Texas takes the lead with :19 left.

Posted by: Ace at 08:27 PM | Comments (124)
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Not to get too "2008 Retro" on you all, but would anyone happen to have a screencap of the "Congressional Motors" blog entry on Rick Roberts' blog on the KFMB-AM in San Diego website from early in the day on Christmas Eve? It'll have to be from before mid afternoon (central time) when they flushed the whole thing down the ol' memory hole. I'd love to find copies of it from before and after the attribution to Iowahawk was added to the original entry. Any screencap that also includes the 900+ comments would be peachy.

Why didn't I get a screencap myself? Uhm, yeah. Hello McFly! MORON BLOGGER, remember? People, what makes you think that I know how these blog thingies work anyhow? Have you ever seen me embed a YouTube video here? Think there's a reason why it's never happened? Hell, I don't know if I could even construct a link to any halfway decent lesbian pr0n, much less link a thoughtful, provocative article. I'm usually on the phone with Dave in Texas at least twice during every posting attempt, crying and asking him "Dave, why don't they LIKE me?"

If youse gots whats I needs, youse can reach me at the usual place (farmerruss "at" gmail "dot" com).

On a completely unrelated note, make sure to go vote for the Ace of Spades HQ as the Best Conservative Blog of 2008. As of 10:30 pm CST, the AoSHQ is only ahead of Pamela at Atlas Shrugs by just over 100 votes. If you've been paying attention to the Senate Race in Minnesota, you already know that a 100-vote lead can disappear like virginity on prom night, so go and show your devotion to one of the leading conservative thinkers on the interwebthingy*, mmmmKay?

* (OK, I'm brown nosing here, but dude CAN flat out ball when he's in the zone. Yeah, Pamela's a great blogger who's got a much nicer rack than Ace does, but are we the sort of shallow mouthbreathers who'll vote for who's the best representative of the conservative blogosphere based on their cup size? No. We're the sort of shallow mouthbreathers who'll vote for who's the best representative of the conservative blogosphere based on memorable phrases like "Suck the barbed cock of Satan" and unforgettable graphics like the "Andrew Sullivan Freakout Alert Status". Besides, lauraw just told me that Dave told her that Slublog overheard DrewM talking to Jack, who said that Gabe thinks that if the AoSHQ fails to win this year, Ace is finally going to follow through with switching formats to "all LOLcats, all the time". I'm super serial here.)

LATE BREAKING UPDATE: I just finished voting on all the categories for the weblog awards, and I found one that's AoSHQ Lifestyle approved in the Best Pet Blogs category. You'll know which one it is when you get there. Now you don't HAVE to vote for Ace. And you don't HAVE to vote for nicedeb. But you Abso-freaking-lutely HAVE to vote for Fuck You, Penguin for Best Pet Blog of 2008. I'm begging you here, if you ever listen to anything I say, listen to this: Fuck You, Penguin MUST win this award. The future of this timeline depends upon it. Well, maybe not THIS timeline. How about the timeline where Teh Fred & Sarah Palin win the White House with a 63-35 landslide?

Posted by: Russ from Winterset at 07:39 PM | Comments (51)
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Remember all the drowning polar bears we were supposed to worry about because there wasn't enough ice in the arctic?

Well, not so much.

Thanks to a rapid rebound in recent months, global sea ice levels now equal those seen 29 years ago, when the year 1979 also drew to a close.

Ice levels had been tracking lower throughout much of 2008, but rapidly recovered in the last quarter. In fact, the rate of increase from September onward is the fastest rate of change on record, either upwards or downwards.

The data is being reported by the University of Illinois's Arctic Climate Research Center, and is derived from satellite observations of the Northern and Southern hemisphere polar regions.

Interestingly, it's kind of hard to find stories on the sea ice levels now that they don't fit the 'we're going to die unless you give up your car' narrative. Something tells me that if the levels were going down, we'd be hearing an awful lot about it.

Funny how that works, isn't it? more...

Posted by: DrewM at 07:37 PM | Comments (74)
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During the first week of the war, Dave in Texas called my attention to news outfits using headlines to editorialize about Israelis. Reuters did it again tonight with this story entitled "Israel deaf to truce calls as Gaza battles rage on" by reporter Nidal al-Mughrabi.

That makes it sounds like Hamas is ready to quit, if only those blood-thirsty Israelis would accept their calls for a truce. Of course, in the fifth paragraph the truth comes out:

Hamas vowed to fight on in "every street, every alley" and threatened to fire more missiles across the border into Israel.

So the headline could have just as accurately (though just as incompletely) read: "Hamas deaf to truce calls as Gaza battles rage on." But that would have run counter to Reuters' and this particular reporter's goals. Incidentally, Nidal al-Mughrabi's biased reporting was well-documented at least as far back as November 2006. Same old story at Reuters.

Later: By the way, this came to my attention because the headline was the top link on Google News, thus adding to my long-simmering suspicions about Google's own editorial activities.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 05:27 PM | Comments (88)
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She hasn't said anything lately that would offer a pretext for this.

NBC, obviously, has decided its brand identity is urban liberal. Their shows skew that way. Their news skews that way. Their sister cable channels like Bravo skew way that way. (NTTAWWT.)

They are, like the New York Times, making the decision to give up on big sections of a potential audience to pander to, and thus attract the loyalty of, a narrower subset of that audience.

But NBC is taking a bigger risk: They're first and foremost a general popular entertainment company, something historically which has been considered an studiously apolitical venture, general.

Can they induce more liberals to watch than they alienate conservatives? I doubt it.

While they will couch their banning of Coulter in ostensibly neutral language -- she's a firebrand; she's not a serious critic; she's an entertainer, etc. -- they will of course fail to apply the Coulter Doctrine to anyone not named Ann Coulter.

UPDATE [DrewM.]: NBC says it's not a ban, just that they don't have time, what with the war in Gaza and all the Hoping and Changing in D.C. and they just don't have a segment to spare or something like that.

As for Perez Hilton, he was already booked in the fluffy and lower rated 4th hour, where Coulter was in the highly prized 7am slot. So, it's not exactly a direct switch.

CBS' perennial bottom dwelling Morning Early Show snapped up the chance to have Coulter on to chat and presumably blast their competitor NBC.

Posted by: Ace at 01:31 PM | Comments (314)
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Complicated, the judge agrees.

Posted by: Ace at 01:25 PM | Comments (15)
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Now this is getting fun.

(CNN) – The secretary of the U.S. Senate on Monday rejected the certificiate of appointment for Roland Burris, named by Illinois' controversial governor to fill Barack Obama's Senate seat, according to an aide to the secretary.

The aide said Secretary of the Senate Nancy Erickson rejected Burris' appointment because it does not conform with the Senate rule requiring that the secretary of state — in this case, Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White — must sign the certificate of appointment along with the governor.

White has declined to sign the certificate, siding with some Senate Democrats who say Burris should not be seated because of the cloud over Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who is accused of trying to sell Obama's Senate seat.

According to a Democratic source and a Democratic Senate leadership aide, without the signed certificate Burris will be denied access to the Senate floor.

Show up anyway, of course.

And then the super double fun begins.

Posted by: Slublog at 11:12 AM | Comments (106)
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What?

I don't see a damn thing in this Wiki bio indicating any relevant experience for the job. Except for being a lifelong partisan hack who can be trusted to hide the stuff that might be embarrassing for Obama.

Like, say, proof of Iran's nuke experiments-- embarrassing, because if that gets out publicly, it would cause an outcry and calls for Obama to address the issue. The only credential this guy has is that he can be counted on to safely hide such information from the public, and vigorously go after those who might leak it.

Thanks to Alice H.

Posted by: Ace at 10:44 AM | Comments (156)
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I'll note the interesting stuff.

Another feed here, though I understand this one has more glitches than the first one. Which has glitches as it is.

Thanks to Alice H.

Rundown: Geraghty's covering it, a bit reporting the lapses in conservative orthodoxy of each candidate.

I know I said I'd blog anything interesting. But I've been listening, and I don't hear anything noteworthy.

Posted by: Ace at 09:48 AM | Comments (14)
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I think this is the video LauraW just tipped me to.

This is the spin that we all knew was coming. Indeed, we've already seen it a dozen times, but not from Harry "The War is Lost, the Surge Has Failed" Reid. The claim, of course, is that by arguing for surrender and defeat, the liberal defeatists were actually arguing for a change in strategy that would result in victory.

Bear in mind, this is especially galling coming from him, as he did not merely say the war is lost. He also was a prime opponent of the surge, arguing it could never work. And then, when the surge began, he said it was doomed. And then, even when it succeeded, he declared the surge a failure.

And now that the surge is so obviously a victory that even he can't deny it, he says You're welcome. I did that.

Thanks, Harry!

Posted by: Ace at 09:21 AM | Comments (94)
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