On Memorial Day I posted about Arlington National Cemetery and the Tomb of the Unknowns. A place I have been to many times, and a place I beleive every American should see.

Like Ernie Pyle wrote in a muddy place in the middle of the night in Italy in 1944, "You feel small in the presence of dead men, and ashamed at being alive, and you donÂ’t ask silly questions."

You feel like that at Arlington.

"The Sentinel" was about the guards who walk the post at the Tomb of the Unknowns, and a friend of mine told me some amazing stuff about the marble that was used to build it. It was quarried from a place called Marble Colorado, and also provided much of the stone for the Lincoln Memorial.

I got tipped to this video about that event in our nation's history, some remarkable photos from that time, not to mention the accompanying musical score.. perfect.
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Posted by: Dave in Texas at 05:58 AM | Comments (95)
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The Massachusetts Democrat convention is today. We'll find out if Fauxcahontas' trail of tears will include a primary.

Posted by: andy at 04:19 AM | Comments (179)
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What's up morons? Well, I'm a bit pressed for time so here's a lite ONT. Enjoy.

Battleship Earth: Does The Pentagon Have The Right Weapons To Fight An Alien Invasion? Unless they build unshielded thermal exhaust ports into their weapon systems, have a fatal reaction to the common cold or fail to have an anti-virus scanner, we're screwed. We can't even deflect an asteroid if we saw one coming. Some cool toys/ideas listed though. more...

Posted by: CDR M at 06:34 PM | Comments (454)
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A Stunning Blow To Obama's Campaign

Five months off, but I think we can say it's pretty much over, folks. No way the Obama team overcomes this one. Holy moly, what a week we've had!

Anyway, to the point of the post:
Former Braves Pitcher who is known only for a racist outburst thirteen years ago endorses Mitt Romney.

I think you can all appreciate how HUGE this news is. Much appreciation to Amy Bingham of ABC News for her admirable work in bird-dogging this important tidbit down for us.

Looking forward to five more months of this pathetic, laughable bullshit.

Hey, you know who not only endorses Barack Obama, but kept company with him, Amy?

Terrorists like Bill Ayers, who detonated lethal bombs in the United States for the express purpose of overthrowing our Constitutional republic. And people who threw bags of feces and urine at peace officers in an American city, Amy. That's who.

Do you really want to play the guilt-by-endorsement game...with a candidate like yours? Really?

Really?

Oh, please don't throw us in that briar patch, Br'er Fox!

H/T to Skinbad.

Posted by: LauraW at 05:14 PM | Comments (131)
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Greetings to all the AoSHQ chess nerds, and you know who you are. I'm going to be away from the computer pretty much all day tomorrow, so I'm putting this week's chess thread up a day early.

More on the CN 7643 endgame problem

Last week, I put up an endgame problem that was driving me nuts, which I didn't know the answer to. And it stimulated a good discussion in the comments, which I found very gratifying. Thanks to you all, I think we now have a pretty good idea of the solution, and it's a win for White.

Here is the problem:

White to move

In these types of problems, I always start out by asking, what can Black do to f@*! White up? Well, Black only has one real threat, which is his advanced a-pawn. His strategic goal is to bring his King over and capture the White pawns. In order to do this, he needs to figure out how to leverage his main threat to tie White up in defense so the Black King has time to make a break for it over to the other side of the board.

For White's part, he needs to not get too far behind Black's march to the king-side, and also, he cannot afford to part with the Knight. If, for example, he trades Knight for pawn, he's dead, as Black has now got the drop on him over on the King-side.

The position starts out with Black pretty much in zugzwang, which White can exploit

1. h3 Kd2

Black really doesn't need to go to b1 to defend the pawn, as some commenters have suggested. White really can't take the pawn, at least not yet. If Kxa2, then Kxc2 and Black now goes over and scoops up the pawns.

2. Kb2 Kd3

This pretty much nullifies Black's queening threat. The King can stay on b2 for a time while White uses his Knight to duel with the enemy King.

3. Nb4+ Ke4 4. Nc6 Kf3 5. Nd4+ Kg3 6. Nf5+ Kxh3 7. Nxh6 Kg3

It's pretty much over at this point. White can now take the a-pawn and then join the fray on the other side of the board. If Black tries to manoeuver his King around to attack the Knight, it can go to f5. A typical continuation might be:

8. Kxa2 Kf4 9. Kb3 Ke5 10. Kb2 Kf6 11. Kc3 Kg6 12. Nf5 Kf6 13. Kd4 Ke6 14.
Ng7+ Kf6 15. Nh5+ Ke6 16. Ke4 Kf7 17. Kf5 etc.

Thanks to moron commenters Philip, DJ, rtw, TSgt Ciz, MFG, CAL and others for providing analysis.

Commenter MFG had an interesting idea, inspired by one of his correcspondence games:

1. Na1 Kb1 2. Kc3! Kxa1 3. Kc2 h5 4. gxh5 g4 5. h6 g3 6. h7 gxh2 h8B mate

Very clever, but I think Black can avoid it by not taking the Knight. Instead, his second move should be Kc1 and now it's unclear how White can make any progress in this new direction without having it morph back into the main line.

What a fun problem. Again, thanks to Edward Winter's excellent Chess History site for it.

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Posted by: Open Blogger at 03:10 PM | Comments (63)
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Ay yi yi.

The media will owe the world a lot of apologies for this calamity.

Posted by: Ace at 03:07 PM | Comments (220)
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Why do I say he confirms that?

Because he really wants to share, um, credit with Republicans.

Impressed by conservatives ability to pretend to believe that Obama is 100% responsible for events 1.5 years into divided government.

And 3.5 years into Obama's term, with 2 years of undivided, Democratic-unified government.

Remember when someone kept saying the previous Conservative Wisdom -- Obama's the favorite! gleep! -- was all effed up as usual? Tony Harden says so now.

Mitt Romney is now the front-runner to win the White House in 2012

If Mitt Romney turfs Barack Obama out of the Oval Office in November, then we might well look back on today and say that this was the day that the 44th President of the United States lost his bid for re-election.

The jobs numbers were appalling - just 69,000 jobs added last month, unemployment clmbing to 8.2 per cent and the ranks of the long-term unemployed swelling by 300,000. As Jim Pethokoukis of AEI notes, if the Obama administration hadn't slashed the numbers looking for jobs, unemployment would be 10.9 per cent.

...

The problems for Obama are stacking up. Not only is there the economy - and even if that gets better, this is the period when people's perceptions become set in aspic - but there's an inept campaign strategy and a tilt to the Left that is likely to alienate moderates and independents.

As John Podhoretz argues persuasively, Obama seems unable to make a case for why he should be re-elected, as Reagan, Clinton and Bush 43 did. Simply being Barack Obama, the personification of people's vague dreams, is no longer enough.

Obama's rambling, responsibility-dodging address in Minnesota showed that while his beautiful words may have been ideally fitted for the 2008 election, speechifying not do it this time around. Contrast it with Romney's relentless hammering of his jobs message on CBNC shortly beforehand and you can see why more thoughtful Democrats are getting very, very concerned.

Like Matt Yglesias. I really do not understand what kind of Fool's Paradise they'd been living in -- in 2008, I was reasonably confident McCain would lose.

While I did get excited about the chance that Palinmania would overcome McCain's huge problems, I was sort of baffled at how that could happen-- Palin was a thrilling personality, but our economic problems were real, and we were in two unpopular wars that didn't seem to be closing in on victory.

Those are facts on the ground. A talented politician can only do so much. (And when the financial crisis hit -- gee, then it was all over. McCain could have pinned that to Obama but insanely chose not to, reasoning "if we're talking about the economy, we're losing." Um, if you don't explain why your opponent is to be doubted on the only issue on people's minds, you're definitely losing, dude.)

At any rate: I knew this in 2008.

What the hell kind of Weapons-Grade Cocoon have liberals been living in?

How disconnected from the actual facts of the world do you have to be to imagine that a deepening depression is not going to count as a rather major mark against Obama?

What do these people think the majority of voters actually vote on? Half-baked, half-hearted gay marriage endorsements?

You should read Harden's piece, but here's a bit from the end:

Put all this together and what have we got? Romney must now be considered the narrow favourite in November. Of course, Obama could well be re-elected. But this feels like a moment similar to the one in mid-December 2007 when Obama began to eclipse Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries.

Although I'm holding off on saying it until after Wednesday, I've been privately saying what Fritzworth said today. Not only am I pretty confident Obama loses, but I do not think it will be close. I think it will be something like 56% for Romney.

By the way, let me explain the psychology of why people always say "it will be close." People like to say this because it seems safe, and also, because it demonstrates they are "serious" thinkers who are not just making "crazy predictions."

This is why, as I've pointed out, the New York Times supposed football predictions always show the games final scores pretty close -- 24-17, 31-27, and so forth.

Well, about half the games are pretty close. About half are not close at all. In many games, things simply break for one team. If things break for the team that was already stronger on paper, it's a blow-out.

People feel safe in making these "it will be close" predictions, but actually these predictions aren't very well-founded on logic or history. They're actually founded on emotion -- the desire to not look silly and not stand out from the crowd.

A realistic, logical view of these things would always bear in mind that sometimes it's simply not close at all; sometimes it's just a drubbing.

And by sometimes I mean "almost 50% of the time."

People who always say "it's going to be close" aren't really trying to predict anything. They're just babbling. If you're really going to make predictions, you have to take into account the not-at-all-uncommon situation where it's simply never really close at all.

Going by actual electoral history -- actually, you know, presidential contests aren't usually all that close, are they? We always keep in mind Bush v. Gore and that 0.005% difference (or whatever).

But Obama won by seven or eight. Clinton beat Dole by more than 8 (with Perot taking 8.4 -- I'd forgotten that).

Yeah, you could say that's "close," in a way. But in a national presidential election, that's really a convincing win where the outcome was never seriously in doubt.

Given actual electoral history, why do people cling to the notion "it's going to be close"? It's going to be close -- if Obama's winning. If that happens, somehow, Obama's lead will be small, and he'll squeak by with a narrow 2 point win.

If Romney wins, however, it's much more likely to be closer to a 6 point victory, which isn't all that close, or possibly even the nine point drubbing Jimmy Carter received at the hands of Reagan.

Just remember that every time you hear about the "intangible powers of incumbency." Yeah, Jimmy Carter had those. So did the Elder Bush.

They still lost.

And they lost for the exact same reasons Obama is likely to lose.

I do not know how the hell these prognosticators have been so confident of Obama's chances given that the two incumbents who lost elections in the past 40 years have lost precisely because the economy was in the crapper and they seemed incapable of doing anything positive about it.

One positive word for Obama's chances: In many of the crucial swing states, the unemployment rate is below the national average.

Some key battlegrounds are doing better than the nation as a whole. And even if the presidentÂ’s policies didnÂ’t cause the improvement, it could help his case that the economic outlook has brightened under his stewardship.

Auto and steel workers in battleground Ohio are getting jobs again. The unemployment rate in the state on Election Day is expected to be close to 7 percent.

That is certainly a helpful fact on the ground for Obama, at least in Ohio... but we'll see about that predicted rate of "close to 7 percent."

Which is, by the way, pretty bad.

The media complained incessantly about Bush's 5.6% national average, but apparently they think that Ohioans will love Obama for a predicted "close to 7 percent" rate.

We'll see, we'll see.

By the way, that article noted:

And the national numbers do still matter. Headlines on weak jobs reports donÂ’t help Obama. And he has only a few of those left, starting with FridayÂ’s report, which is expected to show the economy added a mediocre 150,000 jobs in May. The stock market, which took a big hit in recent weeks as fears about Europe mounted, has a big impact on consumer confidence and voting behavior. A falling Dow often means a faltering incumbent.

Well. What a difference a day makes.

Posted by: Ace at 02:22 PM | Comments (180)
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Stories about Madison and Milwaukee are a dime a dozen.

How about this little quick tweet from a newspaper contact inside Waukesha county:

"it did in fact exceed Nov 2010", asking about early voter and absentee returns in one of the big cities in the most conservative county in Wisconsin. As of Thursday. Early voting ends today.

Waukesha County's margin for Walker nearly matched the margin Barrett enjoyed in Milwaukee in 2010. The assumption that ramping up turnout in urban areas is enough for the Democrat, if this development holds, is dangerously foolish.

If Waukesha County voters decide to turn out at rate exceeding 2010, as implied, it can potentially drown out the big city to its east, Tom Barrett's home turf, despite having a fraction the population.

The assumption has been that if the Democrats turn out explosively in Dane and Milwaukee they can beat Walker. That assumption apparently forgot what the rest of the state's voters intend to do.

Posted by: CAC at 01:47 PM | Comments (59)
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World's first private space vehicle, now returned to earth. more...

Posted by: Ace at 01:33 PM | Comments (53)
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@tmi3rd calls this possibly the "greatest video ever."

It's a rap video which proclaims that when you want some "new" (i.e., new vaigzsh), you should go to Wal*Mart, because that's where all the sexy ladies are.

Content Warning, as the whole video consists of booty being shaken one foot from the camera, and a flurry of sexual terms that I'm actually hearing for the first time. Things where you're like, "I've never heard that and so I technically don't know what it means, but I do know what it means, and that's awful."

Like I said, Content Warning.

Posted by: Ace at 01:08 PM | Comments (146)
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