Happy Friday.

I have no news this morning. I have a music video. Have a great weekend. more...

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:49 AM | Comments (256)
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A late good evening, Morons and Moronettes, from the AoSHQ Weather Desk. It seems like we just did this last year with Hurricane Irene, and Sandy is a very rare bird indeed. For the moment, however, let's concentrate on what we've got in the short term, and we'll move to the longer-term implications shortly.

Forecast map and discussion below the fold... more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 07:35 PM | Comments (138)
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Feeling a bit drained by the ups and downs of the election and needing a little inspiration?

Well Mr. J. Wales has a thought for you:

"Now remember, when things look bad and it looks like you're not gonna make it, then you gotta get mean. I mean plumb, mad-dog mean. 'Cause if you lose your head and you give up then you neither live nor win. That's just the way it is."

And let Mr. D. Butkus show you how it's done:

Also Blogger Dan Riehl is in the Hospital

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:03 PM | Comments (660)
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Steampacket

Some entertainment news.

In his new autobiography, Rod Stewart disavows that ancient rumor that has dogged him for decades:

The book also clears up the urban myth about Stewart once ingesting so much semen that he had to have his stomach pumped. Stewart writes that his former publicist Tony Toon made up the tale after he was fired.

Thank goodness! We can put that horrid rumor to rest forever. Not true. Let it be said here:

Rod Stewart. Not a sailor-pleasing gangbang manslut.

In other news, Rod Stewart made anal cocaine-filled butt suppositories and put them in his bum. Anally.

On one hand: He didn't have to tell us that. He could have lied about it like the sailor thing. Makes one wonder about this fellow's editorial acumen.

On the other hand: This is the kind of gritty detail (sorry, heh) that breathes realism into a screwed-up old entertainer's memoir. And reminds us why we shouldn't give a sh*t what celebrities think about politics.

Thanks to tmi3rd.

Posted by: LauraW at 05:28 PM | Comments (166)
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This is complicated by the fact that he's burned his bridges with virtually every network he's worked for... which is most of them.

So he's casting a wide net. Including with cable networks that don't even do any kind of news, like... AMC.

You might suspect that Olbermann would be steering clear of NBC Universal in his job hunt, given his acrimonious history with that company, and youÂ’d be right, at least as far as IÂ’ve heard. Among the networks heÂ’s approached are ones owned by Viacom and AMC Networks, two conglomerates he has yet to quarrel with.

Will Special Comment for Food.

Posted by: Ace at 04:58 PM | Comments (175)
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Ohhhhh really?

It’s time people understand why – and how – Wall Street always wins,” Connaughton writes at the outset of his book.

He is harshly critical of his own party and the Obama administration, arguing that the president is no different than most other Washington Democrats in his willingness to kowtow to Wall Street.

President Obama and Biden, he writes, are “both financially illiterate.”

“The Payoff” is every bit the cri de coeur of a man who, as he writes, is “willing to burn every bridge” in order to indict the transactional Washington lobbying and political culture. (After Kaufman’s term ended, Connaughton fled D.C. and moved to Savannah, Ga.)

Biden was upbraided by Obama for his dopey "This president is going to be tested early in his administration, mark my words" line.

Biden later said: “I’m going to have to earn his trust, but I’m not going to grovel to this guy. My manhood is not negotiable.”

The book depicts him not as a truly friendly, warm-hearted guy, but, if you can believe this, a cold pol who's only interested in personal advancement and shaking the right hands.

I think I'm going to pick this book up. Politico says it's filled with anecdotes that show Biden in a bad light, but their article on it can't seem to find many of them.

Posted by: Ace at 04:35 PM | Comments (114)
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It's hideous.

It's not funny, it's not cute, and it's not persuasive, unless you think the important issues in this campaign are Binders Full of Birth Control.

It underlines the essential triviality of Obama and his Government Client & Upper Upper Class White Voter agenda. There is nothing to his campaign except very small social-progressive appeals to people who are simply not affected by the economy, whether they are too poor to notice a bad economy, immunized from the economy by being a government worker, or so rich they have nothing at all to fear from a bad economy.

It continues to be weird that Democrats want so bad to have sex with their cult leader. But I guess that's a central part of the cult thing.

Obama 2012

Let him put his 7.8% in you.

Whoah... Looks like this was a Vladimir Putin ad before it was an Obama ad.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 03:46 PM | Comments (523)
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Immortal image from MSNBC on the night of October 3rd.
Picture credit: Blessed Blasphemy

Small point here.

Before the debates, people were saying "Debates don't matter." There's a reason for that -- they usually don't. In most debates, while someone is acknowledged as a "winner," it's really a close thing. I agreed with this guy on this, with the other guy on that. I liked this line, it made me laugh. This guy made a good point here.

It's a very even thing. Someone "wins," but, you know, barely.

So that's why it doesn't change numbers.

Now, obviously, that was not what happened in the October 3rd debate. The October 3rd debate was a demolition, or, as Jay Mohr called it, a "curbstomp."

The successive debates were like the usual sort of "debate." Someone "won," as usual, but without actually making an impression or impact.

The game was played over four quarters. Romney ran up the score 35-0 in the first quarter. The remaining quarters were (arguably) 7-6 in slight favor of Obama. (I actually think Romney and Ryan won all of them on substance.)

Overall, the game was still a decisive loss for Obama.

One thing that's been annoying me is the reaction by liberals. They understood -- they knew -- Obama got his head handed to him in the first debate. And they also realized, then, that Obama had to be said to have done the same to Romney in successive debates.

That's why you've seen this furious spinning from liberals that Obama (and even Biden!) somehow "destroyed" Romney and Ryan and later debates.

They knew they were destroyed by that debate; they were furiously trying to gin up the meme that Obama had done the same in return to Romney.

But no one believed that, not even they themselves. They understood the following debates were like the usual "Debates don't matter" situation; someone arguably came out ahead on debate points, but no one really "won" in any genuine way.

Even worse, they failed to understand that Romney and Ryan were winning the debates on the grounds they actually fought on. Understanding that they were actually ahead (or soon would be) based on the October 3 debate, their strategy from that point out was to reassure voters who were already beginning to incline towards them, to offer confirmation that their October 3rd hunch was correct.

They did just that.

Obama, on the other hand, hand a much steeper hill to climb: He had to attempt to prove that Romney's first performance was some kind of wild fluke, and that he was unqualified for office, no matter what that first debate suggested.

He failed at that. That's why he's continued to lose ground.

There's an interesting structure to this campaign that I think I'm the first to explicitly mention. It occurs to me just now.

It had been argued, previously, that Romney wanted a "Referendum" election, and Obama wanted a "Choice" election.

Romney wanted a straight referendum on Obama's performance, whereas Obama wanted people to only consider the contest in terms of Obama vs. Romney.

Obama's ad strategy -- a year of demonizing Romney -- was aimed at disqualifying Romney. And it was mostly successful -- after all, just before the debates, Obama had something like a four or five point national lead.

Obama's negative campaign actually changed the structure of the race so that it wasn't a Referendum on Obama, but in fact a Referendum on Romney-- and Romney was losing that Referendum until Oct. 3rd.

The October 3rd debate changed that. Suddenly, Romney was a perfectly reasonable, perfectly acceptable candidate, and so it became either a Referendum on Obama, which he loses, or a Choice between Romney and Obama, which Obama also loses.

Obama never had anything else but that negative campaign on Romney. Now that that's gone, he's reduced to Binders Full of Birth Control and Romnesia and a silly Big Picture children's book called "Obama's New Agenda for a 2nd Term."

In a way, Obama might have been hurt a bit by his Negative Ad blitz working too well for a while, encouraging him to rely on nothing but that.

At any rate. Obama lost the debates. This was obvious to any fair viewer, whether conservative, moderate, liberal, Republican, Independent, or Democrat.

I'm glad that the absurd spin over that fact will finally stop.

Posted by: Ace at 03:20 PM | Comments (197)
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He claims Bill Clinton is arguing with her that she should release the documents which would exonerate her... and doom Obama.

I have heard people express hopes on this score. It would never happen. At least not before the election:

Government
Ed Klein: Bill Clinton ‘Urging’ Hillary to Release Benghazi Documents That Would ‘Exonerate’ Her, Destroy Obama’s Re-Election Hopes

Posted on October 25, 2012 at 12:44am by Jason Howerton Jason Howerton
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Ed Klein: Bill Clinton Urging Hillary to Release Benghazi Documents That Would Exonerate Her

(TheBlazeTV)

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ordered additional security for the U.S. mission in Benghazi ahead of the terrorist attack but the orders were never carried out, according to “legal counsel” to Clinton who spoke to best-selling author Ed Klein. Those same sources also say former President Bill Clinton has been “urging” his wife to release official State Department documents that prove she called for additional security at the compound in Libya, which would almost certainly result in President Obama losing the election.

Appearing on TheBlazeTV’s “Wilkow!” on Wednesday night, Klein told host Andrew Wilkow that Bill and Hillary Clinton have been having “big fights” for “two or three weeks” about the issue, according to his two sources on Clinton’s legal counsel. While Bill Clinton wishes his wife would “exonerate” herself by releasing the documents that show she wasn’t at fault for the tragic security failure in Libya, the secretary of state refuses to do so because she doesn’t want to be viewed as a traitor to the Democratic party.

On Glenn Beck’s radio show earlier on Wednesday, Klein said his information comes from two “very good” sources.

Wilkow pointed out the obvious, that the Obamas and the Clintons have a “very behind the scenes, tense relationship” — to put it lightly.

“I said to you last night, and I think I stand corrected, that it seemed like Obama out-Clintoned the Clintons,” Wilkow said. “But Clinton seems to have gone along with all of this because he knew that Hillary would be exonerated in the end.”

He then asked Klein whether he thought Clinton would resign over the Libya scandal and expose the truth.

“No,” the author said immediately. “I can’t imagine that she would resign. It would bring down the entire administration. [Obama] would lose the election and she would be essentially blamed by the left-wing base of the party.”

“She will not be tarred with the blame for bringing down this administration,” Klein added.

If Hillary has evidence that the White House, and not she, is to blame for Benghazi, there's no strong reason to release this earlier. It's in her back pocket; she can release it anytime.

What we need is a whistleblower who just wants the truth to come out.

Posted by: Ace at 02:54 PM | Comments (146)
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They also inserted out-of-context footage of Romney in 2007 making a case for a larger effort against Al Qaeda, clipping his words to make it sound like he didn't want to get bin Ladin. (The "move Heaven and Earth" statement.) But National Geographic, which is airing the TV movie, cut that back out. more...

Posted by: Ace at 02:29 PM | Comments (112)
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