About
Captain Ed is a father and grandfather living in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota, a native Californian who moved to the North Star State because of the weather. He lives with his wife Marcia, also known as the First Mate, their two dogs, and frequently watch their granddaughter Kayla, whom Captain Ed calls The Little Admiral.
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The Crows Nest
Would Early Primaries Allow More Donations?
Jim Geraghty at The Campaign Spot believes that candidates will benefit if primaries and caucuses get pushed into 2007. A loophole in campaign finance regulation appears to allow an extra $2,300 per donor for candidates if those elections are held this year. Be sure to check out Jim's analysis, and the surprising candidate that may benefit the most.
When Tom Met Jeralyn
One of the interesting aspects of politics is finding out that opponents are people, too. Jeralyn Merritt of TalkLeft met Rep. Tom Tancredo backstage at NBC's studios, and found him more likable than she had anticipated. Perhaps it was their mutual interest in Dog, The Bounty Hunter ...
Joe Lieberman A Right-Wing Nut?
That's what CAIR says, according to Joe Kaufman. He has a link to a CAIR official's blog post that calls Lieberman, along with John Bolton, former CIA director James Woolsey, and the Heritage Foundation's Peter Brookes as "extremists". Affad Shaikh also calls Dick Cheney a "fat bastard of a liar," apparently not meant as a pop-culture reference to the Austin Powers movies. (via Let Freedom Ring)
Broadband Homelessness
The Japanese have made homelessness more efficient, and more Net-friendly, too. Their Internet cafés have become homeless shelters for the struggling manual-labor sector. The problem has grown into such a problem that government intervention will shortly become a political priority.
Found My Law Firm
Power Line links twice to this story regarding an attorney at Faegre & Benson who refused to become a victim and helped capture a very dangerous man. Keith Radtke is a partner in the firm as is Power Line's John Hinderaker. Radtke is listed in satisfactory condition after getting shot in the back, but that didn't keep him from locking up his attacker in a wrestling grip until police could arrive. I don't know about you, but that's the kind of man I'd want as my counsel ....
Don't Click That YouTube E-mail
The latest in spam seems to be redirections from YouTube links in e-mail to IP addresses without domain names. They attempt to entice people by making it seem that they have been inadvertently YouTubed. I'm sure most people can see through this scam, but just in case, you've been warned ....
Rick Moran Escapes The Floods
Rick Moran has kept us up to date on his travails along the Algonquin River. Yesterday, the police showed up to get him evacuated before the river flooded his home -- but today, Rick finds that a minor miracle has taken place, and that his house survives ... at least for now. Keep Rick in your prayers, and keep checking in at Right Wing Nut House for updates.
Rule 1: Drag The Corpse On Over First
If I've learned anything in four years of blogging, don't try to be out in front of the death rumors, especially with the villains of the world. Saddam died a hundred deaths before we caught him alive in his spider hole, and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi almost as many before his demise last year. Osama may or may not be alive, but everyone's avoided speculating on his fate for a while now. Maybe Val at Babalu Blog will get luckier with his "Castro Is Dead" story. We all hope so. I'll wait for the announcement ....
Hobbs Choice
Volunteer Voters is holding its annual "Best of Nashville" on-line polls, and one of the categories is for the best political writer. Our friend Bill Hobbs, now posting at Newsbusters, and he'd like his on-line fans to cast their votes. Drop by and put one in for Bill if you get a chance!
Murtha Getting Backlogged On Apologies
Gary Gross of Let Freedom Ring sees another case collapsing on the Haditha charges. He's called for Murtha to apologize earlier, and adds another reason to the tally.
No Such Thing As 'Moderate' Islam?
Turkish PM Tayyip Erdogan told a television interviewer that he finds the label "moderate Islam" offensive. Shrink Wrapped has a lot more on this, but at least in the same interview Erdogan acknowledged that "radical Islam" exists, and that it's been a catastrophe. Be sure to read the whole post.
MS-NBC Gets Punk'd
Power Line has a great post on a lack of journalistic effort on the part of MS-NBC. In covering the Michael Vick story, they reported on what they thought was Al Sharpton's website proclaiming Vick's innocence. I guess Alex Johnson and two other MS-NBC reporters couldn't bother to read the title bar of the site, which proudly proclaims it as a "parody site".
New Instapundit Podcast On Pharmaceuticals
I just caught this e-mail from Glenn Reynolds about his new podcast with Richard Epstein, the author of Overdose: How Excessive Government Regulation Stifles Pharmaceutical Innovation. Haven't had a chance to listen to it yet, but the topic is important enough to make sure I carve out time for it tomorrow. Get their first and tell me what I'm missing ....
Fed Trying A 'Stealth Easing'?
The Federal Reserve seems to have conducted a quiet campaign to steady markets that started spinning out of control, according to King Banaian at SCSU Scholars. He thinks that the Fed has conducted a "stealth easing". Be sure to read his explanation and follow his lnks.
A Shameless Bit Of Sel-Promotion
Gateway Pundit and Val at Babalu Blog note a crass PR move by Hugo Chavez. Venezuela has responded to Peru's eathquake disaster with food shipments -- and with Hugo's smiling picture on the cans. He also uses the tuna-can label to undermine President Garcia of Peru, who narrowly defeated Chavez' pal Ollanto Humalla, whom the labels extol for his "solidarity" with Chavez.
Tacky beyond belief.
Comments (31)
Posted by Mike Smock | July 20, 2007 6:09 PM
AXcess claims:
"AXcess News subscribes to the Society of Professional Journalists code of ethics. It is the mission of the Society of Professional Journalists to stimulate high standards and ethical behavior in the practice of journalism."
This is there about page link:
http://www.axcessnews.com/index.php/pages/show/id/1
Posted by Jim Pickering | July 20, 2007 6:13 PM
Thanks for the smile, Ed. Hope all the right wing has not lost their sense of humor as you appear to have done.
Have a great weekend.
Posted by Anthony (Los Angeles) | July 20, 2007 6:24 PM
Charles at Little Green Footballs has posted many examples of Google's odd choices for "news" sources.
Posted by Baxter Greene | July 20, 2007 6:26 PM
If this was said about Hillary or Obama, the liberals would
be yelling and getting their panties all in a bunch.
Glad to see liberals practicing their compassion for the sick
and showing off that intellect they are bragging about so
much.
This does not surprise me considering this is coming from the same people whose leadership get their foreign policy advice from the daily kos and consider jon stewart "hard news".
Posted by marvin | July 20, 2007 6:35 PM
Humorous headline, I love it.
Posted by bvw | July 20, 2007 6:40 PM
AP, today: Google's 2Q profit lets down investors
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070720/ap_on_hi_te/earns_google_32
Posted by newton | July 20, 2007 6:45 PM
That's a headline for a college fraternity newspaper, not a journalistic entity.
Posted by carole | July 20, 2007 6:50 PM
newton, how right you are, but what does
it matter, it really is not as bad as some of
the other really nasty things said by the
lliberals and allowed to stand with no
speaking for the president.
Typical republican response.
Yes, I do have a sense of humor, but it
does not get to the level this latest
liberal spewing on somthing that is not
funny.
Posted by King Tiger | July 20, 2007 6:59 PM
Captain,
almost 3 hours later and no change. Our president's posterior is still the focus of their headlines.
Posted by Scrapiron | July 20, 2007 7:36 PM
Do you mean Goggle has news? What next, two wimps doing the sports. Anytime a search ends up on Goggle I expect and have problems. Overhyped and overpriced bunch of crap.
I'll bet President Bush gets a good laugh at the headline. Good to see the left wing cowards are holding up their end, scared of Chaney and their own shadow. Isn't it great.
Posted by daytrader | July 20, 2007 8:16 PM
I have followed google news from the day it opened.
As the campaign for office has moved forward the headline choices have changed.
Read for the anti-Bush and anti-Republican story lines and put them on a graph and you will get the same hockey stick curve Al Gore loves to trot out.
Posted by Moon | July 20, 2007 8:22 PM
Well, if any of y'all actually visited Axcess News, it's really quite funny. It skewers people on all sides of the political spectrum with equal weirdness. And, to say the least, it's choice of headlines is, well, odd. It sells itself as the news for the X generation. As such, it provides little actual content, gets facts wrong, lots of slang, and has lots of typos. I put them on my aggregator under humor. Not quite as good as The Onion, but close.
Posted by Steffan | July 20, 2007 8:41 PM
::shrugs:: Actually, I'll bet the President and VP do get a laugh out of it. It's certainly not the worst anyone has ever said about either of them....
That being said, it's nice to see how AXcess News subscribes to that "professional code of ethics." They keep this up, somebody might actually mistake them for the MSM.
What's fun is watching the frothers-at-the-mouth at Huffpo, DKos and DU fulminating at the very idea of Cheney being in charge. :)
Posted by Adjoran | July 20, 2007 8:55 PM
Google filters out most conservative sites from their news page because the leftists always file complaints about them.
Conservatives just complain to each other.
Posted by Mwalimu Daudi | July 20, 2007 9:09 PM
From the same organization that does Communist China's dirty work for them.
Posted by Jim Treacher | July 20, 2007 9:11 PM
I chronicled my futile attempts to get the Daily Gut listed on Google News here and here. Not that I expected anything different.
Posted by MarkT | July 20, 2007 9:18 PM
Do any of you actually know what algorithm Google uses to select news sources and rank stories?
I certainly do not and I doubt any of you do.
I would love to be proven wrong here - I've been curious to know their algorithms for a while and if you all can enlighten me I'd appreciate it. Thanks!
Posted by Rose | July 20, 2007 9:28 PM
Google, the engine that refused Michelle Malkin as a news service, and also Little Green Footballs, too - because THEY are "hate mongers", for reporting the TRUTH!
And how the DIM LIBERAL SOCIALIST ISLAMOFASCIST-LOVERS DO HATE THE TRUTH!
Posted by Mark F. | July 21, 2007 4:33 AM
This isn't nearly as fun as when Colin Powell had the same exam. Then we had wags talking about "Colin's colon" and "Powell's bowels".
Posted by bulbasaur | July 21, 2007 7:12 AM
I say the simplest theory is always the best.
Was there an error in the Google search engine? An external hack into Google?
Or is it simply the case that liberalism is nothing more than perpetual adolescence?
I think we know the answer.
Posted by MarkT | July 21, 2007 8:55 AM
Did any of you go to AxcessNews.com and read a few articles?
Do you even know what their gimmick is? They try to be 'edgy' because they say their audience is gen-x.
Here are a few other headlines:
"CBS spins poll results to favor Clinton in presidential race" (this one includes the line "Dennis Kucinich who threw a hissy fit")
"Ambassador sees fear in Iraq, says U.S. troops must stay"
"Google Profit short of expectations, shares drop"
"Views on Bush stem cell veto split along party lines"
Posted by Rose | July 21, 2007 11:47 AM
Funny how the "edgy" folks never appreciate "edginess" towards themselves, ain't it. :)
Posted by LuckyBogey | July 21, 2007 11:47 AM
Google scares the hell out of me! Google is known for its left leanings and they have been accused of using their algorithms to distort the search engine results.
This is very serious folks and most ordinary Americans have no idea that Google is in bed with the left loonies. Google is a bigger threat than the MSM!
I never allow Google to keep any cookies or scripts on any of my systems. It would not surprise me that their is an internal Google effort under way to identify voters or potential voters by their searches and the results page will display according to the user's political orientation.
Type in Michelle Malkin and Ann Coulter. Note the bikinis pics! Now type Clinton and note the difference!
Posted by Ray | July 21, 2007 12:34 PM
I've had several colonoscopies in the last 5 years, (I have Crohns) and I can speak from experience that, when it come to a colonoscopy, the preparation is far worse than the procedure. No one can claim that President Bush is "full of (expletive deleted)", at least until 24 hours after the procedure.
BTW, Liberals shouldn't worry too much as Cheney will only "be in charge of the country" for about an half and hour or so.
Posted by Greg | July 21, 2007 12:51 PM
Just checked Google news (1:45 pm EST 7/21/07), and the lead story is about President Bush's colonoscopy. It is not itself disrespectful, but the picture of Cheney and Bush is labeled (credited to) "Monsters and Critics.com."
Posted by MarkT | July 21, 2007 1:33 PM
The top story now on AxcessNews is:
"Bush Iraq troop surge working, U.S. Army says"
Clearly, Axcess news hates America ;-)
Posted by Charles | July 21, 2007 1:58 PM
Google News is quite up front about how it ranks news articles:
1. It is done by algorithm and automatically.
2. It is based on the number of times a page is linked.
Hint: by linking to the article, Ed made its ranking go up. Rather self-defeating, wouldn't you say?
If you want more details, I'd suggest that the ranking scheme is a variety of the google page ranking scheme. You can find introductory information on wikipedia and follow the links there if you want to learn more.
If there's a "hockey stick" in "liberal leaning" stories on google, the most likely explanation is that these are, increasingly, the ones getting linked (and viewed). This might have something to do with the increasingly liberal views of the public, especially among the young (who are over-represented on the internet), supposedly documented by a recent study.
In the case at hand, however, it seems that the ranking anomaly is due to a clever headline, which brought in a lot of attention - and links.
Posted by lexhamfox | July 22, 2007 12:04 AM
I'm sure they will find the CinC's head there today. That will be newsworthy.
Posted by Only_One_Cannoli | July 22, 2007 1:02 AM
Jim Pickering, Moon, etc.
What lexhamfox said is a good example of funny. The Onion is funny. That Axcess attempt at news was ... not funny -- it was, as bulbasaur pointed out, adolescent.
Funny. Not funny. You'd be a more interesting group of lefty commenters if you could tell the difference.
Posted by MarkT | July 22, 2007 8:24 AM
> 1. It is done by algorithm and automatically.
As far as I know, the exact details are secret, no? Otherwise it would be easy to get your page ranked higher than it deserves.
> 2. It is based on the number of times a page is linked.
That is true at a basic level; however, the math involved is pretty complex (lots of linear algebra to 'weight' each link).
Posted by Charles | July 22, 2007 9:59 AM
MarkT,
I would suggest that this is not the forum for discussing page ranking. The general methodology is as I stated above, and hardly a secret. The implementation of the method so that it runs fast enough to be useful is proprietary.