By "brighten", I mean depress you to the point of embarking on a week long Sterno swilling and paint thinner huffing bender. We can all thank curious for this hopeful view of how our situation has changed recently.

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 05:37 AM | Comments (129)
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Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 05:06 AM | Comments (74)
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About 95% of what Reich has written here is dead on accurate analysis of the workforce transformation phenomenon happening out in the street today. He only drifts off into mush brained liberalism in the last few paragraphs of the piece.

...Another surprise is the age of these new entrepreneurs. According to the report, most of the growth in startups was propelled by 35- to 44-year-olds, followed by people 55 to 64. Forget Internet whiz kids in their 20Â’s. ItÂ’s the gray-heads who are taking the reins of the new startup economy. And if you thought minorities had been hit particularly hard by this awful recession, think again. According to the report, entrepreneurship increased more among African-Americans than among whites.

At first glance, all this seems a bit odd. Usually new businesses take off in good times when consumers are flush and banks are eager to lend. So why all this entrepreneurship last year?

In a word, unemployment. Booted off company payrolls, millions of Americans had no choice but to try selling themselves. Another term for “entrepreneur” is “self-employed.” ...

Reich is a sharp guy for a liberal. I've always had a modest measure of respect for him precisely because he wasn't PelosiGrade™ stupid.

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 04:51 AM | Comments (44)
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Via Zerohedge.

The Telegraph article makes a good point about the BP-bashing currently going on in our government and media right now. Back in 1988, an Occidental Petroleum rig exploded in the North Sea and killed 167 people. You heard no rhetoric from Margaret Thatcher about having her "boot on the throat" of Occidental, or of driving the company to ruin.

It may be that there was some gross negligence on BP's part. But the fact remains that deepwater drilling is a dangerous and risky business. Putting BP out of business to "punish" the company for the accident will have the undesirable side-effect of hurting one of our best allies: Britain. Many British pensions hold large shares of BP stock, and if BP goes under, then British pensions suffer. Which means that British citizens suffer. And many of them may blame the Americans for their financial pain, whatever BP's liability may have been.

Everything is connected in this brave new world. Rather than scoring points on a company all the lefties love to hate, Obama might consider what effect his actions and rhetoric are having on a valued ally.

Posted by: Monty at 04:42 AM | Comments (73)
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Good evening all M&Ms.
Also don't forget about the job bank at the AoSHQ yahoo group.

How The Star Wars Text Crawl Was Done

It's totally old school with just a camera and a platform moving on rollers. Today it would all be done using CGI and probably wouldn't look as good. One of the problems with computer-generated graphics is that they generally look a little too perfect. But really it's the very slight imperfections in lighting, shadowing, and texture that make an effect seem 'real' rather than merely a realistic effect.

So to my eye special effects peaked in realism sometime around the mid 80's and have been playing catch up since then as computers have replaced analog techniques. Of course one main benefit of CGI graphics is that it has lowered the cost of effects to where almost any movie can have decent effect shots. Plus it's allowed scenes to be shown that would otherwise be impossible to shoot using any other method.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:29 PM | Comments (771)
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Not the biggest lead ever -- that would still belong to the Democrats -- but the biggest GOP lead. This poll, as most, is overly favorable to Democrats.

49-43.

But as Ann Coulter advises: Probably a good idea to hold off on victory parades until after the actual victory.

Below, Dick Morris talks up the possibility of the GOP taking the Senate, a possibility I myself have pretty much written off. (We can get 7 or 8 or even 9 but 10? Like pulling an inside straight... flush.)

more...

Posted by: Ace at 04:12 PM | Comments (235)
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Since, I think, California's primaries are open, if you don't care who wins the Fiorina-Campbell-DeVore tussle (or if you think Fiorina's going to win easily), why not cast a vote for Kaus over Barbara Boxer? (Whoops-- a commenter says the primaries are closed. Update: if you're a decline-to-state you can request a ballot for the primaries.)

Kaus if often accused of being a conservative or a Republican by his liberal Democrat friends.

I'd like to defend him from the charge, and say No, he's not! Don't reject his ideas with such easy branding!, but, uhh...

I knew of a very, very gay dude in college, who claimed he was straight for most of his life. Hear tell, in his senior year, he announced to his friends -- exclusively women -- "I'm coming out; I've thought about this a lot, and I've realized I'm gay."

One woman hugged him and said, "Stephen! You were the last to know!"

One day, Kaus is going to have an epiphany about his political orientation and... last to know, dude.

But seriously, he is a registered Democrat. If there were more Democrats like him, this country's politics would be a lot better. His pitch probably makes sense to a large number of working- and middle-class Democrats, but the party is owned by those who donate huge sums of money to it -- the Liberal Leisure Class and the unions.

Posted by: Ace at 03:09 PM | Comments (88)
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The current seniors were freshmen and sophomores when the Duke Not-a-Rape case was the main story about Duke Lacrosse.

Why isn't this being covered as a major feel-good vindication story? Why no Rocky trumpet-fanfare? Where are the inevitable Phoenix-from-the-ashes metaphors and lessons about the triumph of will over adversity?

Guess they were more evitable than I realized.

Seems to me a few years ago we were invited to learn all sorts of lessons from Duke's Men's Lax. Now... no lessons to be had!

Because, of course, the innocence of the Duke Lacrosse Men embarrassed the left. That is their crime now -- not having raped a woman, but the more egregious offense of having embarrassed the left.

And the MFM knows its enemies from its friends.

Video recap from ESPN.

Thanks to Russell.

Actually... Okay, this happened yesterday, I guess, so it's premature to ask my rhetorical questions about the non-coverage.

So, fine: After a week, when there's been no Rudy-esque coverage, then consider my questions posed.

This Just In... Sure, they're "innocent," but I know they did something.

Like... exist.

Memories... A flashback to false accuser/serial lunatic Crystal Mangun's recent arrest.

Just before midnight on Feb. 17, in Durham, N.C., police responded to a call about a domestic dispute. The voice on the line was a child's. "Please hurry," she said. "My mom is going to die." Authorities arrived to find a woman fighting with her boyfriend. She'd lit his clothes on fire in the bathtub and, according to police, was threatening to stab him. Her children, who are 3, 9, and 10, were in the next room. She was arrested and charged with attempted first-degree murder, assault and battery, communicating threats, injury to personal property, identity theft, resisting a public officer, five counts of arson, and three counts of misdemeanor child abuse, according to The News & Observer.
It was the kind of report that would normally not go any further than the local news page of the Durham paper. Except the woman happened to be Crystal Mangum, who falsely accused three members of the Duke University lacrosse team of rape and assault four years ago. The case, of course, exploded into a national news story and brought down the Durham district attorney. As the reporter who covered that case for NEWSWEEK, I am sorry to say that I wasn't at all surprised by the most recent events.

...

At the time of the rape accusations, Mangum was a mother of two, working as an escort, and taking classes at North Carolina Central University. NCCU was the first publicly supported black liberal-arts college in the country, but it has struggled over the years to get adequate funding. The distance between the campuses of Duke and NCCU was a few miles and a lot of resentment. Students I spoke with at NCCU's campus soon after the rape charges were filed had no doubt that the lacrosse players were guilty but would beat the rap. One student told me, "This is a race issue. People at Duke have a lot of money on their side." Another student said, "It's the same old story. Duke up, Central down." He said he wanted to see the Duke students prosecuted whether they were guilty of not. "It would be justice for things that happened in the past," he said. For me, it was one of the more eye-opening moments of the whole case.

Eyes opened? Sure, and then promptly shut again.

Posted by: Ace at 02:29 PM | Comments (202)
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I must prepare your brain-stem for egg implantation.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? There's a robotic quality to his email about this, as you might expect.

Former Vice President Al Gore and his wife, Tipper, are separating after 40 years of marriage.

According to an e-mailed statement obtained by The Associated Press on Tuesday, the Gores said it was "a mutual and mutually supportive decision that we have made together following a process of long and careful consideration."

That statement has just as much of the drama of human emotion that, uh, well, that the infamous DNC kiss/Romulan Smothering Clinch did.

Friends say there's no affair responsible for the end of the Love Story, and I almost kind of believe them.

Former Vice President Al Gore and his wife, Tipper, are telling friends they "grew apart" after 40 years of marriage and there was no affair involved.

Or at least I can believe Al Gore hasn't had an affair. Not with a human being.

Al Gore can now marry longtime paramour Gaia.

40 years of marriage is a long time. After 40 years, I guess it's fair to say you're really not the person that got married so long ago -- unless you're boring and emotionally retarded, like, say, Al Gore -- and sometimes, the new person you are isn't compatible with the new person your spouse is. I guess they did pretty well. Not the gold, but an okay silver.

Hah! HeatherRadish nails the right take on this.

Marriage: Eco-friendlier than divorce?

Divorce isn't green, according to a new study ["new" in 2007 -- ed.].

The research, led by ecologist Jianguo "Jack" Liu, a Michigan State University professor of fisheries and wildlife, looked at international data comparing utility consumption and housing space per capita in married and divorced households. He found that divorce creates more households with fewer people, using more energy and water and taking up more space.

The analysis, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, does not look at the environmental impact of singles who have never been married, but Liu says he plans to look at singles in a subsequent study.

"If you have more households as a result of divorce, then you would need more housing units, and if you need to build more houses or apartments, that means you need more land, and that will contribute to urban sprawl," he says.

It's not just truculence here -- there's a real point. Al Gore and his acolytes continue agitating for people to live not according to their wants and needs but strictly according to the claimed needs of a non-existent life form/God they call "The Earth."

And yet whenever these shackles become inconvenient for them -- like, say, when they'd like to jet off to Copenhagen on a private Gulfstream (and, seriously? Who wouldn't? Someone offers to fly me on a private jet anywhere and I say yes), they make all sorts of excuses and rationalizations.

Like the rest of us do, or would.

But... that's the point. What is the point of this endless hectoring? Al Gore does not live his life this way. We all know that. What is the point of the hypocrisy and false piety, then?

Flashback: Erotic Poetry With Al Gore: Here he is, reading his Ode to Gaia to a CNN reporter. It's verse like this that really heats up and raises the sea-level of the ladies, if you know what I mean, and I think you do.

Posted by: Ace at 10:45 AM | Comments (650)
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What a hero.

Posted by: Ace at 10:40 AM | Comments (113)
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