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Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:05 AM | Comments (495)
Post contains 149 words, total size 3 kb.

From Hot Air's headlines, some dirty lines.

The website that allows you to track increasing or decreasing levels of prurient interest is Porngram.

Open Thread.

Posted by: Ace at 03:53 PM | Comments (550)
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First about the leaker, as that's the fresher news. The Associated Press reports:

U.S. officials say they strongly suspect Russia of being behind the leak of an apparently bugged phone conversation about Ukraine between two senior American diplomats in which they make disparaging comments about the European Union.

...

The White House and State Department stopped just short of directly accusing Russia of surreptitiously recording the call between the top US diplomat for Europe, Victoria Nuland, and the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt. But both took pains to point out that a Russian government official was the first or among the first to call attention to the audio of the conversation that was posted on YouTube. The State Department said the incident marked a "new low in Russian tradecraft."

White House spokesman Jay Carney pointed to the Russian official's tweet and Russia's clear interest in what has become a struggle between pro-Moscow and pro-Western camps in the former Soviet Republic.

The earlier news was that Victoria Nuland's disparagement of the EU was leaked (after having been bugged, of course).

“F--- the E.U.,” Nuland says, dismissively referring to slow-moving diplomatic efforts to address political paralysis and a looming fiscal crisis in the country.

The United Nations, she adds, is trying to help faster.

It’s unclear who posted the recording, which surfaced on YouTube on Thursday, just as Nuland arrived in Ukraine for talks. Illicitly recorded material, however, is a staple of politics in the former Soviet Union and is known by its Russian name “kompromat,” meaning “compromising materials.”

...

The release of the audio followed Ukrainian President Viktor YanukovichÂ’s offer to include two senior members of the opposition movement in his government.

You will probably be shocked to hear that Nuland is taking a more aggressive posture on Ukraine than the EU. This shocks me, because for five years we've been a bit softer than even the Europeans. But apparently E.U. is more willing to compromise and agree to some deal by which the Russia-favored current president clings to power, but with some token opposition figures in the government. The US wants the president out.

Thanks to tasker.

At Hot Air, Allah discusses the security breach aspect -- don't we have people on this? The actual call is below.

The interesting thing to me here isn't that she says "F*** the EU" (she says it to mean if we get our ducks in a row, we don't need the EU's help), but listening to government/corporate-speak.

What I've learned today is to say "gaining altitude" when I mean "gaining support." So from now on, I'll be saying, yeah, if that idea gains altitude, I could see some emergent synergy in the near-term.

Damn, I Missed This One: This is the one that alerted me to listen for more Trendy Cliches. CharlieBrown'sDildo reminds me to now say, rather that "this is the complicating factor," "this is the complicated electron here..." more...

Posted by: Ace at 02:21 PM | Comments (327)
Post contains 573 words, total size 5 kb.

Instapundit has the links. They cut the fiber optic cables, and then destroyed 17 of 22 transformers via sniper fire. The attackers knew where to hit the transformers -- in the oil lines that fed their coolers. As the oil supply trickled out, the transformers heated up to the failure point, and the saboteurs had already fled.

The FBI says this wasn't terrorism but they always say that. As they don't know the motive for the attack, they really can't say it wasn't terrorism, but they say so anyway.

The Atlantic article on this gets a little conspiratorial and wonders about the date of the attack: April 16, 2013. The night/early morning after the Boston Marathon bombing of the 15th.

On the other hand, the probabilities favor something less interesting. While people tend to attribute such attacks (including shootings, like that of Gabbie Gifford) to larger political causes they can easily understand, it more often turns out to be done out of shabby and small motives, like a disgruntled employee with a grudge, or a lone wolf lunatic.

Posted by: Ace at 01:33 PM | Comments (234)
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Well, Patrick McMahon doesn't say the decision itself is good (he's agnostic on that), but he applauds the idea that a business can still make its own decisions about what it will sell. He offers two cheers.

I'm not sure I think two cheers are proper, or even one. I actually think it's a not-terrible idea for a drug store to stop selling cigarettes. It's a curious thing how they ever came to be sold there in the first place. And smoking is horrible, just horrible.

However, when McMahon writes...

I think it's great whenever a business takes steps to implement its vision of social purpose...

The freedom to sell what you want - or not - is a marvelous thing and should be applauded whenever it's exercised.

However, every person and every business has always had the freedom to do what the controlling forces of society encouraged them to do. One was (I hate to bring up Hitler, but...) perfectly free to extol Hitler in 1939 Germany.

The true level of freedom of any society is not determined by how free you are to do the things that the government and ruling classes want you to do, but how free you are to do the things they don't want you to do.

CVS' decision should not be faulted, I don't think, but I do not see either how it can be praised. It could be praised as regards health benefits, but not on the principle of freedom. I would not claim that CVS' decision represents a loss of freedom -- I respect their own freedom to choose what image they will offer of themselves, and what products they will sell -- but neither is it any sort of advance of freedom to adhere to the mode of thought and way of life recommended by the government and ruling classes.

There has never been a society in which you were not free to do as you were told.

To me, an advance of freedom on this score would be selling cigarettes in a place where they hadn't previously been sold. Now, the health consequences of that would be bad, but that would be a show of the freedom to do things you are told not to do.

Posted by: Ace at 12:36 PM | Comments (320)
Post contains 395 words, total size 2 kb.

Lots of f-words in the quotes, and a link to the podcast where he describes his travails. The podcast of course contains unredacted f-bombs.

Son, it took me 3.5 hours to read 25 pages."

"Motherf*****s talk like Yoda."

"This shit is impossible to me."

"Pegasus....Pegasi. That's horses with wings. This s*** is crazy."

"This motherf****r got a sword that talks to him. And s***."

"Motherf*****s live in places that don't exist."

Thanks to Dave @ Garfield Ridge.

Below, a funny comic named John Mulaney talks about Ice T's role on Law & Order: SVU, which is basically The Guy Who Asks Childishly Obvious Questions So That Other People Can Explain Stuff to the Audience. more...

Posted by: Ace at 12:12 PM | Comments (189)
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From Monty's great post:

People without meaningful work and copious free time don't write symphonies or create great works of art. They don't live a life of the mind. They drink too much, or get in fights, or watch a lot of internet porn, or commit crimes. They don't contribute to the economy or culture, as a rule. They just...exist. And it goes on like that, sometimes for generations.

Labor is the fate of all humankind. Always has been. We work to live. Work gives shape and meaning to our lives. It's not just the income we derive from it; it's the knowledge that we are able to function as adults in the wider world, and provide for ourselves and our families. It's feeling the satisfaction of having contributed something to the maintenance of civilization, even if it means we haul trash away or keep the grass mowed. It's all honorable work, necessary work, and not something to be ashamed of.

It's not an outrage, it's just the way things are. To try and embitter people about that, to make them feel that the natural order of things is unfair, is just to do an enormous amount of harm to the very people you're claiming to want to help.

Charles Cooke also writes on this philosophical disagreement we seem to be having with the left-- whether labor is a boon to be celebrated, or an evil to be avoided to the extent that an obese government may (temporarily) permit.

In a lovely illustration of the truism that progressives really havenÂ’t the slightest clue what it is that conservatives believe, the Huffington PostÂ’s Senior Congressional Reporter, Michael McAuliff, spoke for the cabal, suggesting ludicrously that,

ThereÂ’s an irony in the GOP complaining that ACA lets people quit jobs. I mean, whatÂ’s wrong with freedom?

To answer a remarkably misguided rhetorical question, there is nothing at all “wrong with freedom.” As Patrick Henry rightly argued, above all other things “liberty ought to be the direct end” of government, for, after that, everything else is mere indulgence. But there is an awful lot “wrong” with using the word “freedom” where it does not apply. After all, it is one thing for a person to choose not to work and to accept the natural consequences of that decision, but quite another indeed for a person to choose not to work because others are being forced to subsidize his well-being. One can reasonably attest that redistributing wealth to underwrite preferred social outcomes is “necessary” or “virtuous” or “kind” or “practical” — or even, more cynically, that it is the inexorable end product of a democratic system in which one man can vote himself the contents of another’s wallet. But one cannot claim that it makes either man “free” — at least not without twisting the word and the concept that it represents beyond all meaningful recognition.

Does the Obama administration really plan to make the case that negative liberty is but a mirage and that, the state of nature’s “forcing” one to work being akin to actual compulsion, the state must step in everywhere to liberate the citizenry from reality’s harsh claims? One suspects not.

Abraham Lincoln spoke a lot about the virtues of labor.

The prudent, penniless beginner in the world, labors for wages awhile, saves a surplus with which to buy tools or land, for himself; then labors on his own account another while, and at length hires another new beginner to help him. This, say its advocates, is free labor---the just and generous, and prosperous system, which opens the way for all---gives hope to all, and energy, and progress, and improvement of condition to all." The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume III, "Address before the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society, Milwaukee, Wisconsin" (September 30, 1859), pp. 478-479.

...

"Labor is the true standard of value." The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume IV, "Speech at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania" (February 15, 1861), p. 212.

"The world is agreed that labor is the source from which human wants are mainly supplied. There is no dispute upon this point." The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume III, "Address before the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society, Milwaukee, Wisconsin" (September 30, 1859), p. 477.

...

"If at any time all labour should cease, and all existing provisions be equally divided among the people, at the end of a single year there could scarcely be one human being left alive---all would have perished by want of subsistence." The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume I, "Fragments of a Tariff Discussion" (December 1, 1847), p. 415.

There are more quotes at that link.

Some time ago I think I wrote about Rick Santorum making the case that, in order to improve the economy and increase the productive vigor of the American people, we needed to increase the morality of the American people.

I half agreed. I do believe there is a strong relationship between the virtue of industry (as Lincoln would call it; we'd say industriousness, but that's so clumsy) and the other virtues. Virtues reinforce each other in a... virtuous cycle. I guess that's why they call it that.

But I wonder if Santorum didn't get the relationship substantially backwards -- that is to say, that it is less that personal morality promotes personal industry, but more that industry promotes other aspects of morality.

A job -- work, labor, industry -- creates a powerful moral climate for the mind. Work creates in the mind a definite and tangible relationship between action and consequence, the appreciation of which is the essential undergirding for all morality.

One's personal labors breed respect for other's personal labors. As Lincoln said, labor is the ultimate measure of value. When a man knows he has worked 30 hours to amass $600, and that the new television he wants costs $600, he understands, in a palpable way, the value of not just his productive endeavors, but those of the men and women who made the object he seeks to buy. It is this understanding that makes working men despise thieves.

When one works, one sees a bridge from the past to the future; one understands that one's labors on Monday produce a service or good deliverable the following Wednesday.

Work thus creates in the mind a fertile ground for the growth of other virtues, almost all of which rely upon the understandings which work affords -- the connection between action and consequence, the value of other people and their own strivings, the sense that progress -- betterment -- can be achieved by application of effort.

Work ultimately breeds a sense of autonomy, a sense of independence, and that which derives inevitably from those, a sense of dignity and self-respect, and self-respect in turn creates respect for others.

Conversely, idleness teaches none of these things, and indeed tends to teach the opposite. A man who receives a gift of money each month has no tangible understanding of the effort required to produce it and will thus tend to disdain the labors of others. A person who makes poor decisions but is shielded from the consequences of those by others' largesse will learn no lessons and have then no cause to seek his own betterment. And an idle person who has no sense of his own personal agency in the world -- no sense that he stands on his own feet as a free and independent actor -- will lack the feeling of dignity and self-worth.

People who are unemployed for long periods of time feel quite bad about themselves. This is both good and bad. It's bad that they have feelings of lacking worth; but the fact they feel this at all shows that they still have dignity and aspire to work.

But what of people who have either completely lost that feeling, due to being comfortably idle for very long periods of time, or who never had that feeling at all, due to growing up in an environment which did not foster a respect work?

And what happens when a government sets out affirmatively to promote idleness and, by relative comparison of cost weighted against benefit, discourage industry?

As Lincoln also said (same link as above):

"No country can sustain, in idleness, more than a small percentage of its numbers. The great majority must labor at something productive." The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume III, "Address before the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society, Milwaukee, Wisconsin" (September 30, 1859), p. 479.

The opposite of a virtuous cycle is a vicious one.

Posted by: Ace at 10:30 AM | Comments (591)
Post contains 1460 words, total size 9 kb.

"Why now?"

But the objection is primarily about timing. Allah's take is that they will do something DREAMy before 2016.

Boehner wants to do this but some sizable chunk of the caucus — a majority? a sizable minority? — prefers to wait. Here’s the question: If he could get more of a Republican buy-in next year, why shouldn’t he wait? Matt Lewis argued the other day that amnesty opponents will always gin up some sort of excuse related to the timing to keep kicking the immigration-reform can down the road, but I simply can’t believe party leaders and their business backers will send the GOP nominee into battle in 2016 without arming him with some sort of amnesty to show Latino voters. It might be a limited one like DREAM, but something’s going to happen.

Posted by: Ace at 08:50 AM | Comments (535)
Post contains 151 words, total size 1 kb.

What does this mean? The one on the bottom right.

These are toilet instructions from hotels at the Sochi Olympics.

And people fish in the toilet? more...

Posted by: rdbrewer at 08:32 AM | Comments (110)
Post contains 48 words, total size 1 kb.

Calling Mike Rowe! Calling Mike Rowe!

“GDP growth isn't a good in and of itself,” he says. “The question here is what's going to create the most happiness for the greatest numbers of people. Being in a situation where people have to work full time or 40 hours a week at a job that may not be the best match for them because that is the only way to get health insurance is not the way you create the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people.”

Do read it all. This article may be the stupidest piece of tripe I've read in years, and that's quite an achievement in the era of His Majesty the King.

This is liberal elitism at work, believe it or not. The upper-crust Democrats see some guy mowing their lawn in the summer, sweating and grunting as he pushes the mower around the steeply-landscaped back yard. Or they see the trashmen coming by to collect the feculent, festering remains of the weekend cocktail party they threw over the weekend. God, I'd hate that job, they think, and then a light bulb goes on in their heads. I bet they hate that job too! No one would do that job unless they had to! It's an outrage! And then we're off to the races.

Upper-crust liberals tend to have cushy, white-collar jobs that pay well. They tend to have stable families and live in decent neighborhoods. To them, "work" means something far different than it does to the guy outside laboring over their landscaping.

The guy out pushing the mower, or hauling away their trash, probably doesn't hate his job. He may not love it, but he probably doesn't hate it. It pays the bills. To the extent that he feels any outrage, it's generally at the shitty hot weather or the lazy gringo kid he hired as a helper this summer but who didn't show up today. It's not like he dreams of being a neurosurgeon or a performance-artist. He'd probably like more free time (who wouldn't?) but not at the cost of losing income.

In other words: liberals who believe this "less work is good" argument are Utopian idiots. They think everybody lives like they do, and likes the things they like.

Further, and on a different track: remember that huge, bloated, unweildy, horrendously-expensive welfare state we've built over the past fifty years? Remember how we're supposed to pay for that? Tax receipts, which is directly related to per-capita GDP. Drive down per-capita GDP (which is what ObamaCare is doing), and you make the huge welfare-state we've built even more unsustainable than it already is.

People without meaningful work and copious free time don't write symphonies or create great works of art. They don't live a life of the mind. They drink too much, or get in fights, or watch a lot of internet porn, or commit crimes. They don't contribute to the economy or culture, as a rule. They just...exist. And it goes on like that, sometimes for generations.

Labor is the fate of all humankind. Always has been. We work to live. Work gives shape and meaning to our lives. It's not just the income we derive from it; it's the knowledge that we are able to function as adults in the wider world, and provide for ourselves and our families. It's feeling the satisfaction of having contributed something to the maintenance of civilization, even if it means we haul trash away or keep the grass mowed. It's all honorable work, necessary work, and not something to be ashamed of.

It's not an outrage, it's just the way things are. To try and embitter people about that, to make them feel that the natural order of things is unfair, is just to do an enormous amout of harm to the very people you're claiming to want to help.
----
UPDATE: Tyler Cowen also responds to this stupidity, but more betterer and smartlier than me. Read it all. Here's a taste:

A simpler possibility is that people undervalue the long-term benefits of having a job and thus in both settings the contraction in employment is a quite negative outcome. That is then very bad news for ACA, if only in expected value terms.

Posted by: Monty at 07:28 AM | Comments (424)
Post contains 735 words, total size 4 kb.