AHFF Geoff tips:

Magellan Strategies for Mark Kirk (R)
2/2/10; 885 likely voters, 3.3% margin of error
Mode: Automated phone
(Magellan memo)

Illinois

2010 Senate
Kirk 47%, Giannoulias 35%

Favorable / Unfavorable
Mark Kirk: 31 / 26
Alexi Giannoulias: 24 / 39
Barack Obama: 51 / 45

I didn't get a chance to congratulate our next Senator from Illinois Mark Kirk on his primary win. I'll do so now -- congratulations.

And yes, he's a bit of RINO on social issues, but he's in the National Guard and served (briefly) in Afghanistan recently and has apologized for his cap-and-trade vote and, well -- I don't care. Better a RINO than a corrupt Chicago machine mobbed-up Obama/Rezko crony.

I don't even want to hear from "RINO." I mean, you can talk about it if you want, but I just have no desire personally to discuss it. The choice seems pretty clear to me. The primary demonstrated that Kirk was as conservative a viable candidate as Illinois' Republicans were comfortable with, which tells me that's as good as it's gonna get, pretty much.

And on that: Corruption is going to be a big theme in this short race. Even Illinois can't help but notice the stink of it any longer.

To that end, the GOP has produced this ad, which is funny, true, and devastating:

Posted by: Ace at 11:37 AM | Comments (154)
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Oh, I try to ignore him. Basically, by never reading him, which takes approximately as much concentrated effort on my part as is needed for me to withstand the potent temptation to staple corn-nuts to my hog.

But then a reader like JoeP. comes along and offers up this piece, and I have to comment.

Did she really just call for Rahm Emanuel to be fired because he allegedly used the term "fucking retarded" to refer to fellow Democrats in a private meeting? Last summer? Did she really?

I don't like the term myself. I think it is offensive. I think Rahm Emanuel is offensive. But at least he's real. And he has now apologized. And at least he used the term metaphorically.

Right. And if Dick Cheney used the term "fucking queerbaits" metaphorically, Andrew Sullivan, Professional Homosexual, would similarly take it in unhurried stride.

I use the word "retard" all the time, of course. But I acknowledge it is deeply, deeply impolite and hurtful to those who are mentally challenged and especially the parents of the mentally challenged. It obviously doesn't stop me from using the term; I do agree, as Krikorian said on The Corner, that Emanuel's use of it is "metaphoric" and, while vulgar, not a firing offense.

But Sullivan himself shrieks like little girl who just watched her pony get raped by the road crew for GWAR whenever the most trivial gay putdown is employed; it's all I can take to keep from busting a gut to hear him lecture me on how we should all just blow off painful invective as if it's no big deal.

I'd take his claims more seriously if he didn't claim everyone who ever said "that's gay" was a "seething homophobe," or whatever his mix-and-match Adjective-Noun combination putdown of the day might be.

Palin, in contrast, called her own campaign prop "her retarded baby" in private, according to an eye-witness account from the father of her own grandson who lived in her house for months and knew her intimately.

That's a very roundabout way of saying "professional mediawhore and gay softcore-porn icon Levi Johnson."

"I was just in shock the first time I heard it," Levi Johnston told CBS.

Right, the guy who announced he was a "fucking redneck" on his MySpace page was shocked, shocked to hear some crude put-downs.

And by the way, he didn't hear them; he's making this up. But the notion that this self-professed "fucking redneck" (and I presume he means that to mean he's boorish and thuggish, rather than in the sweeter way a gentleman like Jeff Foxworthy uses it) was "in shock" over hearing the dreaded r-word is, well, something that only steroid-demented retard Andrew Sullivan could possibly believe.

But oh -- we are just getting started here, folks.

Unlike Sarah Palin, Johnston has not been caught in multiple indisputable lies. I believe him over her. In fact, in any factual dispute, I believe anyone over her.

That's kind of your problem, you drug-addled fruitcake. ("Fruitcake" used metaphorically -- I don't mean he's literally a Christmas treat or anything. I have just apologized to Liz Cheney, head of the Fruitcake Confectioners of America, and she accepted it, so my usage of the word is blessed by a non-partisan authority.)

While I'm at it, does anyone actually believe that Palin's name for the child of miraculous provenance was found by her deep knowledge of ancient Norse as she claims in her magical-realism novel, "Going Rogue"? I mean, seriously. She knows about as much ancient Norse as she does English grammar.

This is where I have to go the low road yet again and quote, I think, Treacher, who once sniped, "Someone needs to explain to Andrew Sullivan that his favorite beverage is sometimes used to make babies."

I say this knowing it's nasty and hompohobic. But it's true: Andrew Sullivan, who has no true working conception of the idea that sex might sometimes have a procreative intent, once again shows how risibly out-of-touch he is with, well, anything not having to do with P-town or the Pet Shop Boys.

See, Andrew, one doesn't need a deep understanding of Norse mythology to have come across the Norse name "Trig." There are, you see, a huge number of books about baby-names, and huge lists of such things available on the Internet, and, see, while you apparently have never before met a pregnant woman (ick!), I can assure you such women ("breeders," to use terminology that might be familiar to you) are usually very interested indeed in interesting possibilities for naming their baby, and this interest actually increases throughout their nine-month term.

Did my parents know a great deal about the Gaelic origins of my name before they gave it to me? No, but I can tell you as soon as I was old enough to ask my mother could tell me what it was supposed to mean.

Gaelic scholar, she? No. She had a baby-naming book, dude.

This is simply embarrassing. I actually do wish to avoid the worst sorts of stereotypes about gays -- stereotypes as untrue, in the main, as they are mean -- but Andrew Sullivan continues proudly championing them.

He continues to write authoritatively about all aspects of the human reproductive cycle while exhibiting about the same level of working knowledge of the subject as all those space-aliens on Star Trek to whom Kirk constantly had to explain the phenomenon of human romantic love.

At least the space-aliens finally got it after a long and smoldering Kirk-Kiss.

I have no fucking idea what it will take to dislodge the tumor of expert ignorance from Sullivan's pot-pocked brain.

I continue to be baffled at how one of the gayest men on the planet -- ranking like a 7.3 on the Kinsley scale of 6 -- propounds weekly on arcane-only-to-him topics of childbirth, motherhood, and the Mysteries of Forbidden Vagina.

Now, that out of the way, here comes the obligatory insinuations of Trig Trutherism:

It's as credible as the idea that she gave a speech while having contractions, several hours after going into labor, as she claims in her novel. It's as credible as her amazing journey in labor with a special needs child on a plane where the flight attendants, according to the Anchorage Daily News, did not even notice she was pregnant. It's as credible as any number of indisputable self-serving, unbalanced lies that she has told in the public record for years.

Remember, he has been forbidden to state explicitly that Sarah Palin is not Trig's mother, but he sure as shit can hint around about it.

And now we come to the culmination of his Internet Detective stupidity:

The medical term for Down Syndrome is Trisomy-21 or Trisomy-g. It is often shortened in medical slang to Tri-g.

He does not provide a citation for that last claim. The cite he includes -- just to the medical term for Downs Syndrome -- contains no reference at all to "Tri-g." (Search it yourself.)

Despite the fact that Dr. Andrew Sullivan asserts, upon his own great authority, that the Downs Syndrome is "often" shortened to "tri-g" -- often, remember -- a google search fails to come up with a single mention of "Tri-G" on the first fifteen pages. (I gave up after that.) It's all Trig (as in Palin) and trig (as in geometry) and trig (as in some computer thingee).

I do come up rather easily with this baby-name page on the meaning of Trig,M which notes the name was popularized by Governor Palin, but not that it was invented by her.

Oddly enough, the "Tri-G" derivation of the name is nowhere to be found on this page. (Remember -- Downs Syndrome is often shortened to Tri-G.)

You know what they say it is?

That it's fucking Norse. They even mention a couple of somewhat-notable people who sport the name, and do not, as far as I know, have an extra chromosome.

Is it not perfectly possible that the very name given to this poor child, being reared by Bristol, is another form of mockery of his condition, along with the "retarded baby" tag?

No. If she hated the baby that much she could have chosen your preferred option of abortion.

And does the way in which this poor child was hauled around the country on a book tour, being dragged out in front of flash photographs in the middle of the night, barely clothed, suggest someone who actually cares for children with special needs, or rather sees them as a way to keep the spotlight on her?

It says she's a working mother.

Again, Andrew Sullivan demonstrates his extreme ignorance about all things reproductive. It utterly fails to crack his Blue Event Horizon of Stupid that mothers must care for young children at all hours a day. Especially if they're breastfeeding, which I am guessing Governor Palin is.

This doesn't even occur to him.

What does Dr. Andrew Sullivan, noted child psychologist recently called "just like Dr. Benjamin Spock, except fat and with a beard and rawmuscleglutes," think mothers do with their 2-year-old children when they need to venture out of the home? Drop them off at Kinko's? Stick them into hypersleep capsules a la Alien?

What? What happens to this kid when Palin is working, in Sullivan's mind? Does he imagine the kid has a hibernate switch like his computer?

C'mon, Levi. Write that book. Expose this fraud.

Doesn't quite have the same ring to it as "Help us Obi-Wan Kenobi, you're our only hope," does it?

Pinning his hopes on a pin-up.

How pathetic.

Sullvan? Seriously, you need to stop opining on a topic you obviously are laughably ignorant of and stick to your strengths.

Whatever those might eventually turn out to be.

Posted by: Ace at 11:29 AM | Comments (371)
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The Senate wants to delay until next Thursday, despite the fact that Devall Patrick is certifying the election results tomorrow morning.

Brown wants the People's Seat, now.

Brown's legal counsel wrote Gov. Deval Patrick (D-Mass.) and Secretary of State William Galvin asking them to certify the election results immediately, which would allow him to be sworn into the U.S. Senate as early as Thursday.

"While Senator elect Brown had tentatively planned to be sworn into office February 11, he has been advised that there are a number of votes scheduled prior to that date," his attorneys wrote. "For that reason, he wants certification to occur immediately."

Former and soon-to-be boxing referee Harry Reid says he has no plans to seat a duly elected Senator anytime soon.

Posted by: Ace at 10:39 AM | Comments (131)
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Tipster ArthurK. says to expect more of these mea culpas.

Because of manmade global warming, I warned in 1996, that “sea levels could rise as much as three feet by the year 2100 … warming can lead to hotter and more frequent heat waves … stronger and more frequent hurricanes to Hawai‘i … endanger native plants species [and] coral reefs.” These dire predictions came from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Researchers at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia provide much of the IPCC’s analysis and predictions. In November 2009, hackers released thousands of e-mails from the CRU, going back years, and it is these e-mails that reveal the very unscientific, unethical activities I described above.

I feel IÂ’ve been had.

...

This doesnÂ’t necessarily mean manmade global warming is disproven. But it does deflate the certainty and moral righteousness of the Al Gores and the IPCCs of the world. At Copenhagen and in Congress, politicians have proposed massive disruptions to our economies and lifestyles in the name of halting global warming. It turns out theyÂ’ve been doing so, at least partly, with books that have been cooked more than the planet.

...

People make these kinds of mistakes all the time, and the motives are no mystery. For the researchers, grant dollars and reputations are on the line. For reporters, global warming offers the thrill of covering The Biggest Story Ever Told, an appeal I could not resist. For politicians, it has offered an endless opportunity for grandstanding and power grabs. Convinced they are saving the earth—what could be more rewarding or important?—all three groups helped each other lose their minds.

It’s time for scientists to do what science is all about: check their work to see if the results can be reproduced. Fresh eyes need to look at the original data the CRU used, to see if they can independently find the same evidence for warming. But wait—that can’t be done. Somehow, the CRU managed to “lose” all its original data.

HowÂ’s that for an inconvenient truth?

Meanwhile, Chris Horner finally got his longstanding FOIA request for NASA's GISS data answered. He hints NASA's just another motley CRU:

Andrew Revkin has an item up today at the New York Times's Dot Earth blog on our expanded inquiry into NASA's problems with temperature-data management and manipulation. He addresses a FOIA request of mine first sent to NASA late in the afternoon of January 26. Remember that timing for a moment.

...

In response to Andy's piece this morning, someone commented to me how fascinating it was for NASA to run to the New York Times over the weekend, after waiting two years to respond to my opening request for documents that, as I will soon detail, are disturbing and in a few cases even damning in their content (incidentally, on Friday I filed our appeal of NASA's substantial refusals to provide other documents responsive to the initial August 2007 and January 2008 requests, and expect to litigate later this month immediately upon their affirmation of the refusal, if that is indeed the route they choose).

Yes, that was prompt for an agency that couldn't quite seem to find time to attend to my earlier requests. The thing about that is, Andy contacted me the morning of the next day after I sent the FOIA, in the later afternoon. Which means NASA actually contacted him about it, oh, immediately.

Panic.

Thanks to EdwardR. for that.

Posted by: Ace at 10:30 AM | Comments (119)
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Here we go again with the bogus models.

...The model added about 184,000 jobs to the payroll total last quarter compared with a 135,000 increase in the same period in 2008, before the financial crisis deepened with the collapse of Lehman Brothers Inc.

“This birth/death model is still assuming that we are getting new jobs from new-business creations,” David Rosenberg, chief economist at Gluskin Sheff & Associates Inc. in Toronto, said in an interview...

...“These additions are coming somewhere from ‘Alice in Wonderland,’” he said...

H/T commenter curious

The Black Plague [ace]: This animation showing unemployment growth by county features 10+% rates indicated by black. (No, not racist, black as in "black hole of joblessness."

Messiah.

Thanks to JimS.

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 09:43 AM | Comments (114)
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What a dick move I just did. Yes, that's the way Andrew Malcolm sells the story on his LATimes blog, but he knows it's not true, the same way I know it's not true, but he knew that headline would grab people, and, well, yeah, I figured he was right.

So, okay, I just sort of lied. The question mark doesn't make it okay. Olbermann isn't going to be fired because everyone else at MSNBC (maybe except Maddow, who knows) has lower ratings and they've tried and tried for an actual ratings-winner and Keith Olbermann was as close as they came. And he failed, too.

MSNBC is a basket-case and always has been and always will be. And when you're always in the ratings cellar in every single timeslot, well, Keith Olbermann's smaller-than-Hot-Air audience of 268,000 still looks okay by comparison.

So Olbermann will probably not be fired, at least not until MSNBC finally goes dark, which probably won't happen either, because it's still dirt cheap to run true-crime documentaries all weekend and the channel can afford to lose a bit of money with NBC's wallet behind it. (Although, you know: NBC itself might not continue as a bona-fide network.)

Still: Dishonest headline aside, Olbermann's ratings are back where they belong. In the toilet.

There are a couple of reasons for KO's frustration and anger and volume and core meltdown over the Massachusetts election outcome, among other issues of galactic import. For one, lots more ranters around nowadays on all sides, including that colleague of Keith's with the hugest head in TV. Please, no 3-D for him!

Also, Olbermann's showboat is sinking. Listing in you-know-which direction.

It's as if he thinks talking LOUDER will keep his low cell battery from dying.

Worst, Olbermann's network president, Phil Griffin, is publicly praising him, always an ominous sign in television. While referring to his host almost in the past tense. "Keith has been our tentpole," Griffin says, adding later, "I'm pleased with where we are."

Where they are, as Jeff Bercovici points out over at Daily Finance, is way behind the big boys over at Fox News, Bill O'Reilly and gang. In fact, Keith is so far behind Bill, he can't even make out the state of the license plate, let alone the numbers. Bercovici thinks Americans may be outgrowing Olbermann's schtick.

In the most desirable TV demographic of 25-54, which Keith will soon outgrow himself, "Countdown" lost 44% of its audience from the beginning of President Obama's term until this year. It could have been worse -- say, 45%.

Olbermann averaged 268,000 viewers last month in that sector. That's just several thousand sets of those eyes more than Campbell Brown over on CNN. According to one count, Keith even finished in that time slow behind Nancy Grace. Nancy Grace!

Olbermann rode the Bush Derangement Train to... well, never to good ratings, but he could occasionally claim he beat an O'Reilly holiday repeat in a particular demographic.

But those glory days of incandescent mediocrity are far behind him. Yes, once upon a time, he blazed with the light of a nearly-average star; long ago, he soared high to almost-middling heights. He can still recall the days of wine and roses when moderate ratings were almost within his grasp; when he very nearly sipped the modestly-sweet nectar of almost-median performance.

One day he will tell his grandchildren -- well, grand-nephews and grand-nieces -- about his meteoric rise to the middle, or close to it anyway, and his fall -- not a terribly long fall, but enough to give you a bruise -- back to the bottom.

One day, he will say wistfully, I almost came pretty close to nearly getting a nontrivial number of people knowing vaguely who in the hell I almost was.

Thanks to Kent.

Punching Up: As you all know, when you pick a fight for attention, you punch up, not down. You take a shot at someone bigger, with a bigger audience. You don't get into spats with people with smaller audiences, because while that helps them, it doesn't really help you very much.

Keith Olbermann is going out of his way to mention Hot Air, even when Ed Morrissey offers a pretty routine bit of commentary about a non-issue. It's really just an excuse to mention Hot Air.

Because Hot Air is bigger than Keith Olbermann is.

So, why does Hot Air return the favor, flattering a guy with a smaller audience? Well, probably jut because it's TV, and that seems like it should be bigger and more influential than a blog. But it's not.

We are in a weird time where the lowest-ranked cable TV shows are now actually more poorly rated than the biggest blogs. And it's weird, now, because we're just not used to it. We're still thinking TV is big leagues, blogging is for wannabes.

But that is changing. Keith Olbermann's show is nothing but a ranty blog with camera-changes. Vidblogging never took off on the internet because it's too slow and boring -- people read much faster than someone can talk.

But vidblogging is now the centerpiece on MSBNC, because TV has always been slow and boring. People are used to it.

I can't yet claim this site beats Olbermann, or even pitiable pudgebunny Chris Matthews.

But...

Well, my ratings will go up, and theirs will continue going down.

We'll meet in a place Keith Olbermann considers his comfort zone -- in the middle.

Posted by: Ace at 09:29 AM | Comments (153)
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I pulled that last post because the main point of it -- the video -- is down at the moment. The hosting company took it down due to the inclusion of the beheading in the video (which I should have warned you about).

Also on that site, though, a link to this harrowing story.

If you click on that, you're going to see a fairly tough image of this former guard, now blinded in one eye.

I was a federal prison guard at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan. In 2000, I was with a prisoner, Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, taking him back to his cell. His cellmate was Khalfan Khamis Mohamed. They were accused of bombing two embassies in Africa in 1998. Later they said that they worked with Osama bin Laden and that they helped set up al Qaeda.

We were back at their cell. It's only me and those two guys. No supervisors. Just the three of us. Somehow, they slipped out of their handcuffs.

They sprayed me with some kind of hot sauce. I couldn't see. They pulled me into the cell and hit me — boom, boom. They hit me so much, I swear to God, like a hundred times.

I hit my radio. I thought help would come.

They wanted the keys for the other prisoners, but they couldn't find them. They were in my front pocket. I used to be big, 300 pounds, and I was laying on them. I gave them my car keys.

About halfway through, they used a comb — thick and long, about 10 inches, with a handle. They'd taken the teeth out and sharpened it like a knife.

They put it in my left eye. It went three inches into my brain.

Thanks to NJConservative for the pointer on that.

BTW, I'll repost that vid once it's back up on a server.

Posted by: Ace at 08:59 AM | Comments (90)
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Better late than never, I suppose.

The family of the failed Christmas Day bomber, Umar Farouq Abdulmuttalab, played a pivotal role in getting their son to start cooperating with federal authorities in sharing information about Al Qaeda, a senior administration official said Tuesday evening.

Abdulmuttalab has been cooperating with authorities and sharing intelligence since last Thursday, another administration official told ABC News.

The family was “instrumental in gaining Mr. Abdulmuttalab’s cooperation," said the senior administration official. The information Abdulmuttalab is sharing has been described by other officials as fresh and actionable.

“It has been very successful," the official said, "as far as gaining his cooperation that will allow us then to follow up on that information." He said the intelligence gained "has been disseminated throughout the intelligence community."

Of course the administration and it's Amen Corner in the press and Congress will point to this and claim vindication for it's 'play by the rules' law enforcement plan.

There's only a couple of problems with that.

First, awesome and all but relying on the family of a terrorist to help gather intelligence isn't exactly a sure fire strategy. The fact that this guy's dad gave him up beforehand shows how extraordinary a case this is. There are huge numbers of examples of everyday Americans who won't help authorities put their family members behind bars for ordinary crime. Does anyone think we can rely on this type of cooperation every time?

Second, Abdulmuttalab began talking over a month after the attack. Do we really have that kind of time to waste? Considering the top counter terrorism officials in the administration said yesterday it's a virtual certainty that there will be another attempted attack within the next 3-6 months, I'd so we don't.

This idea that our 'good behavior' has earned us cooperation and that we can count on this kind of support in the future is nothing but a hope.

Oh by the way...what exactly are we learning from the guy now? Robert Gibbs assured us that we learned everything we could and needed from Abdulmuttalab in the 50 minutes the FBI had with him on Christmas Day. I guess that wasn't exactly, strictly speaking, true.

Posted by: DrewM at 07:11 AM | Comments (103)
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It's all downhill from here, Morons.

Here, a gift for you. Because we're pals.
It's the best pep talk ever.

Posted by: LauraW at 06:35 AM | Comments (97)
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Phew, another day.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 05:04 AM | Comments (194)
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