Today is the sixth day of the Proposition 8 trial in San Francisco. I will be livetweeting starting at 8:30 at @gabrielmalor. more...

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 05:38 AM | Comments (56)
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Big day!

Also: Thank you to the Bay Area Morons for the warm welcome. We had 16 people turn out last night. It was nice to meet Keith, Diane, Rod, Rodney, Alex, Roc, Clark, John, Dan, Doug, and Cthulhu. And you guys whose names I'm blanking on. Oh, it was nice to see Sobek again. Special thanks to Travis for buying drinks for everyone and for an excellent toast: "Scott Brown!" I'll definitely have to come up this way again.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 04:53 AM | Comments (225)
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Well yea, if you predict non-appearing summer heat waves, and "warm" winters where the continent is frozen in a block of ice, the customer might just kinda wonder about the quality of the product they're paying for.

... as the BBC considers dropping the Met Office forecasts after almost 90 years.

The contract runs out in April and the broadcaster has been in talks with the New Zealand forecasters, Metra.

Again, accuracy is the issue, with the Met Office coming under severe criticism over the prediction of a barbeque summer last July. The UK suffered a washout.

And its forecast of a mild winter attracted derision as temperatures plunged to as low as -22C in parts of Britain.

A poll commissioned by the Sunday Times this weekend found that 74 per cent of people saying they believed forecasts were inaccurate.

However, the Met Office staff are still in line for a bonus, with a muted pot of £1m to share out...

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 04:48 AM | Comments (22)
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Sign up to vote, and commit to making sure a friend votes with you.

Posted by: Ace at 09:34 PM | Comments (235)
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Welcome to holiday Monday. Hope everybody is ready for the real start of the week. I'm still traveling so expect the ONT to be up a little later and a little skimpier than usual this week.

Milestone: Israel suffered no Islamic terror attacks within its borders in 2009
This is the lowest level since the second intifada began in 2000 and is due to the successful tactics the Israelis developed to stop Palestinian terrorism and their constant adaption since then:

This included going after terrorist leaders and technical specialists, and either capturing or (failing that) killing them. Raids and air attacks were made against buildings used by the terrorists, and tight security on Israelis borders were instituted. This last measure crushed the Palestinian economy, which put popular pressure on the terrorists to stop their attacks, and promise to keep it that way.

So terrorism as a tactic can be defeated with a combination of border security and going after the terrorist leaders. I grade this as Israelis 1, terrorism experts 0.

Even Cliff Clavin is Compaigning for Brown
And he hates dirty hippies too. Here's what he said at a rally for Brown:

This isn’t the Democratic Party of our fathers and grandfathers. This is the party of Woodstock hippies. I was at Woodstock — I built the stage. And when everything fell apart, and people were fighting for peanut-butter sandwiches, it was the National Guard who came in and saved the same people who were protesting them. So when Hillary Clinton a few years ago wanted to build a Woodstock memorial, I said it should be a statue of a National Guardsman feeding a crying hippie.

Posted by: Open Blog at 06:43 PM | Comments (798)
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These aren't mine; they're from someone2, who went out holding signs today before heading to this event in Scott Brown's hometown.

The scene at 7pm

Posted by: Open Blog at 06:02 PM | Comments (145)
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Plan B.

via Allah over at Twitter, and a commenter or two also I believe. Not sure, I don't know how to use the internets very well.

ALSO Unrelated but annoying, some French minister twit accuses US of occupying Haiti while we gear up to provide meaningful humanitarian aid, and Venezuelan twit echoes same.

ALSO ALSO Slublog puts me some f'n' knowledge with this (Times link),

In an interview on Monday, Representative Bart Stupak, Democrat of Michigan, who opposes the Senate bill in part because of provisions related to insurance coverage of abortions, said: “House members will not vote for the Senate bill. There’s no interest in that.”

When the idea was suggested at a meeting of the House Democratic Caucus last week, Mr. Stupak said, “It went over like a lead balloon.”

“Why would any House member vote for the Senate bill, which is loaded with special-interest provisions for certain states?” Mr. Stupak asked. “That’s not health care.”

In addition to his concerns about the abortion provisions, Mr. Stupak said the Senate bill does not do enough to improve the quality of health care, and it preserves the federal antitrust exemption for health insurance, which would be repealed under the House bill.

Not that I put any great faith in Bart Stupak. I don't think there's much they wouldn't do to get this crappy thing done, regardless of the outcome in Massachusett[e]s tomorrow.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 03:37 PM | Comments (484)
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But really, it has been known, and grumbled about for years, that conservatives (and the GOP) were clueless about using the Internet for partisan purposes.

For a long time -- not sure if you noticed this -- but this blog followed the older model of sniping at the media and trying to avoid direct action type stuff, all spectator sort of stuff.

In the 2008 campaign I personally started a more Kos-like direct boosterism. Especially months out from an election, where it was GAME FACES, MAN all the time.

Is that good or bad? Well, your mileage may differ. Whatever standing I had as a disinterested observer (the amount of such standing I once had: zero) is gone now, of course.

Anyway, that's my own discovery of the use of the internet for expressly partisan purposes. Ross Douthat notes the conservative netroots are finally a force to be reckoned with.

BTW: I wasn't comfortable about this at first. It is easier to be against stuff than for stuff. Most crap sucks, so if you're against it as a general rule, you're right 90% of the time.

It's harder to be *for* something. You can look silly if you're *for* something and that thing turns out to be not so good.

Well, not harder really. It's not hard to be a cheerleader. But certainly you're investing more of your credibility when you're huckstering something.

But, be that as it may, at some point it's time to drop the "disinterested commentator" line and just admit the obvious, I'm in the bag for the GOP/conservative candidate, and might as well fully embrace that.

Posted by: Ace at 12:56 PM | Comments (487)
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I want to make a romance on this poll.

A new InsiderAdvantage poll conducted exclusively for POLITICO shows Republican Scott Brown surging to a nine-point advantage over Martha Coakley a day before Massachusetts voters trek to the ballot box to choose a new senator.

According to the survey conducted Sunday evening, Brown leads the Democratic attorney general 52 percent to 43 percent.

"I actually think the bottom is falling out," said InsiderAdvantage CEO Matt Towery, referring to Coakley's fall in the polls over the last ten days. "I think that this candidate is in freefall. Clearly this race is imploding for her."

The numbers show males and independents overwhelmingly breaking for Brown, who has married his GQ looks with a populist tone in a pick-up truck on the campaign trail.

Brown holds a 15-point lead among males and crushes Coakley by 41 points among self-described independents, a group that's been steadily inching away from the Democratic party over the last year due to growing apprehension with government spending, bailouts and health care reform.

"Men are not going to vote for Coakley at all. You have a very angry male voter who's repudiating whatever is being said in Washington and they're taking it out on this woman. And independents are clearly going to the Republican in droves. What's left are the Democratic voters," said Towery, who is a former aide to Newt Gingrich. Angry male voters? Et tu, Towery?

I guess there is some angry out there. But come on, don't parrot the "angry white men" crap.

Thanks to Geoff again.

Posted by: Ace at 12:19 PM | Comments (269)
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Final ARG poll: 52 to 45.

I said on Twitter that Brown would get 25% Democratic crossover votes. Right now, 23%.

And it's a snow day in Boston.

Meanwhile, across the street at the Massachusetts Teachers Association, the holiday and a bitter winter storm have kept the crowds away from a phone bank for Democratic candidate Martha Coakley. As of 10:20 this morning, not a single volunteer had yet arrived for the 10am phone bank. MTA Webmaster Meg Secatore tells Watchdog.org that the severe snow and ice that have covered Massachusetts highways are keeping people from the phones.

Obviously this helps Brown. Brown's troops kind of heard it was one of Massachusett[e]'s rare genuine elections some time ago.

This video, I'm told, is lots of fun. (I can't see it; am linking it again.)

Your Tears Are Delicious, Mmm, Mmm. David Shuster: Has Massachusett[e]s lost its mind?

But nothing is really better than this. I was waiting for this. This, the moment where it finally gets through to these cocooned, I-only-read-liberal-stuff-that-protects-me-from-hard-reality lefties that the nation is not, not happy about Obama's programme. (British spelling deliberate, it's socialist.)

Finally -- the ugly truth dawns on butterball pudgebunny Chris Matthews.

With a visible frown on his face, Matthews told "Daily Rundown" co-host Chuck Todd Monday that recent polling data "has to do with reality of a terrible economy, of this new burden that people feel being put on their shoulders of bigger debt, perhaps taxes coming down the road."

Matthews continued, "And the fear that the burden of healthcare is going to be much heavier than the benefit."

The "Hardball" host cautioned, "I think it's going to show up in Massachusetts tomorrow with the results there"

On the other hand, there's one of the biggest cocooners for the biggest cocoon in America, Gail Collins of the New York Times. Once again, when the public chooses a Republican over a Democrat, it's all about the messenger, never the message. (Don't question the message, ever.)

So. Just like with Bush's win in 2000 and 2004, it's only about the personalities of the candidates.

It's pretty clear that no matter what happens, the voters are sending a message that they are in a bad mood. You cannot fail to notice that people are ticked off. The economy feels awful. The weather feels awful. Did you know that the cold snap in Florida hit the people who breed tropical fish so hard that there is a national guppy shortage? Things are bad, bad, bad.

If Coakley loses, the inevitable conclusion will be that the message was a repudiation of Obama. My own theory is that the national angst is causing people to ignore the issues and just react to candidates' personalities.

If forced to choose a Senate candidate to be stranded with on a desert island, most voters would probably pick Brown over Coakley. Possibly even if the question was who they wanted to sit next to on a short bus ride.

But didn't we get over the idea of voting for the person you'd most like to have a beer with after George W. Bush?

Doubtless, no seriously, personality plays an issue. I knew Brown was going to win when I saw he was handsome in that distinguished grayed-but-still-youthful way and spoke well and seemed like a good guy.

But that is hardly the only thing going on. People are not ready to walk on broken glass to vote against Coakley just because Scott Brown is such a cool guy.

But that's always the claim. If they lose, their own messenger was too aloof, too lacking the common touch, but her ideas, of course, were sound and in fact wildly popular. And our candidate was of course just an affable idiot.

Posted by: Ace at 10:53 AM | Comments (416)
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