Months after everyone else projected the deficit would be far higher than the White House "projected," the White House gets around to confirming it. Correction: This is the CBO revising the deficit up from $1.2 trillion to $1.8 trillion. The White House has admitted only an $89 billion correction. (Only an $89 billion correction. Strange days.) Sorry for the conflation of the two.

And the White House admits no job growth through the rest of the year. I'm sure he'll be "saving" millions of jobs, though.

Former AoSHQ commenter Geoff at put together this amazing chart. Below, see in blue Obama's own projections of unemployment -- what he predicted unemployment would be with the Spendulous, and the higher unemployment he predicted we'd have without the Spendulous.

All Geoff added was the red triangles indicating real-world unemployment rates in March and April.

That's right -- the unemployment numbers track exactly with Obama's prediction of what would happen without his Spendulus.

So what has the Spendulus accomplished? According to Obama's own predictions, nothing.

I think this is just an outstanding little chart, and the MSM should be embarrassed that a blogger* did it before it even occurred to them that such amazing technologies were even possible.

* Not even a blogger, really. Innocent Bystanders insists it's not a blog, it's a commenting site where the commenters just happen to post blog entries.

Posted by: Ace at 11:47 AM | Comments (74)
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Why isn't the press asking John Edwards and Reille Hunter if they always practiced safe sex?

A bit of news on this front. First up, Elizabeth Edwards is borderline delusional, and by "borderline," I mean "fully."

"If you take that piece [my husband's longterm affair with the woman who'd replace me after I died of cancer, and his siring of an illegitimate daughter by her] out, I do have a perfect marriage."
--Elizabeth Edwards on Oprah.

And except from head to toe, I am Gina Lollobrigida. (Yes, am feeling retro today.) Excuse me if I seem flippant, too, but I just watched a woman claiming to be Elizabeth Edwards tell Oprah and all of us out in TV Land that it's immaterial to her if her husband made a baby with his mistress, and the whole thing was kind of surreal. "Completely extraneous to my life,'' is how she put it.

Still, she slapped the nameless blond around pretty good. (Nameless because the one condition placed on the interview was that Rielle Hunter's name would not be spoken. The Voldemort clause, I guess. "This person,'' is what Elizabeth called her.) And of her husband, John Edwards? "No one's perfect,'' she said. That is one lucky son-of-a-mill-worker.

...

By default or design, Elizabeth is not really a member of the reality-based community. She has, by her own account, constructed her own preferred version of events. So of course she doesn't want to know if that's his baby: "Actually, there's not much reason for me – this is the part where you have to concentrate on your own life and this doesn't – whatever the facts are, it doesn't change my life in a sense.''

When Oprah remarks that hmm, she doesn't know a lot of men who would run off to a hotel somewhere in the middle of the night to hold a baby that wasn't theirs, she repeats her husband's lie – or maybe he'd repeated hers: "Golly, then you don't know that many politicians. We do it all the time. Holding babies is what we do.'' We, she said. We politicians do it all the time.

A little story about St. John, Patron Saint of Mill-Workers and Class Warriors:

Just a week or so before my interview, Elizabeth Edwards was honored at the Time 100 gala in New York (to celebrate the magazineÂ’s annual roundup of the most influential people in the world), and my friend went over to her suite at the Regency hotel with a manicurist and a makeup artist to help her get ready. Midway through the process, John Edwards storms in, barely speaks and goes into another room. Five minutes later he comes back out, announces he needs the room and throws them all out in front of a speechless Elizabeth. Her hair had been done, but her makeup wasnÂ’t finished and neither were her nails.

I can only imagine that at least part of such a scene had to do with the fact that the night’s event was about her and not him. This is a guy who lost his cool on the trail when someone had the temerity to interrupt his stock speech with a question; I saw him go ballistic on a heckler dressed like a giant waffle who had followed him and Kerry to a series of train stops. (Kerry, wisely, made a joke of the guy, while at one point Edwards – in a bit of after-the-fact irony – stuck his finger in the man’s face and shouted, “My wife and children are on this train, it’s time you showed them some respect.”)

And one last bit: Edwards' staffers said they would have sabotaged the campaign to prevent Edwards from gaining the nomination, had he ever threatened to win it.

True? Who knows. They sure kept quiet when they were on his payroll.

Posted by: Ace at 11:06 AM | Comments (62)
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Apparently the man raised in Indonesia who recently terrified New York City with a barnstorming 747 think 9/11 is kinda funny, despite Gibby's disclaimers to the contrary.

A couple of more updates on this story. First, Obama half-heartedly spoofed his addiction to the teleprompter...

And Ben Shapiro calls Sykes "gutless:

Sykes, for those who haven’t seen her stellar work in gems like CondomNation, Brother Bear 2, and Over the Hedge, is a militant lesbian with a grating voice and an obnoxious strut. She recently proclaimed during the California Prop. 8 debate that “Everybody that knows me personally, they know I’m gay … Now, I gotta get in their face. I’m proud to be a woman. I’m proud to be a black woman, and I’m proud to be gay.”

Well, apparently sheÂ’s not so proud to be gay. Because when given the opportunity to make jokes about the nationÂ’s leading proponent of opposite-sex marriage, President Barack Obama, she said precisely nothing. Instead, she chose to gently stroke his ego with jokes about his pecs, his dog, and his basketball skills.

I'm surprised she even managed to bitterly cling to her lesbianism having been so close to The One's raw sexual magnetism.

Posted by: Ace at 10:28 AM | Comments (137)
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For, well, combat stress. Five dead, three wounded. He did not take his own life and is in custody.

Edit: Snark about Joe Biden deleted, as it's not the right time for snark of any kind.

Posted by: Ace at 10:10 AM | Comments (29)
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Jay Cost says so, and I'm persuaded. In just the space of a one minute answer, Steele manages to accuse the GOP base of religious intolerance and accuses Mitt Romney of being a dishonest flip-flopper.

As Cost notes, either or both of those things may be true, and are fair comment. (Yeah, way too many people are way too bothered by Romney's Mormonism, and yeah, he flip-flopped.)

But as he also says: Under no circumstance should such statements be coming from the RNC chair.

On the issue of flip-flopping - all signs point to Mitt Romney having an interest in a future presidential candidacy. He might very well succeed where he failed last cycle, becoming the 2012 Republican nominee. That would make these comments quite unfortunate. One could imagine the DNC working this into a general election campaign ad. The kicker is pretty obvious: "Mitt Romney's own boss doesn't think he's honest. Why should you?"

Second, the RNC Chairman has no business talking about a tension that exists within his party, unless the goal is to minimize it.... [I]t's bad for the party's image. If you're trying to woo marginal voters, you don't want to emphasize the fact that groups within the party have conflicts. Think Progress headlined its clip of Steele as this: "Steele Calls GOP Base Bigoted, Says They 'Rejected' Romney Because They Have 'Issues With Mormonism.'" Republicans should hope that the mainstream press does not run with Steele's comments, as it will only forward the "GOP is shrinking and narrow" meme, which he has actually helped along in the past.

I doubt very much that the party will suffer any long run damage from his most recent comments. The problem is: if he will say something this now, what's to stop him from flapping his gums when it could do the party real harm? What if, for instance, he mouths off one night backstage at the 2012 convention in front of a Politico reporter? That'd be a great story for the party during it's crucial week of self-promotion!

As I was quoting that, I was about to write "As an RNC Chairman, Michael Steele has been a great talk-show host." But Cost already made this point. I'll direct you there rather than quote more of it.

I have defended this guy at every turn. Or, well, most turns. This is the last straw. Michael Steele is the latest person who needs to learn the lesson It's not all about you, dude.

He seems to believe that he is so magnificently charming and persuasive that he can gain voters by being overly candid and overly "interesting" as a speaker. And, if he had one quarter of the charisma he seems to believe he's been blessed with, he might be right.

But he doesn't, and he's wrong. He's not particularly charismatic and he does not have the skills to turn these dangerous statements into rapport-building assets. They just continue to gather on the ground like unexploded grenades.

Give him the talk show he so plainly craves -- you can't separate this guy from a microphone with a crowbar -- and get someone less "interesting" and far less taken with himself as chairman. I'm tired of Steele's increasingly Wapnerian Rain Man act.

Thanks to someone, and also via Hot Air's headlines.

Posted by: Ace at 09:52 AM | Comments (208)
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Gen. David McKiernan, who was less than one year into an 18-24 month command tour, was basically fired by Secretary Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mullen.

The change is aimed at "getting fresh thinking, fresh eyes on the problem," Gates told a Pentagon news conference.

The move comes as more than 21,000 additional U.S. forces begin to arrive in Afghanistan, dispatched by Obama to confront the Taliban more forcefully this spring and summer.

Replacing McKiernan will be Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who has had a top administrative job at the Joint Chiefs of Staff for less than a year. He is a former commander of the Joint Special Operations Command.

McKiernan held the command in Afghanistan for about 11 months.

Gates recommended to Obama that McChrystal be nominated for the top job and that Lt. Gen. David M. Rodriguez be McChrystal's deputy. He urged the Senate to confirm the two quickly.

Possibly the most awesome part of this is that McChrystal headed the the Joint Special Operations Command which crazy Seymour Hersh said was nothing more than the home of Dick Cheney's super secret assassination teams.

Expect lots more shortly on why McKiernan was fired and what Gates and McMullen expect out of McChrystal.

One name I didn't hear mentioned in the press conference (though I missed some of it) was David Petraeus. McKiernan took over in Afghanistan last summer, Petraeus took over CentCom last fall. I'm pretty much of the, "whatever Petraeus wants, Petraeus should get" school, so if this change reflects his thinking, it's likely a good thing.

I should note one possible reason Petraeus wasn't invoked here is because he wanted McKiernan to stay. In which case applying my "whatever Petraeus wants, Petraeus should get" rule, this is bad.

As you can see in the comments, there are a lot of reasons this may have happened. Time will tell.

Posted by: DrewM at 09:37 AM | Comments (35)
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True? Who knows. "Pakistan reported" is very much like "Joe Biden said."

Pakistani Air Force fighter jets pounded militant positions in the Swat Valley on Monday as the military pressed its offensive on three Taliban-held districts northwest of the capital, the interior minister said.

Rehman Malik, Pakistan’s interior minister, told reporters in Islamabad that 700 militants had been killed in the last four days of intense fighting — a far higher figure than has been reported by the military. No official reason was provided for the discrepancy.

At the weekend, the military put the number of killed militants at around 140 and has reported additional militants killed since then. The Taliban have not commented on their own casualties since the start of the latest offensive, and the death toll cannot be independently verified because aid agencies and journalists are barred from the conflict areas.

Pakistan's President, by the way, repeated the increasingly-popular line that he believes Osama bin Ladin is dead.

While many believe al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is hiding in western Pakistan along the Afghanistan border, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari does not.

On NBC's "Meet the Press," he blamed the U.S. for losing track of bin Laden in Tora Bora and repeated his belief that the terrorist leader is dead.

He added he has been told by those in American intelligence no one has heard from bin Laden for seven years.

I believe that too, but Pakistan obviously has a vested interest in believing this. It takes the pressure off them.

Posted by: Ace at 09:28 AM | Comments (15)
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Video of his latest unhinged bit of resume padding, plus rebuttal.

Joe Biden's never actually done anything in his life, except vote on stuff and sponsor some legislation. (Most of it very minor -- his claim to fame, apparently, is a federal law about violence against women, which is primarily (almost completely) a matter for local law enforcement, so that gives you a sense of his clock-watching, time-passing career.)

Pretty much the only thing Joe Biden has ever done is spout off. Well, when all you have is a hammer, all the world looks like nails. We continue to see Joe Biden continuing to claim that his mere observations and rants have somehow altered the course of history -- so insightful and prescient were they.

Well, let me note something: Over the past four or five years, I've said on many occasions, "Hey, maybe we should win the Iraq War." In fact, I think you guys have said that too once or twice.

And Lo -- our mighty pronouncements have become actual fact, for our troops won the Iraq War.

Could they have won it if we didn't say "Hey let's win this war"? Would they have chanced upon that idea all by themselves, without our suggesting it to them?

I don't want to take too much credit, but the answer is obviously No.

I won the Iraq War just by saying doing so was a good idea. You guys won the war too. Take a bow.

Are we all heroes? Well... shyah, yeah. We won a war, dude.

What's scary is that Joe Bide is not, at his heart, a liar. He really believes this crap. Part of his brain makes up this daft crap, and the other part of his brain seizes upon it.

It's like waking up from a dream and temporarily not knowing what's real and what's dream. Except Joe Biden walks around in this fey state where the borders of reality and fantasy bleed into each other 24/7.

Posted by: Ace at 08:59 AM | Comments (90)
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A popular CBS golf analyst has been forced to apologize for making this observation in a magazine:

"From my own experience visiting the troops in the Middle East, I can tell you this though," Feherty wrote toward the end of his column. "Despite how the conflict has been portrayed by our glorious media, if you gave any U.S. soldier a gun with two bullets in it, and he found himself in an elevator with Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Osama bin Laden, thereÂ’s a good chance that Nancy Pelosi would get shot twice, and Harry Reid and bin Laden would be strangled to death."

But Sykes? Funny.

I'm not sure if this got covered on the main page over the weekend. If it was, my apologies for double-posting.

Here the media cheers like girls at a Beatles concert when Obama says, accurately, "Many of you covered me; all of you voted for me."

He noticed us! He noticed us! Tell Rahm to tell Obama we might like him, but only if he likes us back.

They're cheering the admission of the elephant in the room. It's liberating, I guess.

Here's some of Sykes' performance.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 08:52 AM | Comments (74)
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Not many details yet.

U.S. media quote an American military source as saying a U.S. soldier has shot and killed at least four of his fellow soldiers at a U.S. base in Baghdad.

A brief military statement earlier said that five U.S. soldiers were killed Monday at the U.S. base Camp Liberty in the Iraqi capital.

The military provided few details, but said an investigation is underway.

It was not immediately clear if the alleged gunman was among the dead.

Horrible if true.

Posted by: Ace at 07:57 AM | Comments (23)
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