Ace of Spades HQ

January 03, 2012

A Nation At The Crossroads: America Worries Whether Keith Olbermann Will, or Will Not, Take His Very Important Anchor Desk Tonight

—Ace

If Keith Olbermann doesn't show up to broadcast tonight, it could literally affect the lives of tens of dozens of fans.

Keith Olbermann, who came to Current TV this year to remake the channel and compete against his old home, MSNBC, is sitting out the biggest political nights of the season.

Olbermann has been missing from various debates, too.

These absences suggest that there may be new tension between Mr. Olbermann and the managers at Current, who are trying to create a progressive-oriented cable news channel.
In the television industry, Mr. Olbermann is well known for fights with his bosses; stories abound about his refusal to speak to managers and executives. At Current, this behavior has continued, according to four people with knowledge of the situation, one of whom described Mr. Olbermann as “disgruntled.”

Olbermann? Disgruntled? Factory setting, no?

But Olbermann promises/threatens that he will actually report to work tonight:

@KeithOlbermann So is #Countdown back tonight?
@OwensC08 Headed into the office now in fact

How girlishly dramatic is Keith Olbermann? Just girlishly dramatic enough to make the routine reporting for daily work a tumultuous swirl of speculation and recrimination.

Via Johnny Dollar.

Estrogen

It's a wild ride.

Posted by Ace at 05:09 PM New Comments Thingy

Occupy Charlotte Splinters Off To Form New Group, People's Coalition of the Carolinas

—Ace

If that sounds like the "People's Front of Judea" (splitters), it's unintentional; it's just that these groups always conform to the parody.

The reason for the split is optics. Some of the Occupiers were arrested for burning American flags, and this new group is supposedly against that.

We, the members of the Occupy Charlotte Movement are no longer affiliated with the camp at 600 East Trade Street. In light of the recent actions taken by a few anarchistic elements that we do not want to be associated with, we are moving on from the actual Occupation site. The flag burning incident in the early morning of December 30th does not reflect the people or the message of the movement.

Posted by Ace at 04:55 PM New Comments Thingy

For Rick Perry
(Caucus Day Bump)

—Ace

Bumping: Just giving it the college try. I added Perry's closing argument ad at the end.

There are two main sorts of primary voters: Those who know too little, and those who know too much. As for the former -- there's not much I can do about them. They don't read this site, or probably too much of any political source.

Maybe they read Time. Bless their hearts.

The online community consists mainly of the latter -- we know a lot about the candidates, and are each making complicated decisions about trade-offs between electability and agenda (and likelihood of advancing that agenda).

My belief is that we know so much that the secondary and tertiary level things we know are crowding out the primary things we know. That is, that we know a bunch of second- and third- order things and knowing so much is crowding out consideration of the top-level, major bullet-point, controlling facts.

I am in favor of Rick Perry because, while I am informed about the second- and third- orders of information, I remain focused on the first order stuff.

First, biographical and character details. Much of the More Informed cohort of the party seems to be giving these factors short shrift. I would suggest to such folks that a certain type of candidate tends to prevail in elections, and that type of candidate tends to have a positive narrative in biographical and characterological traits.

Rick Perry did not marry his high school sweetheart. He married his grade school sweetheart. He has never been divorced as as far as I know there haven't been any rocky patches in his relationship.

Those who discount the importance of that, especially to women voters, are making an error, I think.

I can only say so often that the swing voters in the center of the country are among the least-informed voters on the planet. Every survey demonstrates that, despite their claims to be all about "the substance" and "the issues," they know less about the substance and the issues than partisans on either side of the aisle.

Being apolitical, they're not very interested in politics. Stands to reason. This means, then, that they don't read much about politics.

Their decision-making is very superficial. Although I do not think that Newt Gingrich's affairs/divorces history is a disqualifier, I think it cannot be entirely discounted.

Some people think that because the media stressed Obama's intellect in the last election, they will do so again, and thus it is important to have an intellectual like Gingrich as our standard-bearer.

You don't the media very well if you accuse them of consistency. Let me suggest to you that if Gingrich is the nominee, the media will not be stressing intellect and brainpower (as, in their estimation, it's a draw).

No. They will be stressing Obama's faithfulness to his wife and their two beautiful children.

The media stresses whatever attribute the Democratic candidate trumps the Republican one in. In 1992 and 1996, the media ignored the virtue of military service in Republican nominees George Bush (the elder) and Bob Dole, and suggested it was relatively unimportant, championing the greater intellect and ideological flexibility of one William Jefferson Clinton, who, as you might remember, dodged the draft, using political connections to secure a higher draft number.

And yet in 2000, Al Gore was sold as a "veteran" of Vietnam, while George W. Bush was portrayed as a draft-evader, and the same in 2004, when John Forbes Kerry announced that he was "reporting for duty."

Dan Rather did a story about Bush's supposed failure to "report for duty" at the Texas Air National Guard.

I would suggest that we should not get too hung up on fighting the last war, because the media will simply change the rules of engagement. It is true that Gingrich can go toe-to-toe with Obama on policy wonkery; it is also true that that is the very reason the media will lose all interest in intellect as a basis for comparison or qualifier for high office.

Should Gingrich be our nominee, be prepared to do a lot of double-takes as faithfulness and devotion to family suddenly becomes the key trait in a president.

The media will call Rick Perry stupid, of course. And Perry has armed them with weapons to use on this front. However, his gaffes are now several months old, and he hasn't repeated them.

Further, the media has called our candidate "stupid" in every single race where it could be argued the Democratic candidate was a singe IQ point smarter than the Republican one. We're used to that, and we've won elections despite that.

After doing poorly in college, Rick Perry joined the Air Force. Not the guard, either. The actual active-duty Air Force. He is, then, a veteran, if not a combat veteran (as far as I know he never saw any engagement or action, as he was flying big transport planes).

Barack Obama did not serve in the military. That is perhaps the most understated sentence in the history of communications, but since people are interested in drawing contrasts, consider that one.

Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich did not serve in the military either. I do not wish to attack either man but both were of draftable age during Vietnam.

Both of these men are smart. And they're smarter than Perry. (They're also easily smarter than pampered princeling Barack Obama but the media will never credit them as such.)

And I cannot and will not say that brainpower is unimportant. I would however say that character matters too.

Several other bits and pieces of Rick Perry make him a central-casting type candidate -- I don't know if he grew up poor, per se, but he grew up modest, certainly. His background is that most Heartland of backgrounds -- hardscrabble farmer.

And he's America's longest-serving governor in America's second-largest state. Texas is no tiny little state. It has nearly the populace of California. He's served as governor there for 11 years (and for two years before that, as lieutenant governor).

The media and liberals (but I repeat myself) will attack Perry, predictably, as stupid, but there is a strong rebuttal to such a claim: If he can't perform the duties of Chief Executive, then how is he's been successfully performing the duties of Chief Executive?

America, and especially the Republican party, has long favored elevating governors to the presidency. Governors are, after all, the presidents of single states. They have nearly the exact same duties and functions (including even maintaining and controlling the state national guards). They have similar executive powers and set the agendas for their respective legislatures. In the case of border states such as Texas, they even require some foreign policy making duties.

No job in the world really prepares someone for the Presidency. But one job, more than any other, comes fairly close to doings so.

So Rick Perry cannot handle high executive office?

Then how is it he's been doing just that for 11 years?

(And if you want to object that Texas has a weak-governor system, with a lot of power vested in the lieutenant governor position -- well, they claimed that about George W. Bush, too. And claimed that Rick Perry actually was doing all the hard stuff in his then-position of Lieutenant Governor. So wherever the power lies in Texas, Perry has handled it, in both jobs.)

The stakes in this election are enormous. The next president may well appoint five justices the Supreme Court, essentially choosing our basic jurisprudence for the next 30 years. This will be the presidency in which we make fundamental decisions about debt, and spending, and entitlements. Decisions on those may decide our fiscal policy for the next 20 or 30 years, too.

But while those are the stakes of this election, the election will actually turn on... Jobs.

Unemployment is at 8.6%, with real unemployment around 16%. For the sake of comparison, unemployment during the Great Depression hit 25% at its high. We are not there yet, but we've consistently been at around 9% for years (with real unemployment higher).

Primary voters tend to be strongly ideological. We have very strongly held beliefs about abstract notions of government and "The Good."

But general election voters -- especially those swing voters -- do not have strong opinions about such matters. Otherwise they would be partisans for one camp or another. They tend to be pragmatic, rather than abstract, thinkers. They do not have any prevailing theory of governance, which is what gives them the flexibility to vote for George W. Bush in 2004 and then an all-but-declared socialist four years later.

They care almost entirely about results, because they have no underlying theory that might explain away failures (as Obama's endless theories explain away his failures, at least to his partisans).

I remember that, by the third debate, people were complaining that they were sick of hearing about Texas producing 45% of all jobs created in America the last two years, and sick of hearing that Texas has created one million jobs while America has lost two million plus in the last ten years.

I understand that High Information voters, who knew this before Rick Perry announced it, might be "sick" of hearing about it.

But the fact of the matter is: That should have been said more, not less. So here it is again:

That bit about "jobs-adding states" is important and also> adds to Perry's case, because the bulk of these states are under conservative rule. It's not just that Perry Is Magic-- other states that put the same policies into effect likewise have similar results.

When you get down to it, that is the winning message of this near-depression election cycle.

Other candidates may have theories about their preferred economic system hypothetically producing postulated good outcomes. The ideologue Ron Paul, for example, will regale you with tales about what Austrian Economics might do, were they ever actually put into practice.

Rick Perry can say, "My policy is to have a low tax burden on wealth-creators and a fair and predictable regulatory scheme which does not seek to pick winners and losers, and here is how that has worked out in Texas."

Not theoretical. Not hypothetical. This is what actually happened.

Partisans, being ideological, tend to be over-swayed by expressions of ideological belief. Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul are champion ideology-slingers.

But what decision or action has either made that has actually had a tangible, measurable, concrete effect on the economy?

Oh they've both "fought" losing battles, casting symbolic votes in their capacity as Congressmen Who Don't Really Do Anything Except Give Speeches.

But what has either actually done?

If you think the unaffiliated, mostly apolitical voters in the center are going to be swayed by full-throated announcements of steadfast ideological commitment, you're guilty of universalizing from your own experience.

If they thought that way, they would not be independents. They would, like you, be declared partisans and ideologically-motivated voters.

Speeches are nice but facts are what change minds. Reagan became a very popular president by his fifth and sixth year. It wasn't because of his ideology and speechifying -- he had the same ideology and said mostly the same thing in speeches when he was at 40% approval in his third and fourth year.

It's because of the fact that the economy was producing jobs by his fifth and six year.

If Reagan had only had good speeches, without good facts to back those speeches up, he would not be an especially fondly remembered president today. In fact, he'd've probably been a one-termer, had the good fact of a rapidly-growing economy not existed when it did (about a year, year and a half before the election).

While some people are focusing on the three total hours of debates in the general election season, I'm focusing on the hundreds of hours of campaign ads stressing the fact of Texas job creation, until people want to hang themselves.

Yes, they'll be sick of it. But they will remember it.

One last point I'd make is that I, and you too, know what Perry's plan is for his first term in office, in a way that you don't know what Romney's is, or Gingrich's is.

What is Romney's plan/theme? Well, he's got a 59 point plan to fix the economy. As they said in The Way of The Gun, a plan is just a list of things that aren't going to happen.

I know his theme is that he's a turnaround guy, and that he'll use his managerial expertise to fix the government.

This theme, of itself, really doesn't tell me what is most important to Romney.

I will say this without fear of contradiction: A president can only really push 3-4 major initiatives in his first term, and 1-2 in his second. By the last half of his second term, he's a lame duck, and is chiefly clocking time and fighting off efforts to undo whatever he's done in the first six years.

Realistically, a president will push for 3-4 big things in his first term, and sometimes not even that.

What are Romney's 3-4 big things? What are the 3-4 big things you know animate him and drive him?

I'm guessing you don't know. I would guess further that Romney doesn't know.

I level the same criticism at Gingrich, who is gaining popularity by pitching a series of policy widgets and Bold New Thinking gadgets which he will never, even if he had three terms, actually pursue.

Illustrative of this is when he was asked if he would consider forgiving college debt. He used the question to note a school in Appalachia which requires students to work 20 hours per week and hence keeps them from acquiring too much debt.

That is an interesting anecdote. It is also irrelevant, unless Newt Gingrich has a plan to compel colleges to implement a similar program. As he's never brought it up again, I assume he does not; so why bring this up at all?

It's an interesting little story. But it's what I expect if we're all sitting around spitballing college bullshit session ideas. I don't expect Newt Gingrich to ever propose something tangible based on this anecdote, and I think most people would be alarmed if he did suggest that federal policy would begin dictating such things to colleges.

Similarly, when asked about health care costs, he eventually (after some stalling) suggested that it was wiser to invest in a vaccine for Polio rather than spending money on iron lungs (for people who suffer from the disease).

I can hardly argue with that. I can also hardly extract any policy guidance from it.

What would Newt actually do in office? I don't know. I know his theme is "Bold, Fundamentally-Transformative Ideas," but I"m not sure what on earth these ideas are.

Does he have 3-4 ideas his mind is set on? Or does he have 100, 96 of which will never be pursued, and we are to guess which his actual Core Four will be?

The latter, I think.

I think Gingrich and Romney are both pushing managerial skill here, essentially arguing "We can do more with less, if we think about government in a smarter way." I agree with that to some extent, but I don't think this is the year for just promising to "work smarter." I think this is the year to seriously question if government should be doing so much (and doing so poorly at what it does).

I think this is the year to stop saying "We can afford that if we use our resources in a smarter way" and start saying "No, we're not going to do that."

I do know Perry's Core Four. Although he's gotten a bit spasmodic lately in pitching new ideas as he tries to secure constituencies for his ailing campaign, his Core Four is what he announced right out of the gate:

1. Keep taxes as low as possible, because citizens spend money wisely and create new wealth when permitted to use their money as they wish.

2. Keep the regulatory climate "fair and predictable" and overturn new attempts by the government to micromanage private enterprise.

3. Start producing energy here in America, rather than purchasing it from countries which are often hostile.

4. Make Washington, D.C. as "inconsequential to your lives as possible," by devolving as much power as possible back to states and localities, consistent with the original goal of the 10th Amendment.

Some of Perry's 10th Amendment ideas I consider glib, half-baked, and near-extremist-- like the suggestion that perhaps individual states could manage social security for their citizens.

That idea will go nowhere and in fact is no longer discussed.

But that impulse -- the idea that the first questions should always be "Wait, does the federal government need to do this? Is it even constitutional that they do this?" -- is the right impulse. Even when he's wrong on this issue, he's wrong for the right reasons.

Gingrich and Romney may be smarter than Perry, and perhaps Romney would even be a more skilled technocratic administrator of government. (Gingrich seems far too disorganized and flighty to engage with this part of the job too much, apart from proposing bold, fundamental changes and then moving on to something else.)

But I don't want someone who is so confident that he is a more capable administrator of federal power. I want someone who is skeptical of federal power no matter who wields it, no matter how skilled and able an administrator he might be, even if that administrator is he himself, and so always prefers to shunt power away from the government to to the states, and their citizens.

Those are the four things Perry seems committed too. Those are the four ideas he has.

Perhaps he's not smart enough to have more ideas than that.

Which is fine with me. I don't want a President with many more ideas than that.

That's how we got here, after all.

Endorsement co-signed by cobloggers John E., Andy, rdbrewer, Ben, Gabriel Malor, lauraw, Slublog and Dave In Texas.

Additional endorsements at RedState, where Dan "Baseball Crank" McLoughlin pens an endorsement undersigned by most of the RedState crew, and by Mike Flynn, editor of Big Government.

Closing Argument Ad:

Close it up

Posted by Ace at 03:55 PM New Comments Thingy

Equal Employment Opportunity Commission: Job Requirement of High School Diploma Might Just Violate The Americans With Disabilities Act

—Ace

Lacey says this might be the stupidest thing she's ever read.

Maybe. For now. They'll do something stupider in a month. They're on a collision course with reality and they're increasing to ramming speed.

The “informal discussion letter” from the EEOC said an employer’s requirement of a high school diploma, long a standard criterion for screening potential employees, must be “job-related for the position in question and consistent with business necessity.” The letter was posted on the commission’s website on Dec. 2.
Employers could run afoul of the ADA if their requirement of a high school diploma “‘screens out’ an individual who is unable to graduate because of a learning disability that meets the ADA’s definition of ‘disability,’” the EEOC explained.

The commission’s advice, which does not carry the force of law, is raising alarms among employment-law professionals, who say it could carry far-reaching implications for businesses.

It is the nature of bureaucracy to ever seek new missions to justify its funding. And there is apparently no one in government now to push back against this pernicious tendency.

Posted by Ace at 03:31 PM New Comments Thingy

David Frum: Our Obesity Problem Invites, Nay Demands, Strong Central Planning and the Firm Steady Hand of Benevolent Government Empowered to Make You Healthy

—Ace

Conservative.

If you as an individual want to change your weight, you must change your whole life. Likewise, to reduce obesity in modern society, we will have to alter the way society is organized.
...

Want to change this? It's no small project. It would involve the redesign of cities, the relocation of schools, the reinvention of our modes of eating and amusement.

First lady Michelle Obama has made healthy eating her special project. Good for her, and let's hope her efforts lead to success. But if we are to succeed, we should understand: The campaign against obesity will have to look a lot less like the campaign against smoking (which involves just one decision, to smoke or not to smoke) and much more like the generation-long campaign against highway fatalities, which required the redesign of cars, the redesign of highways, and changes in personal behavior like seat-belt use and drunk driving.

The good news is that the campaign against highway fatalities has yielded real progress: down two-thirds since the mid-1960s. The bad news is that, for most of us, it will take more than a New Year's resolution. However, if you are seriously resolved, congratulations -- and see you on the jogging path.

@bdomench points out that Frum's central claim for this call for government control over our diets and exercise regimes is wrong. Frum claims off the jump--

Yet as we talk and talk about the issue, the country only becomes fatter and fatter.

-- just isn't true:

The percentage of Americans of "normal weight" has slightly increased in the past year, but overweight and obese people still command a solid majority, according to a new study.
In the third quarter of 2011, 36.6 percent of Americans were of normal weight, compared with 35.6 percent a year ago, the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index survey found.

Obese and overweight Americans combined for more than 60 percent of the population, it said.

"Although the majority of Americans are still overweight or obese, it is an encouraging sign that obesity rates are trending downward in the U.S.," the study said.

The government does have a role in this-- the government is actively promoting a theory of overweight (and weight reduction) for which there is almost no evidence, apart from a "consensus" of scientists, and which just might be the exact wrong theory, actually causing the increase in obesity it seeks to check.

Posted by Ace at 02:49 PM New Comments Thingy

Iowa Predictions Thread

—DrewM.

Today is the day when our quadrennial nightmare ends and Iowans can go back to doing what they do best...providing the rest of us with pork products and corn.

Here's the thumbnail version of how this works: After a year of being alternatively sucked up to and badgered by every GOP wannabe, Iowa voters go to fire houses, schools and community centers to tell us who may continue to run. Following that, the rest of us bitch about it and then turn our annoyance to New Hampshire and their primary next Tuesday.

I may have cut out a few details but that's the gist.

So...get your predictions in now and be eligible for fabulous prizes* if you correctly predict the order and percentage of the field in the final results.

Also he's my position on the post-Iowa landscape: If either Perry or Newt (my guy) come in 3rd or better, supporters of the other candidate should really give the 3rd place finisher a very, very serious look.

And no, there's no "but Ron Paul doesn't count so 4th is really 3rd" exception. If neither Newt or Perry get at least a top 3, resistance is futile, we will all be assimilated into the Romney Collective.

Also: Open thread.

*There are no prizes, fabulous or otherwise.

Posted by DrewM. at 12:11 PM New Comments Thingy

DOOM! Special Edition: Locked and Loaded

—Andy

doom_bw

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are boned.
- Stuff Shakespeare Said, 3rd. Ed.

With the primary vote casting coming quickly upon us, here's a reminder of where we find ourselves, with a huge hat tip to coblogger emeritus Geoff.

First, we continue to make unrealistic assumptions about future GDP growth.

People talk about 4 – 5% GDP growth as if it were the norm, and they base all their budget projections on the economy returning to that sort of growth rate. Absurd.
We haven’t seen consistent 5% GDP growth for 35 years.

If it weren’t for the dot.com boom, we wouldn’t have seen consistent 4% GDP growth for 25 years. Our economy is settling in at 2 – 3% growth for the foreseeable future.

Second, even the most aggressive piece of legislation to deal with spending, the Ryan budget, is inadequate to the task of even dealing with just FY 2011's deficit, much less the additional like amount we'll run the debt up in FY 2012.

This is what the President and his crackerjack economic team have wrought. A one-year deficit that is so large that it can only be paid back if everything goes exactly right. And if everything goes exactly right, we're still looking at decades before we can get back to the debt level we had only 6 months ago.

Be sure to read the whole thing.

Since Geoff wrote the posts these graphs were culled from, we've had a few clear opportunities to address the problem. We whiffed on the FY 2011 continuing resolution showdown and the debt ceiling increase, choosing instead to punt to the "Super Committee" that failed miserably as it was designed to. Also, don't forget that we still don't have a FY 2012 budget thanks to the feckless Harry Reid.

Now the debt ceiling (and debt) has been raised to $15.2 trillion, with an additional increase of $1.2 trillion in the offing. We foolishly traded a theoretical $1.2 trillion of spending cuts over 10 years for an immediate increase in the new debt limit (ha!), and on the current path, we'll hit $16.4 trillion of debt by inauguration day 2013.

To bring these two pieces of Geoff's work together, does anyone care to hazard a guess as to the average annual GDP growth presumption in the Ryan budget? I'll save you the work; it's 4.7%. 4.7% per year for 10 years? Take a look at that first chart again and tell me how realistic that seems.

If you presume the Ryan budget achieves its spending targets on an absolute dollar basis but that revenues are a function of GDP - and then cut GDP growth to a realistic number, like, say, half of what's in his forecast - we'd add nearly $5 trillion of additional debt in the ten years over and above what's in his budget.

So the most aggressive spending reduction plan we have, that our candidates don't exactly shout their support for from the mountaintops, falls short of what's needed to keep us from ruin. And on the revenue side, everyone agrees that we have to grow our way out of the problem, but then they fudge the growth estimates beyond anything realistically achievable so they can avoid the pain of making adequate spending cuts.

But the fault lies not in the candidates; it lies in the electorate. Enough of us are content to let the cancer we know is there eat away at us because we feel o.k., if not entirely well, and will apparently continue to do so right up until the point that it kills us.

Posted by Andy at 09:50 AM New Comments Thingy

The Daily DOOM: Still on hiatus

—Monty

The Daily DOOM will be remaining on hiatus until next week at the earliest due to factors beyond my control. As much as I enjoy bringing stories of financial perfidy, failure, and catastrophe to the Moron Horde, real-life work intrudes and since that gig pays my bills, it only makes financial sense to screw you guys instead.

Happy New Year, Morons.

Posted by Monty at 08:43 AM New Comments Thingy

Top Headline Comments 1-3-12

—Gabriel Malor

Happy Tuesday. Some news stories to get you started:

Guy who shot four people at a New Year's house party on Sunday morning fled to Mt. Rainier national park, where he shot and killed a park ranger setting up a roadblock. Naturally, libtards are blaming legislation that allows guns in parks. Because survivalists who shoot people at house parties are well-known for obeying gun laws.

Okay, maybe just one news story to get you started...

Posted by Gabriel Malor at 06:52 AM New Comments Thingy

Overnight Open Thread

—Maetenloch

We're Somebody: Presenting: the 2011 Fabulous 50 Blog Award Winners!

So the Doug Ross 2011 awards are out and guess what - we made it:

It's a fair cop I'd say.

Meanwhile commenter Taxpayer1234 over at Legal Insurrection wrote a paper for graduate school comparing certain well-known conservative blogs and had this to say about the moron home base:

Ace of Spades’ masthead contains a quote from H.L. Mencken: “Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.” This speaks to the writing style of the blog, which is sharp-tongued, sometimes vulgar, and often humorous….

Even though Ace and his equally anonymous co-bloggers often use biting satire and vulgar language, this is balanced with insightful sociopolitical analyses that earn kudos from mainstream press, professional pundits, and politicians….

Another fair cop I suppose although I don't get why writers always insist on describing us as vulgar. It's not like we curse all that fucking much.

On a personal note: I kinda got exploded last night. I was fiddling with a new-ish paper shredder which had started running all the time in auto-mode when suddenly there was a bright flash and mini explosion of hot gas. I immediately went into Emergency Procedure #3 (shouting 'fuck' about 30 times while alternately rubbing at my face and groin). After ascertaining that I wasn't blinded or maimed, I began to notice that pieces of hair were coming away in my hands.

Yep I got pretty well singed and now have 40% less eyebrows and eyelashes along with a mild hair frizz. Mrs. Maetenloch was Very Concerned until she got a good look at me and started laughing at what a Looney Tunes caricature of a explosion victim I looked like. A day later I still smell of burned hair and look something like this. Luckily I have a face made for blogging so it can take the occasional explosion.

Update: Contrary to speculation this probably wasn't the work of the Mossad since they're like competent. So I'm suspecting IMAO or more likely HotAir, especially since they're probably looking for some payback after the cobras-in-their-bags episode during BlogCon.

Perry on How To Handle The Press

Allen: “These are members of your staff.”
Perry: “You got a name?”
Allen: “Who say –”
Perry: “You got a name?”
[pause]
Allen: “You won’t listen to –”
Perry: “You got a name?”
Allen: “Uh.”
Perry: “If you don’t have a name to tell me this individual said this, then I don’t take that as a corroborating source

The 50 Most Obnoxious Quotes of 2011

48) I’m in, like, dating Babylon. Like, I go on dates with men and, literally, like Sarah Palin will come up in like the first 20 minutes, and that doesn’t put me in the mood. Like, talking about Sarah Palin. And they just want to know gossip, and I’m just kind of taking a little hiatus from dating right now, because I just don’t want to talk about Sarah Palin. — Meghan McCain
[snip]
45) Do you think this Constitution-loving is getting out of hand? — Joy Behar
[snip]
5) You know what, man? I am going to literally — if (Palin) gets elected president, I am going to hang out on the grassy knoll all the time, just loaded and ready — because you know what? It’s for my country. It’s for my country. If I got to sacrifice myself, it’s for my country. — Christopher Titus

5 Crazy Stupid Video Clips From The Depths Of YouTube
Well in her defense Europe does have its own currency (for now) but I doubt she knew that either.

2011: Safest Year For Flying Ever

The new record of one death for every 7.1 million passengers beats the 2004 record of one to every 6.4m. The WSJ also notes: 'Another low is the total number of passenger deaths; as of today that number stands at 401. Though it was lower in 2004, when 344 passengers were killed in commercial aviation accidents, that year saw 30% fewer passengers as well as far fewer flights. Western-built planes have fared best, with one major crash per 3 million flights, the best number since the International Air Transport Association began tracking crashes in the 1940s.

In fact we're into a two month plus window of absolutely no fatal airliner crashes as all:

We are also in the midst of the longest period without a fatal airliner accident in modern aviation; nobody has died in an airliner since an Oct. 13 propeller plane crash in Papua New Guinea. The previous record was 61 days in 1985.

Bristol & Willow Palin Pitch “Kardashian-Style” Reality Show
Ugh. Time to go have a life, baby.

Bristol Palin and her 17-year-old sister Willow Palin want to star in a “Kardashian-style” reality show, along with Bristol’s boyfriend. The abstinence-only speaker is probably still reeling that she show she filmed with her “Dancing With The Stars” pal Kyle Massey, which got nixed before it even made it on air. “Bristol believes the show will be more marketable with Willow – that they can be the next Kardashian sisters,” says an “insider.”

The Best Time For Sex?
Is after midnight on Fridays in December when it’s raining. So ~~be ready~~ start practicing for next year.

According to The Daily Beast, which collected these studies, almost 10 percent of all babies are conceived during the month of December — which may mean that sperm and egg are less ripe at other times of the year, but may also mean we’re in a randy mood after a few martinis at the holiday party.

Other studies finds that most people have sex between 11 p.m. and 1 a.m., Fridays and Saturdays are the most popular days for nookie, and we’re 13 times more likely to get down and dirty at night (duh) than during the afternoon. But the most surprising finding is that a whopping 83 percent of Americans say rainstorms are the best time to have sex

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

Tonight's post brought to you by friend zones:

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Close it up

Posted by Maetenloch at 09:55 PM New Comments Thingy

Mark Levin: I'll Declare a Vendetta Against Rand Paul If His Father Runs 3rd Party
Plus: Levin Calls Virginia Ballot Snafu A Designed Plan To Help Romney

—Ace

"Everything within my power."

Rand Paul is talking this possibility down, for what it's worth. Which is not much.

And here's Levin venting pungently at the Virginia GOP.

Posted by Ace at 07:29 PM New Comments Thingy

Steel Panther, The Greatest Band Ever
Bumped From Friday

—Ace

Iowahawk mentioned on Twitter that he was ready to do some headbanging at a "Steel Panther" show.

I accused him of making it up. No heavy metal band would be so stupid to call themselves Steel Panther. It's just too dumb. Even for metal.

He told me to google it, so I did. At which point I suggested there was an elaborate hoax afoot, most likely some viral marketing for an energy drink or something. No one poses like that anymore. No one was even that cheesy in the 80s.

Well, they're real. They actually do shows and stuff.

The idea of the band seems to be to take Spinal Tap and Tenacious D and turn them to 11 -- and by the way, don't even bother with cheesy sexual metaphors; just write songs explicitly about "boners" and "boobs" -- and make it real.

I'm linking some of their best (and I use this word advisedly) stuff below. It's all very NSFW. Maybe for later.

"Fat Girl (Thar She Blows)"

Yes, that's a whale joke. And that's one of the more elevated jokes.

"Death To All But Metal"

This rips off like five different songs.

Every metal band released a hard-rocking single first, then followed it up with a romantic power ballad, for the girls. It was always this second single that shot the band to the top of the charts; it became completely obligatory.

Anyway, Steel Panther isn't all about metal and boobs and sex. They also have a romantic side. As exemplified here, in

"Weenie Ride"

One of their cleverest songs is "Tomorrow Night," about the greatest party in the century, with naked people and Charlie Sheen, but it's going down, unfortunately, tomorrow night. Tonight, on the other hand, is kind of lame.

How perfect is that album cover? Incredible. Their previous album had a title nearly as good: Feel the Steel.

For this one I think they just went over their old WASP albums and thought, "What's the stupidest possible song we could write about Hell?" And they came up with

"Hell's On Fire"

Why yes. Yes, Hell is on fire. Good call.

Oh I could go on all day. In terms of increasing offensiveness, you can also check out "It Won't Suck Itself," "Eatin' Ain't Cheatin'," "The Shocker" and "Critter."

That's right, It Won't Suck Itself is the least offensive on the list. Because that, at least, is an attempt at an extremely thinly disguised metaphor for sex. (See, he gets bitten on his penis by a rattlensake, and you, the hot chick, has to suck out the venom. Later he gets stung by a scorpion in the same exact place. And he keeps getting bitten on his penis while he's banging you.)

But that's them working at a very high level, attempting metaphor and such. Most of the time they can't be bothered with pretentious devices like that, so they just sing, flatly, about vaginas and boners and dongs and big boobs. And The Shocker.

Oh: In case you were saying, "I dig the stupidity, pro-drug messaging, misogyny, homophobia, and nonstop degrading sexual material, but where's the racial offensiveness?," they cover that too, with the very subtle "Asian Hooker."

Close it up

Posted by Ace at 05:22 PM New Comments Thingy

And Now An Endorsement For Ron Paul...

—Ace

Ron Paul's greatest liability is Ron Paul, but his second greatest liability are his hippie-Nazi cultists. Not all of his supporters are hippie Nazis, but the aggressive ones are.

Since "Audit the Fed" wants to boost Ron Paul, I'm promoting his comments to the front page.

Quick, everyone! Get on this train before it fills up.

I call this prose poem "Jewess." It's about Elena Kagan.

Oh for Christ's sake.
She's a jewess.

AND a bulldyke.

She has no integrity whatsoever.

Chief Justice John Roberts: Epic. Fail.

I call this sonnet "Hebe Community."

I am merely observing the untidy little factoidal tautology which is that 90%+ of all jews support [enthusiastically] the bolshevik-nihilist assault on the foundations of Western Civilization.
They always have, and they always will.

Chicks like Pamela Geller are [statistically speaking] so rare in the hebe community that they might as well not exist.

And just in case your mother locked you in a cupboard your entire life: Every single word out of these bolshevik-nihilsts' mouths is a lie, including the words "and" and "the".

This one I call "Ode to Jewish Nature."

I'm a mathematician - I know exactly what the word "tautology" means.
From your link: "universal unconditioned truth, always valid".

As in, "It is a universal unconditioned truth, always valid, that 90%+ of all jews are bolshevik nihilists..."

Bolshevik-nihilism isn't some abstraction which exists independently from the jewish race; bolshevik-nihilism is merely a reflection of jewish nature.

There isn't a dime's worth of difference between an Elena Kagan and an Emma Goldman or a Rosa Luxemburg [or, for that matter, a modern-day bolshevik-nihilist terrorist, like Michelle LaVaughn Robinson's mentress at Sidley-Austin, Bernardine "Dohrn" Ohrnstein].

They're all manifestations ["instantiations" for you comp-sci geeks] of the same underlying legalistic darkness.

Here this Paul supporter mocks a commenter for pointing out that Bernadine Dohrn is, according to the rule that its one's mother who determines one's Jewishness, actually a gentile like himself. This Ron Paul supporter immediately compares that rules to Nazi classifications, and finds the Nazis wanting on that score.

I call this "Jews Are Just Like Nazis, Except I Like Nazis, And Hate Jews."

[a different commenter replying to him:]
Dohrn's father may have been chosen, but since he married a heathen,that makes her a heathen like you.

[The Ron Paul supporter now speaks:]

Boy, the Nazis sure were rank amateurs when it came to questions of eugenics, racial purity, and genealogical-determinism.

The extant Ron Paul Newsletters are now posted in a chronological format for your inspection.

So the question I have is this: If Ron Paul's not actually anti-semitic, and he didn't write his anti-semitic newsletters, why do so many anti-semites rally around him?

Why, it's almost as if they think he's lying when he claims to disavow the central points -- racism, anti-semitism, conspiracism -- that they so love.

I may go back into this solid citizen's previous comments, which I think were pretty much about how blacks are inferior and we need laws which reflect/announce this.

Audit the Fed, all of your repellent spam is now going to the front page, and promoted via Twitter as well. If you think your Stormfront agitation helps your antisemitic candidate, do continue.

If you wanted to keep your filth on the downlow, maybe reconsider the spam.

Quick everyone! Support Ron Paul! This is the company you will be joining.

Bonus: I skipped this anti-Paul ad from Jon Huntsman, as I didn't think I need to pile on, but every time a spammer comes in here to do his Stormfront Schtick, I'm going to post this.

Or any other anti-Paul videos.

Posted by Ace at 04:24 PM New Comments Thingy

Kindle Recommendations Thread

—Ace

Now that I've got a Kindle, I'm reading again. I was wondering if anyone had any recommendations.

If anyone's new to Kindle, you have to watch it with cheapie collections of classics, like Poe, or Lovecraft, or Robert E. Howard, because some do not have functioning Tables of Contents -- you have to manually scroll through hellaciously long files, all stories in the same file without any links to their beginnings. I got burned on that on a $1.99 (incomplete) Conan collection.

Last night I downloaded the one Raymond Chandler book I hadn't read, Playback. I'm burning through it (reading is pretty fast on the Kindle), and, as everyone says, it's not just an inferior work by Chandler, but a truly weak one. Gone entirely is his amazing scene-setting and tough-guy poetry. It reads like someone attempting to mimic his style -- but also not trying very hard, because the bulk of it is just prose which, while clean and readable, is also without any color or vitality. He truly is not even trying in this one.

Plus, 60% of the way through the book, I'm really not sure what mystery I'm supposed to care about. A woman's being blackmailed for reasons unknown, and halfway through, we finally had our first body, but it just apparently walked off on its own, so I'm not sure anyone's even dead yet.

So consider this an anti-recommendation (at least so far). But if you haven't read it -- The Big Sleep is incredible. None of his later works really touch it. People claim The Long Goodbye is better but I just don't see it. It's longer, certainly, but I don't see that as a plus. The Big Sleep is short and zippy and just filled with gorgeous writing, which is a trick, because he writes in a Hemmingway-esque telegraphic style, so to convey a richness of color to a scene without resorting to flowery or emotional language is an exceptional thing.

Posted by Ace at 03:31 PM New Comments Thingy