#OccupyOvernightOpenThread

—Maetenloch

Down with the thieving corporations like Dupont, Walmart, and Ace LLC. We demand an end to this blogging oppression! And dental insurance for all the cobs!

The commenters - united - will never be defeated!! The commenters - united - will never be defeated!! The commenters - united - will never be defeated!! The commenters - united - will never be defeated!! The commenters - united - will never be defeated!! The commenters - united - will never be defeated!! The commenters - united - will never be defeated!!

We don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. We don't want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed.

Oh wait...

Huh....that's a little contradiction city, dudes. Time for a think-break.

Guns In School - The Old Days
Not banned and searched for but actually part of the curriculum. Literally unthinkable today.

How Everything You've Ever Heard About Marie-Antoinette Is Wrong
Not only didn't she say the famous quote attributed to her, but the phrase itself is actually an example of classic liberal muddled economic thinking.

Marie-Antoinette didn’t actually say “Let them eat cake!” In fact, she actually worked pretty hard to feed the poor. The legend comes from Rousseau’s Confessions, where he wrote that a “Great princess” had declared “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche” while the people were starving. Unfortunately “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche” doesn’t mean “Let them eat cake!” either. It means, more or less, “Let them eat [expensive] buns.”

...When Marie-Therese declared “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche,” she was demanding that the “profiteering” bakers should follow the law and feed the people the more expensive bread, or buns — even though the ultimate result would have been to crush the bakeries financially, and hence make starvation even worse…

Like Who Needs to Know Stuff?
One of the perils of letting wet-behind-year kids like Ezra Klein and Matt Yglesias have prominent blogging gigs at MSM outlets is not only that they say stupid things because they don't know much about the world, but that they don't know (or care?) how little they know. One benefit of paying your dues before getting a media megaphone is that you learn a little humbleness about your own knowledge.

In my post this morning about why Apple lost the personal computing battle, I noted that a big part of the reason was the much lower cost of PCs vs. Macs. Matt Yglesias tweets back:

Actually, they did in a way. The original version of Windows was designed to work with the first CGA color adapter, and in order to keep costs down that adapter only supported 16 colors. Later adapters supported more colors, but Windows retained a considerable amount of backward compatibility with old hardware for a very long time. Thus, even as late as the early-90s, versions of Windows were still using logos that rendered properly on ancient hardware.

Becoming a Better Criminal Moron: How To Survive a Mace Attack
and How to Escape from Wrist-Binding Zip Ties
Plus How to escape the police in a high speed chase?
Short answer: You can't. Which is why you should always use your high speed to get to a crowded mall or the flight space around a major airport.

The Longest, Bitchiest Argument Ever
From Bridesmaids. I'm guessing this was mostly improved.

Male Buttcrack or Lady Cleavage
Can you discern the difference? It's important.

The Yahoo AoSHQ group. You know the way.

Tonight's post brought to you by behind the scenes:

Notice: Posted by permission of AceCorp LLC. Please e-mail overnight open thread tips to maetenloch at gmail. Otherwise send tips to Ace.

Close it up

NFL Pickem Stats - Week 5

—Dave In Texas

The debates, like the playoffs, need to start weeding out the weak.

Just sayin. It's time.

But you can read all that other political doo doo down there. This here is football, the only game I apparently know nothing about, 5 weeks into the season. Ben and CDR M report the following:

The Detroit Lions of the AoS Pick'em World

Scott 47, (who leads the leaderboard, agonizing over last night's game as much as I've ever seen anyone agonize, and that's sayin something).

The Plauge 46
Muletrain2016 45
FMG: 45

(TWO OTHERS AT 44)

Now, that right there is a problem, because I don't know who these two at 44 are. But you know who you are.

AnthonyL 43
Country Blumkins 43
Purity Republican 43

The Philiadephia Eagles of the AoS Pick'em World

Drew 41
Gabe 38
rdbrewer 37
Ben 35
Andy 35
CDR M 35
Russ from Winterset: 33

Cahbahs

DiT 32

(there's no way in hell I'm gonna be a Philadelphia Eagle of anything)

Also, Rangers down 5-1 in the bottom of the 7th. You win the first two, you come back to Texas. That's a rule or something.

Liveblogging The Bloomberg/WaPo Debate

—Andy

Another one of these things. Because what could be smarter than letting the MFM pick our candidate? Again.

The October 11th debate will be moderated by Charlie Rose, Washington Post political correspondent Karen Tumulty and Bloomberg TV White House correspondent Julianna Goldman. Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, businessman Herman Cain, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, Texas Rep. Ron Paul, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum will participate in the live debate at Dartmouth College.

Starts at 8:00pm. Livestream here and here. Also: the Bloomberg TV channel finder.

I would suggest some drinking game rules, but with Charlie Rose moderating it's going to be hard enough to stay awake sober. Drink 'em if ya got 'em, I guess.

Standard reminder: Your comments do not automatically display. So don't ask "Why aren't my comments displaying?" They don't display.

They're not posted comments a la chat room. Instead they go to queue, which the producers (cobloggers) read, and we post them, by hand, if we think they make a good point.

Liveblog thingy below the fold.

Herman Cain: Obama's Not Really Black, You Know

—Ace

Last week, I think, I was talking to someone, and the possibility of a Herman Cain/Barack Obama contest came up.

"It would be pretty amazing," this someone said. "Two black candidates for President!"

"One and a half," I corrected.

And then I noted that we'd be able to do something hitherto undreamed: We could actually play the race card.

We could actually call Obama and his supporters... Racist.

This thought amuses me to no end. I don't care if that's unprincipled or inconsistent or what-- I'm doing it, if it comes down to that. The left has such fun with the race card. It's about time we had fun, too.

It wouldn't be effective, mind you. The country isn't going for a "vote for the black guy" pitch in 2012. Kind of got burned on that in 2008.

But it would be fun.

Herman Cain thinks so too.

Ticking off ways he could compete with Obama, Boortz says that Cain would be able to talk about the black experience in America. Cain’s response: “[Obama's] never been a part of the black experience in America.”

But for now, Cain says he's going after Romney.

In a radio interview just now, Herman Cain previewed his Tuesday night debate plan: “I’m going after Romney.”

"I’m not going after Perry. I don’t need to go after Perry," Cain said, per POLITICO's Juana Summers.

Romney's had a free pass for most of the debates. Perry tried to go after him in the last two, but bungled it and wound up whiffing.

Cain's had a free pass himself.

It would be interesting to see both of these guys tested. I would like to know who can handle the attacks and who's deft with attacks in turn.

Meanwhile: The Barack Obama Parkway opens in Orlando.

Mile and a half of road. $10.5 million bucks. 150 temporary jobs. Wonderful.

Some Tea Partiers Note Slight Disparity In Media's Attitude Towards Themselves, Occupy Wall Street

—Ace

Via Networked blogs:

But only a slight difference.

While reporters at first didn’t always cover tea party rallies, Russo said, a California newspaper has recently been putting stories about the Occupy Wall Street on its front page.

“The Sacramento Bee actually had a front-page story before the rally, telling people where it was and what time it was,” Russo said.

...

Mark Meckler, the co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots, struck a similar note, saying that when the tea party protests first began, “we were ignored, mocked, and then attacked by the media” and “called ‘Astroturf,’ ‘fringe,’ ‘racists’ and ‘Nazis.’”

“Yet today, the leftist media seemingly cheers for a group of lawbreaking miscreants who have openly committed a variety of illegal acts,” Meckler said.

The media is always going to be kind to its precious lefties, but that doesn't mean they themselves are lefty. Oh dear no.

Thanks to lu.

Romney Demands Perry "Repudiate" Jeffress' Mormonism Remarks

—Ace

Offensive:

Mitt Romney said today that Rick Perry needs to “repudiate” the remarks made by Baptist pastor Robert Jeffress about Mormonism Saturday in his introduction of Perry at the Value Voters Summit.

This is sort of interesting. Jeffress intended his remarks to help Perry, and also, I suppose, to further the notion that Mormonism is a cult.

But what's going to end up happening is that Perry will either say Mormonism is not a cult, which in thus hurts Jeffress' second goal, or will not say either way, which will hurt Perry, at least with voters who are against the idea of a religious test and different classes of citizenship based on religious allegiance.

Perhaps that's a good thing. It's interesting, though, that bringing stuff like this into the open so often backfires. There's some kind of lesson in that.

Bryan Preston isn't having any of this, though.

Romney even hit Perry for saying that Jeffress’ remarks “hit it out of the park.” Romney decried a “religious test” and called on Perry to disassociate himself from Jeffress’ remarks.

The problem with Romney’s version of what happened is that it’s almost entirely untrue.

The Perry campaign did not select Rev. Jeffress; the Summit selected him and got a perfunctory sign-off from the campaign. Rev. Jeffress’ remark that Mormonism is a cult was not made in his introduction to Gov. Perry, but in remarks made to reporters later. As soon as he was aware of Jeffress’ remark, Perry did in fact disassociate himself with them entirely.

Romney seems to be demanding much more than a simple "disassociation," though. He basically wants Perry to repudiate and scold his base.

Which obviously would be bad for Perry.

Jeffress' anti-Mormon stuff might have worked if it had been stealthier, but he went obvious with it and now the guy he'd hoped to help is in even more political trouble.

Christie also rapped Perry hard on that at today's endorsement. He then went on to defend RomneyCare...

Speaking about Romney’s Massachusetts health-care program, Christie said it was “completely intellectually dishonest” to compare it to Obamacare.

...and it turns out that today is a particularly bad day to claim the systems cannot "honestly" be compared.

The records, gleaned from White House visitor logs reviewed by NBC News, show that senior White House officials had a dozen meetings in 2009 with three health-care advisers and experts who helped shape the health care reform law signed by Romney in 2006, when the Republican presidential candidate was governor of Massachusetts. One of those meetings, on July 20, 2009, was in the Oval Office and presided over by President Barack Obama, the records show.

“The White House wanted to lean a lot on what we’d done in Massachusetts,” said Jon Gruber, an MIT economist who advised the Romney administration on health care and who attended five meetings at the Obama White House in 2009, including the meeting with the president. “They really wanted to know how we can take that same approach we used in Massachusetts and turn that into a national model.”

Politico casts tonight as "Now or Never" for Perry, and, despite his solid fundraising, I think that might be right.

And will the knives come out for Cain?

Santorum's in a huff that no one's taking him seriously yet.

One candidate, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, has signaled that he may be taking aim at Cain. Before Cain’s recent surge, many speculated that Santorum could be the next to rise.

In a new radio ad running in Iowa, Santorum accuses Cain of “strongly” supporting “the Wall Street bailouts.” (RELATED: Country singer Lee Greenwood endorses Cain)

And Santorum, whose campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment for this story, also has made it clear he doesn’t agree with Cain’s tax plan: “I know there’s a plan out there, the 9-9-9. I’ve got a better one; it’s the zero-zero-zero plan,” he said at a conservative gathering last week.

Zero Zero Zero plan? Awesome. Bullshit bullshit bullshit.

FBI & DEA Thwart Iranian Plot to Kill the Saudi Ambassador to the US, In America

—Ace

Breaking:

The official said the alleged plan was directed by elements of the Iranian government and involved a plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to the United States.

In Pre-Obama years, this would be an act of war, and the reply would be serious punitive airstrikes against Iranian military and government sites.

Now, it'll just be soft-pedaled.

I Don't Really Question the Timing: There are some cynical remarks flying, like this is Eric Holder's new operation, "Forget Fast and Furious."

This is a variation of the I Question The Timing! claim that the left made 63 million times under Bush. The left's claim was that virtually every Bush anti-terrorism arrest was "timed" for political impact.

Well, that's dumb to begin with. It's a kneejerk method of denigrating an actual success, isn't it?

But if someone is going to make the I Question the Timing claim, he really must, as a first thing, establish that the particular timing of the announcement is especially good, and would be better than other plausible windows for the event to be "timed" to coincide in.

An assassination bust, I trust, is generally "timed" to occur when the police think they have enough evidence to make a case (but they are hurried along by the prospect of the attempt occurring sooner than they expect, or the suspects catching on that they're being followed and therefore fleeing).

But let's say there's some wiggle-room here -- you could let the surveillance proceed for a couple more weeks, then make the arrests near November. Or maybe you could have cut the surveillance short a few weeks, and made the arrests mid-September.

I'm not really sure that either of these timing-windows is "better" for Holder and Obama with regard to Fast and Furious. As the case is still not getting the media coverage it deserves, perhaps the best "timing" would have been next month-- maybe by next month, the media would have stopped protecting Obama and started reporting on the case more.

I really don't see any evidence for the "timing" of this announcement being especially good for Holder. Last month, such an announcement would have helped him. Next month, it also would have helped him.

In December, it would have helped him.

In all possible universes, this would "help" him, because busting up an Iranian assassination plot is inherently a good thing.

I think the whole "I Question the Timing" kneejerk reaction is a way of avoiding the obvious -- this is good for Holder -- by way of making some half-considered charge of political gamesmanship.

This is a good thing for Holder. Does it mean he shouldn't be removed from office? Of course not. It's just doing his job.

And besides, Holder had nothing to do with this. What, was he one of the investigators? Of course not.

Holder's sin is attempting to grab up credit he hasn't earned. Eric Holder had about 1% more involvement with these arrests than me.

Like Obama, charging to that microphone to announce that he personally plugged bin Ladin.

But timing? Meh. When would a major foreign assassination plot bust be poorly timed?

I Question The Convenient In/Out of the Loopiness: Why is that Eric Holder knows absolutely nothing about covert operations that end in disaster, but is presenting himself as a details guy in a covert operation that ended successfully?

Kind of convenient that he's involved in the successes, but cannot for the life of him even remember the mere existence of operations gone awry.

Christie To Endorse Romney

—Ace

Game changer? Probably not; more than half of Christie's supporters probably had Romney as their number two, anyway.

Letters From "The 99%"

—Ace

What the hell is it with the left and this same internet stunt?

They did this before with the "Thank you" stuff from, at that time, the 52%. Same schtick -- snap a picture of yourself and post it online. Which is narcissistic attention-getting.

And shoot the picture while holding a sheet of your grievances and/or miseries. The confessional style is also narcissistic attention-getting, of course. People interested in policy speak about "economic pain;" people interested in narcissistic self-promotion speak about "my economic pain."

I think this is a major stylistic difference between conservatives and liberals. Conservatives prefer to keep it impersonal, while the left really likes the "politics is personal" thing. It's just a coincidence that you can become an Internet Star! using the picture & confessional mode of political expression, I'm sure.

Anyway, here are some perfectly absurd tales of woe from the 99%.

One very common thing here: They are all white and mostly college-educated. Some have multiple degrees. However, they mostly chose the degrees you're not supposed to choose unless you are some kind of standout or come from a rich family -- psychology and the other degrees that don't immediately scream out "Job prospects!"

Why did they do that?

Who knows. But they ignored advice to think practically about their future earning power and now find themselves lacking earning power.

So what they want is for the government (that is, you) to step in and make them whole, immunizing them against their own choices, giving them the earning power they believe is due them.

I don't see one goddamned accounting or engineering degree in the tales of woe.

Sorry, you lose.

We do see "Classical Studies" majors suddenly panicking at the idea of entering the job market.

This isn't entirely their fault, of course: Their colleges lied and lied and lied to them, encouraging to "explore themselves" and take whatever courses they thought interesting, rather than actually building towards some kind of hirable skill-set.

But none of the whining is directed at their teachers and provosts, of course. It's directed at you, because you don't have any use for a Classical Studies major.

This Confused Woman... is mostly complaining that 32% of her salary is going towards taxes.

So what does she demand? "We need help...," and she seems to mean "from the government."

A gallon of irony spilled but not a drop splashed upon her.

Tonight's Debate Is A Turning Point In The Election

—Ace

Between Romney, Perry, and Cain, someone is going to win (or lose the least).

Perry can right his ship and begin building back up to front-tier status. Or he could stumble again, and consign himself to also-ran status.

Cain has had a problem handling questions that can't be answered with the numbers 9-9-9. He's said some constitution-scorning things about Muslims, and he has been baffled about elementary knowledge (the Right to Return) or major issues he really needs to have some kind of a position on (continuing the fight in Afghanistan).

In addition, he hasn't often been challenged, as he was viewed as a nice guy of virtually no threat to win the nomination. So none of the contenders challenged him. They were all playing nice, to curry favor with his supporters.

Given that Cain is now in second place, that should change. Whether Cain rises or falls might be the storyline of the night.

And then there's Mitt Romney. As Romney makes few actual mistakes, whether Romney "wins" depends on whether Perry and Cain both lose.

As boring as these things are, tonight's might actually be important. It's also supposed to be almost exclusively on the economy.

Avengers Trailer

—Ace

The neatest thing about this remains the fact that they did it at all. They built a six or eight year business plan on the idea they'd make some movies about Marvel's second-tier properties, with an eye to doing the big team-up in The Avengers. No one's ever done that before.

I think it's just going to be a standard comic book movie, when everything is said and done, but still, it's neat to see the heroes interacting, as they always do in the comics and never do in movies.

Thanks to Slublog.

Now They Tell Us: Bill Clinton Has A Photographic Memory

—Ace

A fact that might have had some legal relevance in 1998, eh?

In addition to Clinton's many other talents, he is known for having a near photographic memory.

The term gets tossed around a lot, but to actually have the ability is quite rare. According to an article from the Washington Post, Clinton "stunned a friend visiting the White House by saying, 'Let's call your parents!' and then reciting a number he hadn't dialed in more than a decade." When Clinton spoke with Oprah about his autobiography, he said had no trouble remembering "what happened to everyone's children and grandchildren," a talent that came in handy while writing his life story.

And yet a talent which failed him entirely when questioned during a deposition.

I guess this post is a little off-base, because Clinton's claim wasn't that the forgot, but that he defined things differently than most people. Asked point-blank if he had ever been "alone" with Monica Lewinsky, he said, sworn to the truth, that he had not been.

When it was revealed he'd done all sorts of things with her, he said "I guess we were alone, but I never thought we were."

Just talking from personal experience-- people are generally alone when they're doing the Disappearing Cigar trick.

Thanks to Dave @ Garfield Ridge.

Pass This Jobs Bill Now: Democrats Desperately Scrambling For... Democratic Support for "Jobs" Bill

—Ace

Obama continues attempting to whip the opposite party. And yet it's his own party that needs whipping.

Democratic leaders in the Senate are scrambling to avoid defections on President Obama’s jobs package, which appears headed for defeat on Tuesday.

A lack of Democratic unity on the president’s bill would be embarrassing for the White House, which has been scolding House Republicans for refusing to vote on the measure.

Obama has been touring the country, aiming to put pressure on the GOP to act. But Senate Democrats have indicated they are feeling some heat. Last week, Democratic leaders revised Obama’s bill, scrapping his proposed offsets. Instead of raising taxes on families making more than $250,000 annually, Senate Democrats lifted that figure to $1 million.

Despite the changes, the legislation still does not enjoy the support of all 53 senators who caucus with the Democrats. A handful of Democrats are undecided or leaning no on the bill.

The three Democrats most likely to cast Nay votes are Tester, Manchin, and Nelson, all of whom are up for re-election in states that typically vote for Republicans.

Even if these guys do vote for the "jobs" bill, isn't their reluctance to do so a sign that this isn't a good bill? Will the media conveniently forget that these three, plus Mary Landrieu and Claire McCaskill, were once pretty strongly opposed to it, and only buckled out of a purely political need to "show unity"?

Romney Health Care Advisers Worked With Obama In Designing ObamaCare

—DrewM.

You know why ObamaCare is so similar to RomneyCare? They were designed in part by some of the same people.

“The White House wanted to lean a lot on what we’d done in Massachusetts,” said Jon Gruber, an MIT economist who advised the Romney administration on health care and who attended five meetings at the Obama White House in 2009, including the meeting with the president. “They really wanted to know how we can take that same approach we used in Massachusetts and turn that into a national model.”

Romney has forcefully defended the Massachusetts law he signed, but says he is adamantly against a “one-size-fits-all national health-care system” imposed on all 50 states. “I will repeal Obamacare,” he has said. “And on day one of my administration, I will grant a waiver from Obamacare to all 50 states.”

...

Another Romney administration adviser consulted by the White House was Jon Kingsdale, a health-care expert who was appointed in 2006 by one of Romney’s Cabinet secretaries, Thomas Trimarco, to serve as executive director of the Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector Authority — the state agency charged with implementing the new Massachusetts health-care law.

The White House records show Kingsdale attended three White House meetings on health care in 2009. Another expert who attended four White House meetings on health care was John McDonough, who also had played a leading role in shaping the law signed by Romney. As the head of a health-care advocacy group in Massachusetts, McDonough was named by Romney aides as a “stakeholder” to represent consumer interests on the health-care law. McDonough later shared an “innovator in health award” with Romney and 11 others — including several top lawmakers and business leaders — given by NEHI, a leading New England health-care research group, “for their collaborative efforts in achieving Massachusetts health reform.”

Expect a fresh round of attacks on Romney in tonight's debate. Since it's on Bloomberg TV, no one will see it.

I'm pretty skeptical about how much impact this will have. As I've said all along, if people have decided to support Romney, they already know he's awful on health care ( some of us have even said it's a disqualifying defect). Is this going to be the straw that breaks the camel's back and sends them scurrying to vote for...someone else? I'm not sure why but I guess it might.

Of course for it to really hit home, someone will have to be able to make the case against him effectively in person. Tim Pawlenty whiffed when he had the chance, Rick Perry stumbled last time he tired and so far Herman Cain hasn't focused much fire on Mitt.

Tonight Perry gets a second chance but given how things have gone for his thus far, he'll probably have a killer debate...and no one will see it.

DOOM: I've got the blues before sunrise

—Monty

Obama's economic illiteracy underpins much of his failure on domestic policy. He compounds the problem by being intellectually arrogant: he's wrong, and the record proves he's wrong, but he cannot admit it to himself or anyone else. It becomes very wearying to enumerate all the ways in which this President is completely unfit for his job.

Here's a good example of how Obama's grand plans to revive the economy have failed: the $30 billion small-business loan package passed last year. It's been a complete failure, mainly due to the sloth and incompetence of the government, and misplaced priorities of the banks who received the money (they mainly used the government money to pay off their TARP loans -- in essence, giving Uncle Sugar's money back in a different wrapper).

Idiot manchild Ezra Klein experiences a blinding gimpse of the obvious, but having seen the light, he proceeds to misinterpret it as a call to even more and larger government intervention. (He also takes a half-hearted shot at Republicans, but that's simply a basal reflex for Klein.) Dumb as a bag of hammers, this guy.

Thomas Sargent, the newest Nobel laureate in Economics, is a surprising (to me) critic of both Keynesianism and Teh Krugman. Even in academia, the wheel turns.

The pre-post-employment economy. My friends and I used to ponder what people would do with their time if we ever achieved a Star Trek-like replicator technology and no one actually had to work for a living -- would we spend our time creating art, expanding the frontiers of science, and advancing civilization; or would we sit around all day watching TV and eating Cheetos out of a big tub?

One of the universal assumptions of industrial society — axiomatic to its capitalist, socialist, and hybridized variants — is that everybody, more or less, works. Not only does everybody work; everybody has a job. Either through judicious state planning or the benevolent invisible hand of the market, there is a job for anyone who wants or needs one and who is willing to do the work.

It is generally assumed that the overall economy will grow over time (again, either through planning or market evolution) and that this year’s batch of of available jobs will support a higher standard of living for the working populace than was made possible by the batch from a decade ago.

These assumptions are considered obvious. They are rarely stated, because they are considered to be a given.

So the question is — what if these assumptions are wrong?

More "green" FAIL, this time with GM’s slow-selling Volt.

From unemployed to unemployable. The jobs are out there, but the skillset of the current workforce is badly-matched to the high-tech needs of the workplace right now. Retraining is rarely an option -- it’s not easy to go from being a bricklayer or a truck-driver to being a database administrator or a software developer, and young people lack the experience that businesses seek. This kind of problem is deep-rooted, and will take many years to rectify. It's not a problem we can fix quickly.

Signposts on the way to municipal DOOM: cash-strapped Topeka will no longer prosecute domestic violence cases. I suspect that this is a variant of the old “we’ll have to lay off firefighters and cops!” ploy that cities bust out when they want to raise taxes, but in any event, as the finances of municipalities continue to degrade unpleasant choices like this will become more common.

I guess Governor Brown figured that since California doesn’t have enough money to cover the educational obligations they already have, and since the ocean of red ink shoes no sign of receding any time soon, he might as well commit to a whole new boatload of educational debt since his state already boned beyond recovery.

Merkel and Sarkozy assure the chumps that they have every intention of possibly having some kind of plan pretty soon, maybe.

Meanwhile, Greece's deficit miss to be re-re-revised again. It's almost as if they're lying, or don't know what the hell they're doing. Incompetence or perfidy? (Though there's no reason it can't be both, I suppose.)

China’s financial foundation is showing a lot of cracks. Dear debt-loaded Western nations: China will not save you. They may not be able to save themselves.

Just a reminder in case your forgot: the Occupy Wall Street people are neither particularly smart, clean, nor self-aware. These people do serve an important purpose, though: they serve as useful object-lessons on the wages of clueless arrogance mixed with stupidity. You can show your children pictures of these ill-bred, oblivious twits and remind them that this is what becomes of people with no skills, no shame, and no sense of responsibility.

Protesting: not a bad gig if you can get it. This falls under the “there are markets in everything” rubric.

Crisis management, Euro edition. A fairly long read, but very worth your time.

You know, most people know this intuitively: ignorance can lead to financial ruin.

Merit pay for teachers a bad idea? I tend to agree, mostly because it would inevitably be gamed by the teachers and their union. Arnold Kling has the right idea: get the government out of the education business entirely, and let the competitive marketplace do its work.

Is a trade-war with China justified? Given our dependence on trade with China, I doubt it -- we can threaten and bluster all we want, but come down to it, we and the Chinese need each other. If we are serious about punishing China, then the solution is simple -- stop buying stuff from them. Pay off the enormous debts we owe them. If we threaten them and fail to follow through, it will damage us more than if we had done nothing. If we go the tarriff route, we open a box full of demons we are in no way prepared to handle right now. (And as Douglas Holtz-Eakin points out, we could do a lot for our competitive posture by reforming our badly-designed tax regime.)

In other great news for the economy, the battering in the financial sector is taking its toll: Wall Street may lose up to 10,000 jobs by 2012. And given how much the state, county, and municipality of New York depend upon the tax revenues generated by those jobs, I'd be feeling some significant alarm if I were a politician there.

So-called "Progressives" -- spreading the misery.

Top Headline Comments 10-11-11

—Gabriel Malor

Happy Tuesday. In addition to Vic's (and others') links below and the links in the mainpage sidebar, you can find links on terrorism, crime, war, civil rights, Congress, Admin, and other news on my twitter feed most weekdays, including today, between 9AM and 11AM Eastern.

Overnight Open Thread

—Maetenloch

Random Wisdom o' the Day: Always eat your German meat products before attempting to go through US customs.

Younger Voters Want Government to Support Traditional Values?

Well that seems to be what this Gallup survey says. Interestingly support among young voters reached its nadir in 2008 and since then has been skyrocketing since then. Hmm I wonder what could have happened in 2008?

Sometimes the worst thing in the world is to get exactly what you thought you wanted.

10 Things You Didn’t Know About the Witness Protection Program

In the U.S., witness security has protected 7,500 witnesses and 9,500 of their family members since it began, and the testimonies of these witnesses has led to an 89% conviction rate of those they testified against. Here are 10 other things you didn't know about the program that helps take down organized crime, gang violence, and terrorism.

How Benford's Law Shows the Greeks Were Cheating
So how do you catch people making up realistic but fake numbers? Well Benford's Law (AKA Bane of the Fraudster) is an easy and surprisingly effective method. Basically it says that the first digits of a list of numbers will tend to have a certain distribution.

Specifically, Benford’s Law has something to say about how many times the digits 1 to 9 should be the leading digit of the numbers in your set. So, items costing £4.00, £412.99, and £4,999.00 all start with the digit 4, and you’d expect around 10% of your set to start with a 4.

That doesn’t seem so remarkable, with there being just 9 leading digits to pick from, of course you’d expect each to appear around 10% of the time. But in fact no, the lower the digit, the more likely you should see it. So, numbers in your set should begin with a 1 around 30% of the time, down to 10% for a 4, and with 9′s only showing up 5% of the time.

And when people make up 'random' numbers, they almost never do it in a way that follows Benford's Law. In fact I believe it's standard for auditors to check transactions against Benford's Law to see if they've been fiddled with by humans. And unshockingly it turns out that all the economic figures used by Greece to get admitted into the EU also fail Benford's Law.

The World's Worst Analogies
Taken from student papers.

Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.

The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling
ball wouldn't.

From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie,
surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and
Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.

John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had
also never met.

Although I kind of like this one:

He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant, and she was the East River.

The McGurk Effect
It turns out that to a certain extent we do listen with our eyes.

Remembering Captain Ed Freeman

You’re a 19 year old kid. You’re critically wounded and dying in the jungle somewhere in the Central Highlands of Viet Nam LZ (landing zone) X-ray. It’s November 11, 1967.

Your unit is outnumbered 8-1 and the enemy fire is so intense from 100 yards away, that your CO (commanding officer) has ordered the MedEvac helicopters to stop coming in. You’re lying there, listening to the enemy machine guns and you know you’re not getting out. Your family is half way around the world, 12,000 miles away, and you’ll never see them again. As the world starts to fade in and out, you know this is the day.

Then – over the machine gun noise – you faintly hear that sound of a helicopter.
You look up to see a Huey coming in. But.. It doesn’t seem real because no MedEvac markings are on it. Captain Ed Freeman is coming in for you.

He’s not MedEvac so it’s not his job, but he heard the radio call and decided he’s flying his Huey down into the machine gun fire anyway.

Read the rest to see why Captain Freeman was awarded the Medal of Honor. He died in 2008 at the age of 70.

The Top 10 Most Expensive Hotels
You don't have to be DSK to stay the night at Le Richmond in Geneva. You just need $17,000.

Steve Wozniak's Privately Printed $2 Bill Pads
Here the Woz explains how he can legally print and use his own custom $2 bill pads. He also talks about how he used a fake DOD ID to travel under a false name before 9/11.
[Note this is a level II prank for those keeping track]

For more Woz nerdery go here where he shows off his Nixie tube watch.

Oh Noes: Oral Sex Causes Cancer In Men
Does this mean a second look at the controversial HPV-vaccine, Tardasil?

The Yahoo AoSHQ group. Bla bla bla. And don't forget about the Job Bank.

Tonight's post brought to you by the feild of selling drugs:

Notice: Posted by permission of AceCorp LLC. Please e-mail overnight open thread tips to maetenloch at gmail. Otherwise send tips to Ace.

Close it up

Keith Ellison Channels His Inner Krugman

—Andy

Sometimes I wonder if we could do worse by replacing elections with an American Idol-like contest to find the 535 stupidest people in America and send them to congress. This is one of those times.

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) tells MSNBC regulations create jobs because a business will have to hire people to help them comply with the new requirement.

"I think the answer is no," Ellison said when asked if he believes regulations kill jobs. "And here is why: When we talked about increasing fuel efficiency standards, the industry responded, and they need engineers and designers and manufacturers, and they need actually more people to help respond to the new requirement."

Got that? Government diktat causing people to be hired chasing unicorns is good for the economy. I wonder why they don't just decree full employment.

Problem. Solved.

I swear, the first week of every new Congress should be devoted to studying Bastiat's broken window fallacy. Then there should be a test.

Creepiest Thing Ever: Human Amoeba Turns Away Representative John Lewis From Speaking

—Ace

The human microphone is creepy enough.

Add in the weird "let's come to a forced group consensus" dynamic and it's just scary. And it all happens with this Pod Person false niceness.

Have you ever in your life seen a group of people less equipped to make decisions for themselves, let alone for the nation?

Help Wanted: Idealistic Revolutionary With Reformist Agenda; Pays $350-$650 Per Week

—Ace

Where does all this money come from?

In this case, it comes from Working Families Party, which itself was concocted out of the professional left in the unions and in... ACORN.

New York's Working Families Party was first organized in 1998 by a coalition of labor unions, ACORN and other community organizations, members of the now-inactive national New Party, and a variety of public interest groups such as Citizen Action of New York.[citation needed] The party blends a culture of political organizing with unionism, 1960s idealism, and tactical pragmatism.

But where did they get their money? They don't make things. They add nothing to the economy. So they should not have a lot of money to throw around for Astroturfing.

Unless they have big benefactors. Who?

I suspect that among those big benefactors are we ourselves, getting tapped, taxed, skimmed and scammed at every turn by a thousand government leeches, which then pump economic blood to these cretins to demand more taxation.

Issa to Holder: “You Own Fast and Furious”

—Andy

Eric Holder: The GOP is being so mean about Operation Fast and Furious. Can't we just drop this thing and all get along. Look ... squirrel!

Darrell Issa: Please, continue, you were saying something about best intentions. What's the matter? Oh, you were finished! Well, allow me to retort.

Dear Attorney General Holder:

From the beginning of the congressional investigation into Operation Fast and Furious, the Department of Justice has offered a roving set of ever-changing explanations to justify its involvement in this reckless and deadly program. These defenses have been aimed at undermining the investigation. From the start, the Department insisted that no wrongdoing had occurred and asked Senator Grassley and me to defer our oversight responsibilities over its concerns about our purported interference with its ongoing criminal investigations. Additionally, the Department steadfastly insisted that gunwalking did not occur.

Once documentary and testimonial evidence strongly contradicted these claims, the Department attempted to limit the fallout from Fast and Furious to the Phoenix Field Division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF). When that effort also proved unsuccessful, the Department next argued that Fast and Furious resided only within ATF itself, before eventually also assigning blame to the U.S. Attorney's Office in Arizona. All of these efforts were designed to circle the wagons around DOJ and its political appointees.

To that end, just last month, you claimed that Fast and Furious did not reach the upper levels of the Justice Department. Documents discovered through the course of the investigation, however, have proved each and every one of these claims advanced by the Department to be untrue. It appears your latest defense has reached a new low. Incredibly, in your letter from Friday you now claim that you were unaware of Fast and Furious because your staff failed to inform you of information contained in memos that were specifically addressed to you. At best, this indicates negligence and incompetence in your duties as Attorney General. At worst, it places your credibility into serious doubt. (emphasis added)

Read the whole, beautiful thing. It's a long-form version of "you lie!"

PhotoShop ... or is it? ... by John E.

Close it up

Depressed President Now Increasingly Self-Isolated and Listless

—Ace

Last month, Gawker claimed the NYT had a big scoop-- that the president was suffering from something that looks very similar to full-blown clinical depression.

The Times being the Times, they never ran that story.

But the New York Post now runs an article with a very similar angle, noting the "rumor" keeps going around.

The reports are not good, disturbing even. I have heard basically the same story four times in the last 10 days, and the people doing the talking are in New York and Washington and are spread across the political spectrum. The gist is this: President Obama has become a lone wolf, a stranger to his own government. He talks mostly, and sometimes only, to friend and adviser Valerie Jarrett and to David Axelrod, his political strategist.

Everybody else, including members of his Cabinet, have little face time with him except for brief meetings that serve as photo ops. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner both have complained, according to people who have talked to them, that they are shut out of important decisions.

President Obama has become a lone wolf, a stranger to his own government.

The president’s workdays are said to end early, often at 4 p.m. He usually has dinner in the family residence with his wife and daughters, then retreats to a private office. One person said he takes a stack of briefing books. Others aren’t sure what he does.

This article doesn't exactly float the "depression" rumor. Instead it discusses the president not talking to his aides, but narrates it in such a way as to suggest depression.

51% of the country says Obama does not deserve a second term, versus 41%, the most vindictive people in the world, who do wish to punish our over-his-head flop-sweat failure of a president with another four years of ego-grinding futility.

Oh, by the way: Hi!

Open Thread

—DrewM.

The guest bloggers left and took all the content with them.

Rick Perry Ad Hits Mitt On Health Care, Flip Flopping And In General Being A Lousy Option

—DrewM.

After a string of dull and ineffective web ads, Team Perry finally unleashes the guy who did the T-Paw ads (at least I assume it's him).

I have two problems with Perry's approach.

First, I think most people who supported him when he jumped in didn't abandon Perry because they love Mitt. They did so because they have questions and/or problems with him. Mitt's support has been fairly steady throughout the course of the campaign. The problem with attacking Mitt is people already know his problems, there's a reason he was rejected last time in favor of John McCain. People either support Mitt because they like him or think he's the best chance to beat Obama. Either way, his negatives are known and factored in already.

Second, the real threat to Perry isn't so much Mitt but at the moment, Herman Cain, who is now even beating Obama in at least one poll, questionable though it may well be.

I get why Mitt thinks he can wait the Cain boomlet out but at some point, doesn't Perry need to start trying to actively peel away some voters from Cain? They are probably betting that at some point people will conclude Cain isn't a real option against Obama and those voters will migrate to Perry not Mitt.

Perry obviously doesn't want to run the risk of angering Cain voters by attacking him but if they may find out that by the time Cain runs his course, Perry is too far behind to capitalize. I guess there's really no good choice for Team Perry but every day he attacks Mitt and doesn't change either of their numbers, is another day Mitt and Cain just keep humming along.

I really hope Perry gets his act together and soon. There are debates scheduled for this week and next. With the primary schedule getting ever more condensed, it's getting late pretty early for Perry.

DOOM: For Brutus is an honorable man; so are they all, all honorable men

—Monty

There are many lessons for America in the current agonies of the Greeks. Perhaps the most important is that there is such a thing as “national character”. The Greeks collectively are mercurial, spendthrift, comparatively unproductive, and have an unearned sense of entitlement. They feed on past glories while doing nothing to ensure future prosperity. The dodge taxes as though it were a national sport. They take alms as if they are earned wages, and then complain that the money isn’t enough. They lied their way into the Eurozone and now resent the consequences of that lie.

The “prosperity” they achieved with the Euro was nothing of the sort: it was simply a mad borrowing binge, and all that borrowed money must now be repaid...in one way or another. Debt, by itself, is morally neutral -- but debt incurred in service to weakness, vanity, and vice is most assuredly not moral. Immorality that goes unpunished or ignored leads to decadence; decadence leads to societal rot. Fiscal improvidence is a symptom. The disease is a deficit of national character.

I have pity for individual Greeks who, through no fault of their own, are held hostage by the wastrels among them. But so many of these stories you read show the defects of the Greek character: a sense of entitlement, of grievance, of inchoate anger at their creditors, a lack of appreciation for cause and effect. Read the comments from the Greeks -- they have no plan to recover the situation, no actual belief in change. Their only hope seems to be that the world will somehow keep giving them money even though they produce nothing that the world wants.

Consider this quote from single mother Dougia:

"If we can survive just this year, I will build a statue of myself. I will put it in the middle of the living room and bow to it every day, because I will be a hero," she said.

Does America have enough national character -- enough strength of will, and of purpose -- to avoid the fate of the Greeks?

Zut alors! We must sell ze dollars!

The entire globalized trade system is in jeopardy. That may be, but whenever I hear assertions that the motley collection of Eurozone nations “must” do something, I wonder to myself: what evidence have they given so far that they are willing to do anything (or, indeed, even able to)? It’s obvious even to the most ardent Euro boosters that the whole Euro idea was badly flawed to begin with -- many are wondering if the Euro is even worth saving. The Euro project makes no real sense in an economic context; it was always a backdoor plan to force the various European nations into a single political union. But it turns out that the various European nations not only like their sovereign status, but tend to hear “transfer union” when the Eurocrats insist on "political union". Germans in particular understand full well that fiscal union means transferring German dollars into Greek pockets essentially forever, and they don’t much care for the idea. It may be true that Europe needs a solution to bring closer economic integration; it is also true that the Euro project is not that solution.

Sarkozy and Merkel still at loggerheads as to how to bail out...er, “recapitalize”...European banks.

If Obama gets a second term, the US will be as boned as California now is -- if it’s not already.

Demographic DOOM. Modern technology has made people selfish -- they think they can put off marriage and family indefinitely in the pursuit of personal fulfillment (whatever that means). The reasons for this change are complex: the emancipation of women, the cultural debasement of marriage, the growth of the welfare state, the gradual disempowerment of men. Yet our expectations for the future do not match our present behaviors: we continue to behave as though there will be an ever-growing population of young people to support us in our dotage, and yet we are doing little to ensure that result.

Steyn, en fuego. “T]he great advantage of mass moronization is that it leaves you too dumb to figure out who to be mad at.”

Concerns over Fannie and Freddie’s debt grow.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency, which regulates Fannie and Freddie, has tried to reassure investors saying they would have recourse to the Treasury in the case of any default.

But data from Credit Suisse shows a material change in the appetite, which dropped markedly from July. For example, Asia took only 3 per cent of $4bn of 5-year Fannie debt issued in August at a spread of 35.5 basis points over Treasuries, a relatively wide level, compared to earlier this year.

Dexia: The vanguard of European bank nationalisations? From The Market Ticker, Karl Denninger wonders if Dexia is the new Creditanstalt.

The butcher’s bill for Obama’s 2012 jobs act? $288 billion, give or take. I guess among Obama’s inner circle, numbers in the mere billions no longer cause much alarm.

How bad would another recession be? It depends on what you mean by “bad”.

Encourage the private sector to grow, and jobs will follow. The fact that the government doesn’t do this tells you all you really need to know about Obama’s views on job-creation. He’s for creating jobs...so long as it doesn’t reduce the power and reach of the federal government.

I’m never quite sure if the anti-business rhetoric and policies of the Obama administration are part of a deliberate strategy, or simply a result of incompetence. I incline towards incompetence, simply because that meets the Occam’s Razor requirement. Never ascribe to malice what can be explained by simple stupidity.

The Soviet Union’s Bill of Rights was better than ours? Who knew?

We may look back and say that this was the tipping point when DOOM became inevitable: half of American households receive some kind of government benefit. The other half funds that outlay, remember; the “government” has no wealth of its own. I don’t have to tell you what happens when the takers outnumber the makers, or when the breakers outnumber the builders.

Remember what I’ve been saying about the overoptimistic return assumptions of pension actuaries? Yeah.

The Great Depression...the good old days?

Who are “the rich” in Democrats’ eyes? Basically, anyone who has money but doesn’t use it to further Democrat ends. Democrats will define “rich” down until it hits the middle-class right in the wallet, and for the same reason Willie Sutton robbed banks: that’s where the money is.

If only women would buy more shoes, the economy would spring back to life. Or something. I would respond: you cannot consume something until it has been produced. The producers always have the whip hand in an economy. Put five people on a desert island and give them each a million dollars, and the money will do them no good at all. Their lot only begins to improve when they produce things to spend their money on. We can argue that our current malaise is in part caused by overproduction, but this indicates that more deflation is necessary before prices achieve market equilibrium. People aren’t buying stuff because stuff is either a) too expensive, or b) not necessary. In the West, it may be that our voracious appetite for consumer goods is finally nearly sated -- which means that the consumer-driven economy is in real trouble if China and India don’t pick up the slack.

My opinion of professional economists is not high, and Robert Shiller agrees with me that we have been very badly served by the so-called "experts" in the Dismal Science. (Shiller's fondness for Keynes distresses me, but hey, he's an academic from Yale. I expected no less.)

In a critique of the Shiller paper presented to the conference, Bhidé writes: “The narrowing of economics in the last several decades seems indisputable; the claim that this has allowed for ‘great progress' raises a question, however: From whose point of view? Paul Samuelson once said – approvingly – ‘in the long-run, the economic scholar works for the only coin worth having--our own applause.’”

The Solyndra economy.

UPDATE 1: Netflix: "Yeah, 'Qwikster' was a dumb idea. Forget we ever mentioned it."

Overnight Open Thread

—Maetenloch

Hey all, I'm baaack - all jet-lagged, exhausted, but still contractually present.
Will give more details once I finish my debriefing, get de-wormed, and catch up on a little shut-eye.

Where People Are Immigrating From And To

Curious where people are coming to and from around the world? Then check out the Migration Map.

Here's the result for immigration to the US.

Not a surprise about the number of Mexican immigrants but the next three sources - the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Germany - would not have been on my top 10 list.

You can see where Americans are emigrating to here. And check out the results for Britain, France, and Mexico.

The End of the Age of Men?
So says Hanna Rosin of Atlantic magazine.

Hanna Rosin's 2010 Atlantic cover story, "The End of Men," was one of the most talked-about magazine articles in recent years. "Man has been the dominant sex since, well, the dawn of mankind," wrote Rosin, an award-winning journalist for Slate and the Atlantic. "But for the first time in human history, that is changing—and with shocking speed."

Why are men finished, exactly? Rosin says they've failed to adapt to a modern, postindustrial economy that demands a more traditionally—and stereotypically—feminine skill set (read: communication skills, social intelligence, empathy, consensus-building, and flexibility). Statistics show they're rapidly falling behind their female counterparts at school, work, and home. For every two men who receive a college degree, three women will. Of the 15 fastest-growing professions during the next decade, women dominate all but two.

Well let's not confuse a decade or two where certain social micro-environments have favored women with the end of the usefulness of men. If you want something dramatically new or if things ever start to go belly up, the man skill set is still quite indispensable.

The Most Miserable Cities in the US
Okay Detroit is number one, but you'd be surprised at some of the other ones.

Using a variety of statistics (which can be found in greater detail here) Forbes magazine recently ranked the ten most miserable cities in America. The results can be found here, so if you’re planning a family vacation you may want to stay away from these places.

Your Kitteh Overload:
World's Longest Kitteh

World's Shortest Kitteh:

Plus 4 1/2 Hours Of A Cat In A Basket
Thanks to The Internet. And it's exactly what it claims to be. Most of the excitement happens around 2:32:00.

Cultural Faux Pas in New York City
Well apparently NYC has quite a few unwritten social rules - more than any other big city with the possible exception of Boston. Some of these make sense - others less so. But then every large tribe has lore and rituals designed to mark members from outsiders.

Don't say you're "from New York" when you're from New Jersey or Long Island. There are very nice parts of New Jersey and Long Island; some very nice people live there. But this is not Boston - you don't get to say you're "from New York City" if you're from slightly outside it. If your prevarication is discovered, this is a quick route to contempt.

Don't refer to the subway lines by their color. Instead, refer to them by their numbers and letters - e.g. it's not the "Green Line," it's the "4, 5, 6." When referring to a specific service along that line, each is called a "train," rather than a "subway" - e.g. the "6 train," not the "6 subway." When referring to the entire system, it's the "subway" - not the "Metro," the "Underground," etc.

Entertainment From A Less Litigious Time
This show actually took place in 1990 in Australia. Sadly none of us will probably ever see anything like it during our lifetimes due to litigation, insurance, and attention competition from the internet.

The Infamous Madonna Leaked Nude Photos
NSFW. To be fair she looks pretty good for being 53 years old, albeit perhaps not entirely human. And just remember that Madonna at 53 is pretty much Courtney Love at 29.

Weekly AoSHQ Commenter Standings
Top 10 commenters:
1 [356 comments] 'MissTammy' [49.97 posts/day]
2 [344 comments] 'Oldsailor's poet'
3 [337 comments] 'Tami'
4 [330 comments] 'kbdabear'
5 [312 comments] 'Vic'
6 [306 comments] 'sifty'
7 [302 comments] 'logprof'
8 [290 comments] 'steevy'
9 [282 comments] 'willow'
10 [246 comments] 'soothsayer'

Top 10 sockpuppeteers:
1 [118 names] 'kbdabear' [16.56 unique names/day]
2 [37 names] 'logprof'
3 [26 names] 'Doctor Fish'
4 [26 names] 'The Robot Devil'
5 [24 names] 'George Orwell what knows Obama is a stuttering clusterfuck of a miserable failure'
6 [24 names] 'Beefy Meatball'
7 [24 names] 'charlie gibson'
8 [24 names] 'al-Cicero, Tea Party Jihadist'
9 [24 names] 'Beefy Meatball'
10 [23 names] 'Arms Merchant'

The group. Yeah.

Tonight's post brought to you by John Wayne on vacation:

Notice: Posted by permission of AceCorp LLC. Please e-mail overnight open thread tips to maetenloch at gmail. Otherwise send tips to Ace.

Close it up

At Least Two Dozen Egyptian Christians Killed By Army/Security Forces In Cairo

—DrewM.

Violence and Islam. What are the odds?

Flames lit up downtown Cairo, where massive clashes raged Sunday, drawing Christians angry over a recent church attack, hard-line Muslims and Egyptian security forces. At least 24 people were killed and more than 200 injured in the worst sectarian violence since the uprising that ousted Hosni Mubarak in February. The rioting lasted late into the night, bringing out a deployment of more than 1,000 security forces and armored vehicles to defend the state television building along the Nile, where the trouble began. The military clamped a curfew on the area until 7 a.m.

...

At one point, an armored security van sped into the crowd, striking a half-dozen protesters and throwing some into the air. Protesters retaliated by setting fire to military vehicles, a bus and private cars, sending flames rising into the night sky.

What precipitated the violence? Christians had the audacity to be Christians in a Muslim nation.

In the past few weeks, riots have broken out at two churches in southern Egypt, prompted by Muslim crowds angry about church construction.

One clash took place near the city of Aswan, after church officials agreed to a demand by local ultra-conservative Muslims, known as Salafis, that a cross and bells be removed from the church building.

Aswan's governor, Mustafa Kamel al-Sayyed, is also reported to have suggested that the church does not have legal authorization. Protesters said Sunday they are demanding the governor's ouster after the church was partially demolished last week.

Muslims demand respect for their faith, even when it conflicts with western values. Yet time and time again, they show that in nations around the world where they are the majority they are unwilling or incapable of provide to others what they demand for themselves.

Gasoline Prices

—Dave In Texas

Always, always tied to worldwide demand for oil.

The price of a gallon of gasoline is driven 55% by the price of a barrel of oil. That's the deal.

A barrel of oil that isn't produced from the Gulf, but is being explored off of Brazil, thank you President Wonderful. It cant be produced off of ANWR because of meeces.

Cap and Trade Coal Preznit wants your electricity bill to skyrocket.

Remember this in November, no matter who the opposing candidate is.

I will.

House Committee Moves to Subpoena Eric Holder This Week [John E.]

—Guest Blogger

Just a brief update. Darrell Issa appeared on Fox News Sunday to discuss both Fast & Furious and Solyndra with Chris Wallace. Fox News is also reporting that the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is planning to subpoena Eric Holder this week to determine what he knew and when he knew it. If Holder is looking to improve on his last performance, a good place to start would be to avoid committing perjury.

Thanks to everyone for the hospitality this week and thanks to Ace for inviting me to participate.

Folks, it was a pleasure... [Moe Lane]

—Guest Blogger

...to play in the Ace of Spades HQ sandbox. Hope you enjoyed having me here as much as I enjoyed being here.

Lemme leave as I came in: to wit, blatantly reposting my content from my other sites.

How Not to Buy Weapons [XBradTC]

—Open Blogger

A Smart Military Blog™ special feature on defense procurement.

Defense acquisition programs are FUBAR’d. I don’t think that’s a big surprise to anyone here. Heck, when your programs are so bad they get the Star Wars treatment, you’re in the hurt locker:

NFL Thread

—Dave In Texas

I can't possibly do any worse than the last 4 weeks, can I?

...

Oh shut up.

Football Sunday morons. Have at it.

United In the Struggle
MA Dems Hold Leftist Occupiers and Tea Party To Different Standards

—Andy

Guess which group had to pull permits, pay for electricity, etc. to hold a rally in Boston - "Occupy Boston" or the Greater Boston Tea Party. It's a tough one, I know. Take your time.

Organizers of the Occupy Boston tent city in Dewey Square have never sought nor received any permits from the state, the city or the Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy, which controls the property.

I'm sure the Democrats that control the state and city just waive these requirements all the time. You know, I bet they even do it for groups that don't agree with their worldview.

Christen Varley, spokeswoman for the Greater Boston Tea Party, said she’s “miffed” by the laissez-faire attitude of city and state officials. The Greenway has provided electricity to the protesters, while other groups, such as the Tea Party, have to pay for power at events, she said.

Yeah. Not so much.

Just another example of how Democrats own this movement lock, stock and barrel.

Update: See here for the Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy's procedures for holding an event on the Greenway. You can jump through all those hoops or, you know, just show up.

Eric Holder Throws a Hissy Fit [John E.]

—Guest Blogger

Attorney General Eric Holder fired off a 5-page letter to congressional leaders yesterday. It was the healthy mix of whining, blame shifting, deliberate misrepresentations and bumbling incompetence we've come to expect from our fine Attorney General.

Senator Grassley has suggested that I was aware of Operation Fast and Furious from letters he provided to me on or about January 31, 2011 that were addressed to the former Acting Director of the ATF. However, those letters referred only to an ATF umbrella initiative on the Southwest Border that started under the prior Administration -- Project Gunrunner -- and not to Operation Fast and Furious.

So, Bush's fault?

Much has been made in the past few days about my congressional testimony earlier this year regarding Fast and Furious. My testimony was truthful and accurate and I have been consistent on this point throughout. I have no recollection of knowing about Fast and Furious or of hearing its name prior to the public controversy about it.

Eric, do you know who Sharyl Attkisson is? If not, you will.

I simply cannot sit idly by as a Majority Member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform suggests, as happened this week, that law enforcement and government employees who devote their lives to protecting our citizens be considered "accessories to murder." Such inflammatory rhetoric must be repudiated in the strongest possible terms.

Representative Paul Gosar shot back at Holder in an interview with the Daily Caller.

“It [Holder’s letter] is rhetoric. I think it’s funny that that’s the heat we take now when we’re in the focus of hearings and the focus of calls for his resignation,” Gosar told The Daily Caller. “[He says] ‘oooh, we want to sing Kumbayah and bring everybody together so that we can diffuse that.’ It’s also interesting that he and leadership in the Justice Department didn’t really exercise that in Arizona by reaching out and really trying to work on issues – they just continue to dictate accordingly."

Darrell Issa had a good line on Hannity Friday night when he said he wanted "change we can believe in at the Justice Department."

I wrote yesterday about the "under the radar" comment made by Obama to Sarah Brady regarding gun control. Well, Holder's letter had a similar eyebrow-raising comment.

As I have said, the fact that even a single gun was not interdicted in this operation and found a way to Mexico is unacceptable. Equally unacceptable however, is the fact that too many in Congress are opposed to any discussion of fixing loopholes in the laws that facilitate the staggering flow of guns each year across our border to the South.

What's interesting, beyond the staggering level of hypocrisy, is that Holder knows there are people that already suspect this was more about the second amendment and gun control than it ever was about investigating illegal gun trafficking. For him to take this position publicly, in a letter to Congress leads me to believe this might end up being his primary defense of the program. The walls are starting to close in on him and maybe that's all he has left. If that's the case, expect a lot of mud-slinging. Eric Holder doesn't strike me as the type of person to willingly fall on the sword.

Unthinkable corruption executed with criminal incompetence.

Sunday Book Thread

—Monty

I recently picked up Stephen Hicks' Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault for my Kindle. It will now join the twenty other books on my "not started" pile, and I curse Amazon for making book-buying so easy. Amazon has made books into pure crackrock, and the Kindle is the glass pipe.

I always swear to myself: no more new books until I've finished reading the ones I've already bought. In the old days, I could look guiltily upon the stack of unread books I keep on my end-table, but the Kindle's list of not-yet-read books is far less intimidating. And with e-books, I can guard against buying the same book twice because I forgot I bought it the first time; I have three copies of Stephen Hunter's Point of Impact in various editions because I keep misplacing the book.

My Kindle has really transformed my reading habits. Prior to buying a Kindle, my reading was very regimented: an hour or two in the evening with soft music on the stereo. Now, my Kindle goes with me everywhere and I read in bits and pieces all day long, a page here and there: waiting in line, on breaks at work, sitting in airports, while eating dinner in restaurants, surreptitiously while sitting in long boring meetings. (You'd think with all that reading I'd make more progress on my backlog, but no....) And there is the Sybaritic pleasure in knowing that I can carry thousands of books with me where ever I go.

So having an e-reader has made two big differences to me as an avid reader: I buy more books on the spur of the moment because Amazon has made it so easy, and I read a lot more throughout the day. The only downside is that I can't show visitors my wall-o-books so they can see how smart I am! (I've known people who have bought classics like Moby Dick as "props" -- they've never read the book, but they want other people to think they've read the book. Or they'll buy one of those big coffee-table photo-books to impress visitors, but never actually read it.) The e-reader makes such displays obsolete: no one can see what books you have on your Kindle. So now the guys can read soupy romances on the subway without fear of anyone scoping the cover; attractive women can read X-Men comics without being mobbed by geeks. In a way, e-readers have made reading a more private and personal experience -- whether you view that as a good thing or not depends on the kind of reader you are, I suppose.

The most significant downside to e-books that I've seen so far is that it's accelerated a trend to "over publishing". Even before e-readers hit big there were too many books being published. Quality books are harder than ever to find amidst the rolling ocean of mediocrity. In the old days I used to use word-of-mouth, past experience, and (I admit) cool cover-art as my main criteria for buying books. Now it's far harder because there are so many new authors, especially in genre fiction -- there is the occasional pearl, but I'm not willing to dig through a mountain of crap to get to it any more. This is one of the reasons I started the Sunday Book Thread: word-of-mouth and recommendations by friends have formed the main part of my book purchases over the past few years.

Comrade Hugo in Solidarity With Wall Street Protesters [JWF]

—Guest Blogger

Let's see. They've got Michael Moore, Susan Sarandon, Mark Ruffalo and Keith Olbermann on their side. Now it really goes populist with Venezuela's Communist dictator Hugo Chavez.

I'm taking bets on what will die first, this bowel movement on Wall Street or Chavez himself.

The U.S. protests, which began last month in New York and have spread to Tampa, Florida, Seattle and other cities, have mostly been peaceful but sometimes resulted in confrontations. Dozens were arrested and police used pepper spray in New York earlier this week.

"This movement of popular outrage is expanding to 10 cities and the repression is horrible, I don't know how many are in prison now," Chavez said in comments at a political meeting in his Caracas presidential palace shown on state TV.

Chavez, who runs for re-election in a year's time and traditionally ramps up his anti-capitalist rhetoric to try and rally supporters before a vote, also let rip at Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, who referred to the "malign socialism" of Cuba and Venezuela in a speech on Friday.

"He's been attacking Venezuela and Cuba, and talking about the malign government of Hugo Chavez. And he has the arrogance to say that God created the United States so the United States can rule the world," Chavez said.

"And that crazy man might be the president of the United States, in elections that are just after ours."

Sunday Morning Non-Book Open Thread

—Andy

Overnight Open Thread-Another Caturday Edition

—CDR M

Yeah, yeah. It's time for the ONT. You guys better get the comments to 666 or the Ewok God of War just might have to show up.

I used to love going to movies a lot as a teenager and in my 20's but since I have become more politically aware, not so much any more. This article captured some of what I had been thinking about in this regard. Democrats vs. Republicans: Stars They Won't Pay To See. I admit it. I won't pay to go see Sean Penn, Micheal Moore, Tim Robbins, or any other raging, foaming out the mouth stupid ass libtard that is highly active in the political sphere. I remember before I started getting like this that my father-in-law was the same way and I remember thinking but he's missing some good movies. Now I understand.

In fact, overall, 35 percent of Republicans and 45 percent of Tea Partiers consider a celebrity's political position before paying to see their films, compared with 20 percent of Democrats.

Imperials Are Chick Magnets?

OK, I'm gonna have to rethink the decision to not purchase a set of stormtrooper armor. Hot Girls With Stormtroopers.

Cat Treadmill

Brown Energy

I don't think you want to get stuck drivin' behind this thing. Seems the Japanese have got a working motorbike that is powered by, well, um, your excrement. Poop Powered Toiletcycle Is Touring Japan. And liberals think CO2 emissions are bad.

The Toilet Bike Neo will be conducting its roughly 500 mile trip from Kyushu to Tokyo powered entirely by the on-board biogas digester. Biogas systems use an anaerobic bacteria system to convert dead organic matter into a usable fuel primarily made of methane. This system obtains its fuel from the rider—directly from the rider, if you get what I mean. It runs on the rider's poop—he just sits there, unloads, and rides off (hopefully with a step involving pants at some point as well). The system is reportedly efficient enough that it could run indefinitely were the rider sufficiently well fed.

Rare Cats

Here is a list with pics of some Rare Cats.

Beernado

Poor beer can.
h/t A Seattle Moron.

Interesting Historical Tidbit

We seem to equate a lot of evil people to Hitler when describing really bad people in the modern era. So who was it before Hitler? Well, it would seem it was The Pharaoh.

War Pron

Political Pron

That's it! I'm moving to Poland. This is a political ad from one of their candidates running for office. Here you have Katarzyna Lenart doing this striptease ad in the hopes of getting your vote. Dayum!

Optical Illusion

So what do you see in the above picture? No, really? A cat? A painting? Not quite. Click here to find out.

Caturday Video

Ok, to close out this Caturday, I present to you this video titled, The Life Of A Cat. Good night ye morons!

Tonight's ONT brought to you by:

Notice: Posted by permission of AceCorp LLC. Please e-mail overnight open thread tips to maet. Otherwise send tips to Ace.

Close it up

Tom McClintock on California as a harbinger of Obama's Second Term: "FLY, YOU FOOLS!" [Moe Lane]

—Guest Blogger

For some reason, my mental picture of this speech by Rep Tom McClintock to the Council for National Policy...

I want to welcome this groundbreaking scientific expedition to the savage lands of the Left Coast. You are here in California to answer an important theoretical question and now you have your answer.

Yes, this is what Barack Obama’s second term would look like.

Study it. Fear it. And then go home and make sure that it never happens to the rest of the country.

Subtext Of A Lawsuit:

—LauraW.

"I Am Incompetent And You Must Take Decisions Away From Me"

College chick goes to a fraternity party. College chick gets trashed and falls out of a window.

An Idaho college student and her parents are suing a University of Idaho fraternity, her sorority, university officials, and others for failing to prevent her from drinking too much alcohol...

At some point between her lifting a bottle and bringing it to her lips, one or all of these people or institutions were apparently supposed to jump out like a jack-in-the-box and swat it out of her hand.

Even though, as a college student, presumably she has attained the age of majority. The article mentions 'underage drinking,' but I think most of us associate that term with high school kids. Between years 18-21, you are not experiencing 'the tragedy of underage drinking.' You are 'breaking the law.'

And why expect others to stop you from drinking too much? Why not expect them to simply prevent you from ever being near windows? And keep you from going to parties, too.

Though I don't think this particular young lady is going to have any problem avoiding parties in the future.

Thanks to Ben Domenech.