Gutfeld wants you to die. Like most Republicans, I guess.

Text below, but it's better to watch -- video after the jump. He announces the rules of the game with a desperate weariness that sells the bit.

“Every time he says ‘folks,’ drink. Every time he says ‘fair share,’ drink. Every time he says ‘extraordinary,’ drink. Every time he brags about working tirelessly, drink. When he frets about lack of compromise, drink. If he says, ‘Bring me a bill, and I’ll sign it,’ drink. When he brings up the middle class, the people he’s ruining, drink. Every time he says, ‘It’s the right thing to do,’ drink. Every time he cites someone that his policies have helped, drink. If she’s in the audience, drink some more. Every time he says, ‘I never said it would be easy,’ drink. If he says that after mentioning ObamaCare, drink again. If he says ObamaCare’s rough start was worth it, drink. And every time he reminds us that running a country is really hard, say, ‘Yeah, we can tell,’ and drink … Finally, each time you feel like you’re being screwed, drink. And if you still buy anything from this gas bag, then you deserve the world’s worst hangover, and enjoy it, ‘cause you built that.”

Tonight we're going to just have an Open Thread on the SOTU. I and the cobs discussed doing a live blog, and the consensus was that basically, TFG isn't worth that much of anyone's time. It will be an hour and a half of complete bullshit, and after the first twenty long minutes, saying "bullshit" to everything just becomes lifeless, predictable, and mechanical, like Obama's speechifying itself.

And what's more: This will be the same SOTU he's given now four (or is it five?) times before, except with a little more emphasis on income inequality and some more threats to act unconstitutionally.

If I watch, I'll comment. But I'll probably check out after twenty minutes.
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Posted by: Ace at 09:10 AM | Comments (406)
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Today, Jan 28 marks the 28th anniversary of the loss of the space shuttle Challenger and her crew. Yesterday on Jan 27, 19 years earlier a fire broke out in the Apollo 1 command module during a launch test that killed the three crewmembers scheduled to fly that mission a month later. Two dates next to each other on a calendar separated by almost 2 decades.

4 days from now on Feb. 1 will be the 11th year since the breakup and disintigration of the space shuttle Columbia in the skies over Texas during their re-entry.

47 years seems like a very long time, but to put that into context it was a mere 66 years from the Wright Brothers first successful flight at Kittyhawk to Neil Armstrong's first step onto the moon.

There were other training accidents. Almost a year before the Apollo 1 fire, astronauts Elliott See and Charlie Bassett died when their T-38 trainer crashed into the McDonnell Aircraft building at Lambert Field in St. Louis where their Gemini space capsules were being built. And later in October of that same year astronaut C.C. Williams died in another T-38 crash in Huntsville.

Over at Meathead, Mollie Hemingway asks some interesting questions about risk aversion and meaningful accomplishments in the space program. Her basic point is if we expect to accomplish great things we have to become more comfortable with the idea of people dying in space.

I'm not sure I agree with her entirely but I absolutely do agree NASA has become just another large overfed federal agency - mostly interested in self-preservation and funding. You can argue for more private sector involvement (I would) but if it's just NASA letting out contracts that's still the government. To be effective and competitive it'll have to be done without NASA writing the checks.

I don't know if we should get more comfortable with the idea of people dying in space so much as we should understand the nature of the job means the risks are greater. Hemingway mentioned in her twitter feed she was surprised so many astronauts agreed with her. I'm not. They're aggressive and passionate about what they do, they train hard, and they're usually pretty smart. They know the risks far better than most and still choose to do the job.

Roll call below the fold: more...

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 12:45 PM | Comments (247)
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Remember when the left spent 8 years complaining about "unitary executive" (a term almost none of them understood) and signing statements?

Good times, good times.

President Obama, in the first of potentially many executive actions tied to his State of the Union address, will unilaterally increase the minimum wage for workers under new federal contracts to $10.10 an hour, from $7.25, in an effort to build momentum for a minimum wage hike for all Americans.

The executive order, which had been pushed by progressive Democratic lawmakers, applies to all contractors performing services for the federal government and would affect more than 2 million employees, according to an administration official.

Is it constitutional? What difference at this point does it make?

But don't worry, John Boehner is on the case.

The House GOP "will continue to look closely at whether the president is faithfully executing laws, as he took an oath to do,” Boehner told reporters after a meeting of the Republican conference. “We’re going to watch very closely, because there’s a Constitution that we all take an oath to, including him, and following the Constitution is the basis for House Republicans.”

Asked what the House would do if lawmakers determined Obama skirted the Constitution, Boehner said only, “There are options that are available to us.” Republicans, he said, would discuss them at their annual retreat, which begins Wednesday in Cambridge, Md.

Apparently those options include passing an amnesty bill that would give Obama a desperately needed achievement going into the midterms.

Someone sent in an "Ask the blog" question about why we don't use the flaming skull much anymore. I don't remember if we answered it during the podcast or not but we did talk about it. Basically while there's so many things coming from this White House that things which would have been shocking to the mind a few years ago are now routine. Combine that with a lack of any interest in responding by Republicans and people are just becoming numb to the lawlessness of this administration. Contra that idiot George Lucas, this is actually how democracy (or in this case a constitutional republic) dies.

Posted by: DrewM at 08:11 AM | Comments (383)
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Mark Steyn has some thoughts on the SOTU for you.

Posted by: andy at 03:03 AM | Comments (311)
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• Brian Ross Runs Over NYC Pedestrian
  
• Ex-Republican Senator Endorses Democrat Over Republican In Senate Race
  
• Steyn: The State Of The State Of The Union
  
• Tu Quoquo Ad Hitlerum
  
• Idiot With A Phone And A Pen To Raise Federal Minimum Wage
  
• State Of The Union Empty Suit
  
• Another Poll Showing Hagan In Big Trouble
  
• The Downside Of A Speedy Primary
  
• GOP Congressman Is Bringing Father Of Seal Killed In Benghazi To SOTU
  
• 69th Anniversary Of The Liberation Of Auschwitz
  
• Media Shocked Obama Has Not Lived Up To His Own Hype
  
• The Worst Republican In The World And Seven Things You Can Do About It
  
• Be On The Lookout For An Evil Pope Sporting A Goatee
  
• Neat Little IPhone Trick
  
• Cool Diagram Of Dog Breeds
  

Follow me on twitter.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:12 AM | Comments (538)
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Chuck Schumer Wants Tracking Devices on Autistic Children

Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has proposed a far-reaching new law that would force taxpayers to cover the costs of placing tracking devices on autistic children after 14-year-old autistic child Avonte Oquendo was found dead last week. The tracking devices would not be implanted, but would instead be attached to watches, ankle bracelets, belts, or shoelaces. "The program would be completely voluntary for parents and run by local law enforcement," Schumer's office announced.

...Studies show that approximately half of autistic children wander away from supervised areas. The legislation would grant $10 million for the program.

Well I know some families with autistic children who have to be constantly vigilant or else their kid will take advantage of an unlocked front door and wander far off into the neighborhood. And it's my understanding that the Secret Service uses a similar tracker to find VP Joe Biden whenever he wanders off.

But even if it's a good idea at the family level for autistic children to wear these trackers Schumer completely fails to explain:

1. Why is this the business of the federal government?
2. Why do we need a law covering this?
3. Why should the taxpayers cover the costs of these devices?

Somewhere along the line a lot of the American people have bought into the assumption that just because something is good in a nice-to-have way, it must automatically involve the federal government paying for it. Now Schumers are always going to be Schumering because it's their nature but sadly this bill is likely to pass with bipartisan support. Because the children.

Also in News You Can't Use: Can Whales Be Autistic? And will they need to be tracked as well?

NYT: Fear the Power of the Koch War-Zeppelin

Only a few weeks into this midterm election year, the right-wing political zeppelin is fully inflated with secret cash and is firing malicious falsehoods at supporters of health care reform.

A right-wing war zeppelin? That's a good idea. I like that. We'll start the ball rolling and get funding approved at the next VRWC meeting Koch-willing.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:44 PM | Comments (466)
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[bumped by BenK: This is worth a read for those who missed it last night]

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. - John 1:1

This is what I have to say about the SOTU, and every other content-free political speech and op-end we're going to have inflicted on us from here on out:

There is a price to be paid for divorcing actions and concepts from the words that describe them. Government, and the law that undergirds it, is made up of words. Devalue the words, strip them of meaning, and you do the same thing to the concepts those words describe. Action follows Thought, and for Thought to exist there must be the Word.

This was George Orwell's central insight when he invented Newspeak for his novel 1984. Language doesn't just describe what we think about, and allow us to communicate with each other; in a major way, it actually determines what we think about, and how we think. We conceptualize the way we do, even in the abstract, using constructs of language - even mathematics and computer code is a kind of language. Orwell understood that the Word could actually be turned into a weapon, an invisible knife to cut away a man's ability to think (and thus, to act). All you have to do is convince a man that the Word he's hearing means something other than what he thought it meant...or can mean anything, really. Or nothing at all. Science, history, literature, even music -- they evaporate like a puddle in the hot sun because the Words used to build them stop conveying meaning.

Words have meaning. They must have meaning, for if we are to communicate at all we must transmit meaning from one person to another. This is perhaps the most unforgivable part of the postmodernist assault on the language itself: it has weakened our ability to even describe the loss of meaning.

If a Word can mean anything, it means nothing. Think of that while his Majesty the King speaks tomorrow night.

Posted by: Monty at 07:37 AM | Comments (526)
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This is a post that is long-overdue, and one I felt I owed the readers & cobs of Ace of Spades HQ along with the Ewok himself. I warn that it is a very long read, and I implore you to read it as seriously as I wrote it. It's the rare instance of someone publicly admitting how badly they screwed up, so ready your pillowcases-filled-with-soap, and dive in.

I take the election-related work I contribute here seriously. I felt a great sense of responsibility when Ace asked me to co-blog with a focus on elections and polling back in 2010, because I had been given an opportunity to do something I've always had a passion for. Everything I've managed to do since he gave me the keys is a direct result of that opportunity. I have a day job, art, and the stars, but the interest closest to my heart (besides my wife) has been elections. This opportunity- blathering about them and having people, some of whom are very influential, take you seriously- is enormously important to me. So, this has been in the back of my mind for nearly fifteen months, and I touched on it in the comments late last week:

The general election, election night in particular, burned me to the core. I had spent months slowly networking a rag-tag group to do a live coverage thing for the blog intended to rival the AP's, much like what we did for the recall. John Ekdahl created a fabulously simple interactive map, did his computer magic so it would be easy for a hundred volunteers to update it live.

Then the results started trickling in.

And things got bad.

And things got worse.

And I lost my nerve and became a bit unravelled.

A lot of volunteers got very depressed, and I can't blame them.

So I started drinking, and as the numbers continued to grow nastier and nastier, and way from what I had foolishly bought into (that the polls were "skewed", a mistake I will NEVER, EVER repeat)... it just all fell apart.

This was an ambitious project I wanted to pull off- successfully- for Ace, because he gave me the chance to cob for him and I wanted to prove just how "big" I could play.

And in the pit of despair over the sour results, I feel like I failed.

Miserably.

So I want to talk about the election call I completely fucked up. more...

Posted by: CAC at 01:50 PM | Comments (251)
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F*** you, oceans.

This is the Telegraph.

This is a great story and I wanted to post it, just because it's fun. But note how almost everything in this is a pure speculation.

A Russian ship had been abandoned by its crew (over nonpayment for their services) in Canada. Later, storms set the ship adrift out into the Atlantic.

Everything beyond that is just sort of a big make-'em-up.

The 300ft Lyubov Orlova has been floating around the North Atlantic since being set adrift off the Canadian coast a year ago and coastguards believe a series of storms blowing in from the west have driven her thousands of miles towards UK shores, according to The Sun.

Since being abandoned by her crew, it is feared the 40-year-old Soviet vessel may have become home to hordes of rats, which would have had to eat each other to survive.

Or they could have starved. Or there could have been not too many rats in the first place.

Since we don't know, it's perfectly fair to jump to the wildest, scariest conclusions.

So, we don't know about these teeming hordes of cannibal rats, but we do know the ship is afloat and bound for the UK, right?

Well... no.

...

The 4,250-tonne shipÂ’s position remains unknown despite several attempts to find her.
In March last year satellites identified a mystery object large enough to be the ship off the north west coast of Scotland but search planes found nothing.

Salvage hunters are keen to trace the liner in order to cash in upon her £600,000 scrap value.

Pim de Rhoodes, a Belgian-based marine missions specialist who is looking for the Lyubov Orlova, told The Sun: “She is floating around out there somewhere.
“There will be a lot of rats and they eat each other. If I get aboard I’ll have to lace everywhere with poison.”

Experts believe the boat is still afloat because her four life-raft transmitters have not been set off as they would if she sunk.

Two distress beacons were activated last March but they are thought to have come from life rafts which broke away from the ship and fell into the ocean.

If I'm reading that right, they think the ship is afloat because its four life-raft transmitters did not go off, which would have happened if the ship sunk.

Only two of the beacons were activated.

So, you know: Watch out England.

Or, as the last quote of the story says:

"We must be vigilant."

Posted by: Ace at 03:35 PM | Comments (445)
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Asked to name her biggest regret during her time as Secretary of State, she says "Benghazi." Of course, when she was asked about the details of this regret by Congressmen seeking details of how four Americans came to be killed despite advanced warning and unanswered requests for more security, she shrieked "What difference could it possibly make?"

What does she blame? "Imperfect information," she suggests (I think-- she doesn't really say what exactly she regrets about this, other than that it happened).

She doesn't mention "YouTube videos" as a regret.

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Posted by: Ace at 02:35 PM | Comments (232)
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