the voters of NY-23, or New Yorkers in general, would be well-served by a disruptive and costly recount that would most likely not change the election outcome.

I know many are disappointed and even angry. To those I say now is not the time to look back, but to focus on the future and ensure that next year we win back this district decidedly. Know this decision was not an easy one. I did not want to let down those who worked so hard, donated so much and shared their enthusiasm for retaking our country with common-sense conservative values.

And rest assured, our energies are now directed toward 2010. This election, in which a third party candidate narrowly lost, showed that principles do matter. Special interests do have an Achilles' heel, the American people. Main-street conservatism's voice is now echoing through the government chambers and boardrooms that shape America. By most measures, this campaign was a success and I have you all to thank for this. And all of us have to thank the Conservative Party of New York State for nominating a candidacy like ours.

There's more but that's the gist.

Given the numbers he was looking at in terms of being behind and the absentees it was inevitable.

As he said, there were problems with some machines on election night. That seems mostly due to problems with brand new equipment and not any organized attempt at fraud (it's not a district that lends itself to that).

Given Bill Owens amazing record of breaking wens-to-break-campaign-promises&catid=60:st-lawrence-news&Itemid=175">four promises within an hour of taking office, it seems 2010 will be fertile ground for Mr. Hoffman.

Posted by: DrewM at 03:41 PM | Comments (13)
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1994-ish:

Republican candidates have extended their lead over Democrats to seven points, their biggest lead since early September, in the latest edition of the Generic Congressional Ballot.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 44% would vote for their districtÂ’s Republican congressional candidate while 37% would opt for his or her Democratic opponent.

...
Voters not affiliated with either party continue to heavily favor Republicans, 44% to 20%.

I'm curious-- if Republicans take the House in 2010, will the media even report it?

Well, I guess that's silly. Of course they will. What they have refrained from mentioning is that Democrats actually gained control of Congress in 2006.

Politico notes the former Obama supporters turned opponents are, as you'd expect, whites. It's only a matter of time before racism becomes this Administration's only policy point.

Just 39 percent of white Americans now approve of President Obama's job performance, a steep drop-off of support since he was inaugurated in January, according to the latest Gallup Poll.

In his first full week in office, starting Jan. 26, just over six in 10 white people gave him their approval. Now that number is down to under four in 10, indicating a net drop of 22 points.

Black voters, meanwhile, have continued to support Obama to the tune of approximately 90 percent. And Democrats and liberals give Obama approval ratings of above 80 percent.

"Though he maintains widespread loyalty among Democrats, the small loss in support he has seen from his fellow partisans seems to be exclusively from white Democrats," Gallup's finding says.

Thanks to DrewM. and AHFF Geoff.

Posted by: Ace at 02:02 PM | Comments (175)
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Well!

Hot Air notes a good write up that ran on CBSNews. Well, their website, at least. It's a start.

Last week's leaked e-mails range from innocuous to embarrassing and, critics believe, scandalous. They show that some of the field's most prominent scientists were so wedded to theories of man-made global warming that they ridiculed dissenters who asked for copies of their data ("have to respond to more crap criticisms from the idiots"), cheered the deaths of skeptical journalists, and plotted how to keep researchers who reached different conclusions from publishing in peer-reviewed journals.

One e-mail message, apparently from CRU director Phil Jones, references the U.K.'s Freedom of Information Act when asking another researcher to delete correspondence that might be disclosed in response to public records law: "Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise." Another, also apparently from Jones: global warming skeptics "have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I'll delete the file rather than send to anyone." (Jones was a contributing author to the chapter of the U.N.'s IPCC report titled "Detection of Climate Change and Attribution of Causes.")

The CBS article next quotes a long email by a programmer, basically informing his superiors that the datasets are utterly unreliable and the coding itself a bloody useless mess.

...

Programmer-written comments inserted into CRU's Fortran code have drawn fire as well. The file briffa_sep98_d.pro says: "Apply a VERY ARTIFICAL correction for decline!!" and "APPLY ARTIFICIAL CORRECTION." Another, quantify_tsdcal.pro, says: "Low pass filtering at century and longer time scales never gets rid of the trend - so eventually I start to scale down the 120-yr low pass time series to mimic the effect of removing/adding longer time scales!"

It's not clear how the files were leaked. One theory says that a malicious hacker slipped into East Anglia's network and snatched thousands of documents. Another says that the files had already been assembled in response to a Freedom of Information request and, immediately after it was denied, a whistleblower decided to disclose them. (Lending credence to that theory is the fact that no personal e-mail messages unrelated to climate change appear to have been leaked.)
...

[G[roups like the free-market Competitive Enterprise Institute, the target of repeated derision in the leaked e-mails, have said: "We have argued for many years that much of the scientific case for global warming alarmism was weak and some of it was phony. It now looks like a lot of it may be phony."

ScienceMag.org published an article noting that deleting e-mail messages to hide them from a FOI request is a crime in the United Kingdom. George Monbiot, a U.K. activist and journalist who previously called for dramatic action to deal with global warming, wrote: "It's no use pretending that this isn't a major blow. The emails extracted by a hacker from the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia could scarcely be more damaging."

Complicating matters for congressional Republicans who'd like to hold hearings is that East Anglia, of course, is a U.K. university. The GOP may intend to press the Obama administration for details on how the EPA came to rely on the CRU's predictions, and whether the recent disclosure will change the agency's position. Another approach lies in e-mail messages discussing grants from the U.S. Commerce Department's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to East Anglia; one says: "We need to show some left to cover the costs of the trip Roger didn't make and also the fees/equipment/computer money we haven't spent otherwise NOAA will be suspicious."

The irony of this situation is that most of us expect science to be conducted in the open, without unpublished secret data, hidden agendas, and computer programs of dubious reliability. East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit might have avoided this snafu by publicly disclosing as much as possible at every step of the way.

Um, that's not "irony." It is not "ironic" that when you are hiding data, disguising errors, and keeping secrets, that the disclosure of that behavior proves embarrassing. That is simply -- what's the word? -- obvious cause-and-effect.

JackStraw sent me a link the other day, and I replied, pretty much, like so: "To be honest, I don't really understand that article, but what I find jaw-dropping is that critics continue to have to beg for these guys' data, for their models, for their assumptions. JESUS LORD GOD ALL MIGHTY WHAT THE HELL KIND OF "SCIENCE" KEEPS ITS DATA, METHODOLOGY, AND ASSUMPTIONS "SECRET"?

That is not science. There are lots of emails from these guys where they say things like "There's no point giving our data to the climate skeptics; all they want to do is punch holes in it."

Well... yes. This is how science is done, you see. You make a claim; you present your evidence; other people try to punch holes in your claim and your evidence. If your claim and evidence stand up to the fire, congratulations, you just advanced science. If not -- well, you also advanced science by failing. Not as much as success would have advanced science, but still -- a failed theory, disproven, also advances science. At least it eliminates one bad theory from consideration.

But what these guys are doing -- and this is the real scandal that no one wants to address -- is merely presenting their claims as naked assertions, with charts and displays to "back them up," and then when people ask for the data, methodology, and assumptions that went into creating those displays, they simply refuse.

And no one calls them on this. The media and the rest of the cocksucking left, which claims to be so "logical" and "pro-science," apparently has no idea that when you present claims, you're supposed to disclose your data and assumptions and methodology.

Science is in the business of reproducible results. That is the central point of it. That results must be reproducible by anyone following the same procedure.

But they refuse to disclose what procedure produced these results, so no one can reproduce them. At least -- no one except their buddies, chatting together in secret email lists, telling each other what "tricks" to use to "hide the decline."

And no one points out: This is not science. Science is not secret. It is open, it is conducted openly, information -- the goal of science -- is to be disseminated, not hoarded and kept under lock and key.

These dirty motherfuckers are doing the exact opposite, guarding their data and methods like it's the Coke formula, like it's a business.

Because it is a business. It is not science. It is a money-making for-profit enterprise, so trade secrets are implicated.

Posted by: Ace at 12:06 PM | Comments (332)
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Not just any terrorist but a so-called High Value Target who was responsible for Kos' favorite murder of Blackwater employees in Fallujah back in '04.

The three, all members of the Navy's elite commando unit, have refused non-judicial punishment — called an admiral's mast — and have requested a trial by court-martial.

Ahmed Hashim Abed, whom the military code-named "Objective Amber," told investigators he was punched by his captors — and he had the bloody lip to prove it.

Now, instead of being lauded for bringing to justice a high-value target, three of the SEAL commandos, all enlisted, face assault charges and have retained lawyers.

Matthew McCabe, a Special Operations Petty Officer Second Class (SO-2), is facing three charges: dereliction of performance of duty for willfully failing to safeguard a detainee, making a false official statement, and assault.

Petty Officer Jonathan Keefe, SO-2, is facing charges of dereliction of performance of duty and making a false official statement.

Petty Officer Julio Huertas, SO-1, faces those same charges and an additional charge of impediment of an investigation.

As an added bit of poetry, the three will be arraigned on, wait for it, December 7th.

Maybe there's more to it than this but a bloody lip? We are charging three American heroes with giving a terrorist responsible for the murders of four Americans a bloody lip?

I know that the men and women who volunteer to serve our nation in time of war do so for many reasons, including a great sense of patriotic duty but it wouldn't surprise me if many of them decide to take an off-ramp from the military in the next few years.

Loyalty is a two way street but right now it seems a Muslim Army doctor communicating with al Qaeda gets more of the benefit of the doubt than three Navy SEALS on the front line.

As I said, there may well be more to it than this but I fear there's not.

Added: Jack Murtha just emailed to say,

This guys are cold blooded smackers and I won't rest until they are given the death penalty. Coincidentally, the executions will take place in my district after we build a prison and death chamber with a 7 billion dollar earmark I am inserting in next year's budget.

Also, Andrew Sullivan emails to ask if there are any pictures, preferably with Abed naked and tied down with leather straps to something. He says it's just research.

I may have made those emails up. Who is to say?

Posted by: DrewM at 11:34 AM | Comments (164)
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