That daffyhead McKittrick says the news is so good Joe Biden just might take credit fo it.

There's video there, which I'd like to steal, but then you wouldn't click over.

Speaking of shoot-downs -- here's some sweet super-slo-mo of mosquitos being shot down in flight by a laser built with parts acquired off eBay. It's a Death Star for bugs.

Posted by: Ace at 11:00 AM | Comments (110)
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I've mentioned this again and again, but just in case:

Adam Nagourney is the Times' go-to spinner on polls.

He only writes two types of stories, with two types of headlines.

When the polls are good for the Democrats, he highlights the big finding of the poll right in the headline, and trumpets it in the piece, starting at paragraph one and never stopping.

Now, when polls are bad for Democrats, he searches the poll for some very secondary or tertiary question and headlines the poll that way, as if that's the grabby information. He's positively shameless about this -- I have seen him take a poll showing, say, good poll numbers for Bush, and headline it about some minor process question, like Poll Finds Country Still Uncertain About Traffic-Light-Placement-Improvement Commission. And that's really not much of an exaggeration, either -- he will skip the ten most important and most dramatic poll questions to find something in the poll that's barely positive for Democrats, or, if he can't find that, he'll just write about some nonsense third-order question about some trivial issue, burying the main findings entirely.

He is, as I say, utterly shameless about this. His job is not to inform readers, but to cocoon them and protect them from the psychic harm of disquieting news. And over the years he's gotten... well, I can't say he's gotten "good" at it, because it's so obvious as to make you literally chuckle aloud. Let's say over the years he's gotten practiced at it.

So, the NYT poll (I think conducted with CBS; this is probably that same poll noted a day or two ago) now finds its lowest support for Obama ever, at a paltry 46%.

Do you think NYT readers might like to know this important fact?

The NYT editors don't think you do. Because Nagourney is once again pressed into service to put a DNC-approved gloss on a very ugly poll.

First of all, let's check that headline:

Poll Finds Edge for Obama Over G.O.P. Among the Public

Absurd. First of all, this is hardly a surprise. The President -- a specific person -- generally enjoys and advantage over the opposite party. That's usually true. I am guessing that only when you get down to very low poll numbers, as Bush did at the end of his term, does a vague amorphous party, comprised mostly of bad stereotypes and generalizations in the public's mind, poll better on trust and such than the President.

Furthermore, this represents no change whatsoever from previous polls. Does Obama poll ahead of the vaguely sinister GOP on many issues? Sure he does -- same as he has throughout his term. (Although that edge is declining.)

So is this news? No, it's not news. The news here, if you were determined to report this secondary finding, is that the GOP has improved on this question, and Obama deteriorated.

But for Nagourney, this old, expected, unchanged non-news is of course his lede.

I'll mark each sentence and key finding with a number, so we know how important Nagourney thinks Obama's danger-zone approval rate is.

Poll Finds Edge for Obama Over G.O.P. Among the Public

By ADAM NAGOURNEY and MEGAN THEE-BRENAN
Published: February 11, 2010

WASHINGTON — At a time of deepening political disaffection and intensified distress about the economy, President Obama enjoys an edge over Republicans in the battle for public support, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.[1]

Not news. Last poll found the same thing, and so did the one before that, and the one before that, and the one before that. The news here -- the change -- is, again, that Obama's edge is declining, not that he has one.

While the president is showing signs of vulnerability on his handling of the economy — a majority of respondents say he has yet to offer a clear plan for creating jobs — Americans blame former President George W. Bush, Wall Street and Congress much more than they do Mr. Obama for the nation’s economic problems and the budget deficit, the poll found. [2]

Again: Same as previous polls.

They credit Mr. Obama more than Republicans with making an effort at bipartisanship [3], and they back the White HouseÂ’s policies on a variety of disputed issues, including allowing gay men and lesbians to serve openly in the military and repealing the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. [4]

The poll suggests that both parties face a toxic environment as they prepare for the elections in November. [5]

Uh-huh. Yeah, the environment may be toxic to both but it is only lethal to one.

Public disapproval of Congress is at a historic high [6], and huge numbers of Americans think Congress is beholden to special interests. [7] Fewer than 1 in 10 Americans say members of Congress deserve re-election. [8]

As the party in power, Democrats face a particular risk from any wave of voter discontent; unfavorable views of the Democratic Party are as high as they have been since the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994 [9], though Republicans continue to register an even worse showing. [10]The percentage of Americans who approve of Mr. ObamaÂ’s job performance, 46 percent, is as low as it has been since he took office. [11]

Eleven. It's the eleventh most important thing in this poll, I guess.

Ahhhh... but Nagourney wants his liberal Democratic readers to know there's still hope, and indulges in a little strategy-brainstorming for his audience.

Still, the poll suggests that Mr. Obama and his party have an opportunity to deflect the anger and anxiety if they can frame the election not as a referendum on the president and his party, but as a choice between them and a Republican approach that yielded results under Mr. Bush that much of the nation still blames for the countryÂ’s woes. That is what the White House has been trying to do since the beginning of the year.

Nagourney doesn't even get the pitifulness of his own spin -- he suggests the White House can change all this by using a strategy he then tells you they've been trying all year. It didn't work before, Adam. Why would it suddenly start working?

For all the erosion in support for Mr. Obama, Americans say he better understands their needs and problems and has made more of an effort to be bipartisan than Congressional Republicans, the poll found.

“It feels like an attempt to sabotage the majority and to regain control of power rather than working on a compromise,” John Smith, a Republican from Greenville, S.C., said of his party after participating in the poll.

Ah, of course we now turn away from the cold, hard, stark numbers and start offering up anecdotal and pretty worthless "data" to reassure liberals.

And of course we start out with a Republican slamming the party.

And this Republican's name is... John Smith.

John Smith.

John Smith self-identified as a Republican with a Times pollster and started telling her how mean Republicans were.

John. Frickin'. Smith.

John Smith, presumably of 1234 Makingthisup Lane.

Shhhhhhhh... there's cocooning going on here. Be very quiet, or you'll wake up the readers Nagourney is trying to lullaby into a peaceful sleep.

Thanks to AHFF Geoff.

Posted by: Ace at 09:20 AM | Comments (178)
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Consider this a bit of a serious follow up to Crazy Uncle Larry's rant below.

Mukasey takes apart, piece by piece, what the administration is trying to pass off as it's legal and political (at least the "Bush did it too!" bits) justifications for how they dealt with Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

Now excerpt can do it justice so read the whole thing but here's the former AG on John Brennan's contention that eveyone should have known that "In FBI custody" meant "read his full rights". After running through the history of detaining enemies on our shores in WWII and Bush era policies and concludes...

Contrary to what the White House homeland security adviser and the attorney general have suggested, if not said outright, not only was there no authority or policy in place under the Bush administration requiring that all those detained in the United States be treated as criminal defendants, but relevant authority was and is the opposite. The Supreme Court held in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld that "indefinite detention for the purpose of interrogation is not authorized" but also said in the same case that detention for the purpose of neutralizing an unlawful enemy combatant is permissible and that the only right of such a combatant -- even if he is a citizen, and Abdulmutallab is not -- is to challenge his classification as such a combatant in a habeas corpus proceeding. This does not include the right to remain silent or the right to a lawyer, but only such legal assistance as may be necessary to file a habeas corpus petition within a reasonable time. That was the basis for my ruling in Padilla v. Rumsfeld that, as a convenience to the court and not for any constitutionally based reason, he had to consult with a lawyer for the limited purpose of filing a habeas petition, but that interrogation need not stop.

...There was thus no legal or policy compulsion to treat Abdulmutallab as a criminal defendant, at least initially, and every reason to treat him as an intelligence asset to be exploited promptly. The way to do that was not simply to have locally available field agents question him but, rather, to get in the room people who knew about al-Qaeda in Yemen, people who could obtain information, check that information against other available data and perhaps get feedback from others in the field before going back to Abdulmutallab to follow up where necessary, all the while keeping secret the fact of his cooperation. Once his former cohorts know he is providing information, they can act to make that information useless.

Nor is it an answer to say that Abdulmutallab resumed his cooperation even after he was warned of his rights. He did that after five weeks, when his family was flown here from Nigeria. The time was lost, and with it possibly useful information. Disclosing that he had resumed talking only compounded the problem by letting his former cohorts know that they had better cover their tracks.

No doubt Homeland Security Adviser John Brennan thinks Mukasey is serving the goals of al-Qaeda with this op-ed but that's because Brennan is an ass.

The constantly changing and often conflicting stories (Abdulmutallab was 'a lone extremist', they got all the intelligence they needed in the first 50 minutes, now they are are getting intelligence 6 weeks later with the help of his family, Bush did it too!, etc) from this administration shows they simply have no clue what to do.

It seems they know exactly what they want to do...treat a man sent by an international terrorist organization to kill hundreds of Americans exactly as they would treat an American citizen who stole a car. The problem is, it's politically untenable and so they have to fashion all of these stories in an effort to look tough and effective in order to hide their true views.

This is a fight Dick Cheney started almost the day after he and Bush left office and he along with others have had this administration on the run since then. It's funny what you can do when the facts and the American people are on your side.

Posted by: DrewM at 09:00 AM | Comments (83)
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The public apparently has a much better grasp of our situation than the media.

U.S. consumer sentiment slipped in early February, with high unemployment expected to continue and with most looking for no gain in income or home values in the year ahead, a survey released Friday showed.

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 08:30 AM | Comments (114)
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The only way to explain this performance (and that's what it was) by Lawrence O'Donnell on Morning Joe today is that he's auditioning for Olbermann's 8pm time slot.

The crazy starts at about 2:20 in.

No doubt Scarborough faces another reprimand, this time for kicking Crazy Uncle Larry off the show.

In and of itself, O'Donnell doing his bit of performance art for the lefty idiots who watch MSNBC isn't important. It's the kind of thing MSNBC does 24/7 (well, except for the times when they are running prison documentaries). What this shows is that Obama is losing the argument about how to handle terrorism, from civilian trials for KSM to the Christmas Bomber. Whenever Marc Thiessen shows up and calmly lays out the facts of what the Bush administration did, the lefties simply go nuts.

O'Donnell is a clown but his act is a symbol of an administration and a movement that is only suited to criticizing the adults but are not able to convince the American people they are qualified to handle this country's security.

And oh yeah, Keith? I'd be nervous because in a battle of crazy, no one beats a guy like O'Donnell.

Posted by: DrewM at 07:46 AM | Comments (96)
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We've played this one before, more than once.
But I hope you Morons agree that this is an oldie that just keeps getting better with age.

Dip 'em if you got 'em.

UPDATE: Sorry about the double-post...it still shows up as only one post in Pixy's editing menu. There doesn't appear to be anything I can do about it.
I so confuzzled.

Posted by: LauraW at 06:54 AM | Comments (99)
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FRIDAY!! LONG WEEKEND!! PUPPIES!!

Oh. And Hawkins' Latest Conservative Blog Poll is Up: He asked some of the same questions as a recent DKos poll of conservative voters that made national news. You can probably figure my responses.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 05:15 AM | Comments (164)
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Awesome!

At 8:44 p.m. (PST), February 11, 2010, a short-range threat-representative ballistic missile was launched from an at-sea mobile launch platform. Within seconds, the ALTB used onboard sensors to detect the boosting missile and used a low-energy laser to track the target. The ALTB then fired a second low-energy laser to measure and compensate for atmospheric disturbance. Finally, the ALTB fired its megawatt-class High Energy Laser, heating the boosting ballistic missile to critical structural failure. The entire engagement occurred within two minutes of the target missile launch, while its rocket motors were still thrusting.

My rocket motors are thrusting even now.

The article says it was the first successful test of an ABL intercepting an airborne missile, but then tosses in another little bit of info:

Less than one hour later, a second solid fuel short-range missile was launched from a ground location on San Nicolas Island, Calif. and the ALTB successfully engaged the boosting target with its High Energy Laser, met all its test criteria, and terminated lasing prior to destroying the second target. The ALTB destroyed a solid fuel missile, identical to the second target, in flight on February 3, 2010.

I'm feeling some high energy, in my pants. A futuristic directed-energy weapon baby.

Too bad the Administration has different priorities. Billions for bailouts but R&D crumbs for missile defense.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 04:31 AM | Comments (87)
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He won't be seeking reelection, as he's decided to spend more time with his dangerous narcotic diet pills.

From Gabe on Twitter:

Poll had only 35% saying they would vote to reelect P. Kennedy. He faced primary challenge from Jon Brien and GOP fight with John Laughlin.

And also, his 2006 campaign slogan -- Less Hookers, More Blow -- was "dated."

Posted by: Ace at 06:38 PM | Comments (170)
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England's socialist, and the BBC is formally a government entity, but its media is less government-controlled than ours.

Via Instapundit.

Posted by: Ace at 06:27 PM | Comments (83)
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