Hey, I don't know about G-8, but will you settle
for G six and a quarter?

He's even got "boner leg."

Via Drudge, thanks to AHFF Geoff.

The Other Side of the Issue:

Looks good from this angle too. But it's the rear view that gives Obama happypants.

Thanks to IreneFingIrene.

Incidentally, she's sixteen years old. Assuming she's Mayara on page 2 here.

President Short-Eyes probably shouldn't gawk at girls not even allowed to vote yet.

On the plus side, everyone with the "No" bet in the Gay Pool just cleaned up at 9 to 1 odds. That'll help the economy.

Thanks to Jenny.

Another Pic: This one of him checking out an adult woman.

He's got all the tact of a country-born wolf in a Tex Avery cartoon.

He eyes up ass like he's Indian Jones about to grab a golden Incan idol. I think he's got a half-filled sack of sand in the other hand.

The Rasmussen Passion index just went to +6 1/4.

He looks like a guy delivering a sausage pizza in a porno.

Larry Flynt just called. He wants his class and subtlety back.

He's staring at the ass like he's a Scanner with the unique power to psychically detonate the buttocks.

I don't get this one, but when a celebrity emails you, you use his joke.

Jedi Master Luke Skywalker writes:

G-8 SUMMIT = BEGGAR'S CANYON

YOUR UNDERAGE DAUGHTERS' ASSES = WOMP RATS

Thanks to Carol.

Classy: Obama's new, more accurate, faux presidential seal.

Thanks to Slublog for doing that. The Latin means "What's your sign?"

Posted by: Ace at 11:50 AM | Comments (39)
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Oops. Consider this an open thread. Go crazy.

Posted by: Slublog at 11:48 AM | Comments (5)
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Obviously it's very early to even begin talking about swing states in 2012.

But who cares. We need some good news and this counts.

In a potentially alarming trend for the White House, independent voters are deserting President Barack Obama nationally and especially in key swing states, recent polls suggest.

Obama’s job approval rating hit a — still healthy — low of 56 percent in the Gallup Poll on Wednesday. And pollsters are debating whether Obama’s expansive and expensive policy proposals or the ground-level realities of a still-faltering economy are driving the falling numbers.

But a source of the shift appears to be independent voters, who seem to be responding to Republican complaints of excessive spending and government control.

“This is a huge sea change that is playing itself out in American politics,” said Democratic pollster Doug Schoen. “Independents who had become effectively operational Democrats in 2006 and 2008 are now up for grabs and are trending Republican.

“They’re saying, ‘Costing too much, no results, see the downside, not sure of the upside,’” he said.

...

Pollsters from both parties debate the numbersÂ’ meaning, but averages of public polls have shown a gentle downward trend.

...

Obama dropped 6 percentage points [among Independents] last week from the week before in GallupÂ’s tracking poll, and Quinnipiac University found a 5-percentage-point drop in approval from independents between early June and early July. Recent state polling shows drops over longer periods.

A Quinnipiac University poll of voters in economically troubled Ohio, released Tuesday, showed ObamaÂ’s approval rating slipping 8 points, to below 50 percent, from a poll two months earlier, with a plurality of 48 percent of independent voters disapproving of his job performance. A Public Policy Polling survey in Virginia found ObamaÂ’s approval and disapproval numbers effectively tied, with independents disapproving of the presidentÂ’s job performance, 52 percent to 38 percent.

The liberal media has successfully branded Rasmussen a "Republican polling outfit," or at least they've convinced themselves of that. (They started deligitimizing Rasmussen a few months ago and now don't even mention them, apparently satisfied with their own offers of evidence.)

But the rest of us still take notice. Obama's doing worse in that poll, consistently 4-5% worse than he does in Gallup. And his vaunted popularity is now... a statistical dead heat between those who approve and those who disapprove.

Thirty-nine percent (39%) now give the President good or excellent marks for handling the economy while 43% say he is doing a poor job. Those are by far his lowest ratings yet on the economy Â…

Overall, 51% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the PresidentÂ’s performance so far. Forty-eight percent (48%) now disapprove.

He's at an all time low of -8 in the oddball Presidential Approval Index, where those who strongly disapprove are subtracted from those who strongly disapprove. His strong support is down to 30% and his strong disapproval is up to 38%.

Democrats Balking: Politico also notes Obama is having a hard time getting Democrats to support a lot of his programs schemes. And that was when he was supposedly Captain Awesome. As he weakens in the polls, he'll get less support still.

Posted by: Ace at 11:32 AM | Comments (1)
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Not an exact quote, but the precise quote is pretty much the same thing:

Question: Are you talking about the distances women have to travel because in parts of the country, abortion is essentially unavailable, because there are so few doctors and clinics that do the procedure? And also, the lack of Medicaid for abortions for poor women?

Ginsburg: Yes, the ruling about that surprised me. [Harris v. McRae – in 1980 the court upheld the Hyde Amendment, which forbids the use of Medicaid for abortions.] Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don't want to have too many of. So that Roe was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding for abortion. Which some people felt would risk coercing women into having abortions when they didn't really want them. But when the court decided McRae, the case came out the other way. And then I realized that my perception of it had been altogether wrong.

She does allow that, based on subsequent rulings, her initial belief that Roe was a eugenics program first and foremost turns out to have been wrong.

I guess that's something.

Her "perception" undermines the entire stated reason that Roe is a constitutional right. The decision itself casts it as a right to reproductive freedom of an individual. And in court cases, if a dispute can be cast as the individual versus the state, the individual will almost always win.

Ginsberg, however, seems to think that the whole purpose was not to advance the interests of the individual, but to advance the interest of the state in culling undesirables from the population. Thus understood, Roe is not about defending an individual woman's right to abortion, but about defending the state's right to encourage and facilitate selective population control of low-desirability "populations." (Guess whom she might mean.)

One can argue plausibly that an individual has the right to do what she wants with her body; but it's a much harder case to make that each woman has the "right" of the state to encourage her to destroy unwanted children for the genetic and social improvement of the state.

A friend of mine used to darkly joke that he believed in every woman's right to have an abortion forced on her. Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Supreme Court Justice (and wise Hebraic woman, I suppose) believes that at least at one point my friend's black joke really was the entire purpose of Roe.

Misfire: I incorrectly paraphrased her belief. She isn't talking about the "purpose" or Roe or its justification; she is talking about a "concern" that existed at the time, which may be independent of the purpose of Roe. (Or, might not be.)

I overstated that a bit, I think.

Still... her belief that sound public policy goals were being served by paying off the poor to abort babies, and that such policy goals were of constitutional relevance (!), is pretty extreme, even without my overstatement. She may or may not have thought this was a proper factor in deciding Roe, but she definitely believes it should have been a factor in a later case, following Roe.

She believes that that concern -- that we as a nation wouldn't be able to efficiently reduce certain "populations" through abortion down to manageable levels -- should have had some bearing on a Supreme Court case. (The case concerned whether Medicaid must be available for abortions. Her answer? Yes, of course it must, we have to keep the poor and black from becoming too numerous.)

She was "surprised" that it turned out the Court didn't share her belief that reducing the population of the poor and black was a consideration rising to the level of a constitutional imperative.

Posted by: Ace at 10:27 AM | Comments (9)
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There are signs that our military leaders have learned lessons from both our 7 years of operations in Afghanistan and our successes in Iraq. They have begun a major shift in strategy and tactics to reflect that. We have discussed some aspects of it here including the decision announced to limit bombing of residential dwellings even if we are receiving fire from them. While this decision may seem counter-intuitive at first. when examined in the framework of a larger shift toward safeguarding populations v. killing bad guys it becomes very understandable.

This same change in Iraq, to take territory and then stay there alongside the populace, was instrumental in shifting public opinion in Iraq. In conjunction with increased security from local forces it led to our ability to let the Iraqis take care of themselves. A similar strategy is now being employed in Afghanistan, but faces many more challenges. The Afghan security forces are near useless as currently constituted. Tribal issues make it almost impossible for any national forces to be used in an area where they are not native. Our training efforts have focused on attempting to put together Afghan police and military units but the problem is that other than perhaps Hamid Karzai there are no Afghans. There are a patchwork of tribes and villages and cliques that speak different languages, hold centuries long beefs and don't see themselves as part of this larger, artificial thing we call Afghanistan.

The full post at BLACKFIVE

Posted by: Uncle Jimbo at 10:09 AM | Comments (1)
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The Chicago Way.

...

"There's no politics at work when it comes to spending for the recovery," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs says.

Counties that supported Obama last year have reaped twice as much money per person from the administration's $787 billion economic stimulus package as those that voted for his Republican rival, Sen. John McCain, a USA TODAY analysis of government disclosure and accounting records shows. That money includes aid to repair military bases, improve public housing and help students pay for college.

Get ready for some Only In Washington type logic:

Investigators who track the stimulus are skeptical that political considerations could be at work. The imbalance is so pronounced — and the aid so far from complete — that it would be almost inconceivable for it to be the result of political tinkering, says Adam Hughes, the director of federal fiscal policy for the non-profit OMB Watch. "Even if they wanted to, I don't think the administration has enough people in place yet to actually do that," he says.

He brings up other reasons to doubt this, but note his main reason: This is so brazen and so obvious and so enormously lopsided that obviously this couldn't be intentional.

His thinking is thus: If only a small amount of extra money was flowing to Obama counties, like 10%, well then, that could possibly be due to political favoritism.

But when 100% more -- double! -- flows to Obama counties, obviously that can't be explained by political rigging.

That's like claiming that because the wife you hated was shot with six bullets rather than one you can't have been her killer. One bullet? Sure. Six? Overkill. No way you could be guilty. What kind of guy shoots a woman six times?

Oh, right: The husband who hates her.

An important caveat is contained at the end: from 2005-2007, counties that would ultimately vote for Obama received 50% more in federal aid than counties that would vote for McCain. So, shockingly, there's a bias in the system already. Go figure, those most demanding of other people's money vote Democratic.

But 50% is not 100%.

Posted by: Ace at 09:40 AM | Comments (1)
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As Ed notes, declining public support for slitting the country's collective throat has something to do with this, as does Robert Byrd's opposition.

President Barack ObamaÂ’s push for quick action by Congress on climate change legislation suffered a setback on Thursday when the U.S. Senate committee leading the drive delayed work on the bill until September.

Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Barbara Boxer said her self-imposed deadline of early August for finishing writing a bill to combat global warming has been put off until after Congress returns from a recess that ends in early September.

“We’ll do it as soon as we get back” from that break, Boxer told reporters. Asked if this delay jeopardizes chances the Senate will pass a bill this year, Boxer said, “Not a bit … we’ll be in (session) until Christmas, so I’m not worried about it.”

But Boxer did not guarantee Congress will be able to finish a bill and deliver it to Obama by December, when he plans to attend an international summit on climate change in Copenhagen.

Posted by: Ace at 09:03 AM | Comments (4)
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Democrats aren't admitting this. And the media will not disturb their narrative wherein Dick Cheney crept out of the National Observatory at night to dose AIG's water-coolers with LSD so that they'd make financial derivatives out of hallucinatory fantasias.

But worth reading for anyone who cares about the truth.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 08:28 AM | Comments (1)
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Despite arrests and beatings, Iranians haven't given up yet on overturning the results of last month's presidential elections.

Anti-government protesters tried to gather outside Tehran University on Thursday, despite a heavy police presence and sharp warnings from the governor of Tehran that the planned demonstration was unauthorized and would be met with a "crushing response."

Riot police with shields and batons dispersed people as they walked through alleys and attempted to assemble at Engelhab Square, in front of the campus, around 5 p.m., witnesses reported. People could be heard screaming in the background as one witness was interviewed. The witness said members of the Baseej, a volunteer militia, were beating people with clubs.

"There are 300 of us in a small alley and we are under attack by dozens of security forces," the witness reported. Pepper spray was used, and police officers in plainclothes led people off the streets into white unmarked vans, the witness said.

Today's protests don't seem to have been called by Mousavi but rather have been organized locally to coincide with the anniversary of a brutally surpressed student rebellion ten years ago.

With cell-phone networks shut down, witnesses shared accounts via email and websites such as Twitter and Facebook. One witness said police fired tear gas into buses. Another said she had seen paramilitary basij fighters tossing protesters from pedestrian bridges onto the road below. There were several accounts of beatings.

This morning, witnesses described one of the biggest deployments of security forces since the start of the demonstrations after Iran’s disputed June 12 election. One protester said there were ‘ten times’ as many basiji on the streets as this person had ever seen. ‘The tension was so high,’ said another, ‘you could cut it with a knife.’

From an Iranian Twitterer (Tweeter?)

Getting 2 many reports 2 keep up w/. Clashes all ovr Tehran, protests all ovr Iran. Again Mullahs join protest in Mashad

Meanwhile, the US is too busy trying to reinstall a wannabe strongman in Honduras to meddle or say anything about people fighting and dying for their rights.

Posted by: DrewM at 06:13 AM | Comments (2)
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The headline:

The "good news."

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The number of Americans filing initial unemployment claims fell sharply last week, while those filing ongoing claims rose to another all-time high, according to government data released Thursday.

There were 565,000 initial jobless claims filed in the week ended July 4, down 52,000 from a revised 617,000 the previous week, the Labor Department said.

It was the lowest number since January and was below the consensus estimate of 603,000 from economists surveyed by Briefing.com.

Analysts said last week's drop was distorted by a change in the pattern of seasonal layoffs in the automotive industry.

Here's the actual jobs picture:

Meanwhile, the number of people requesting continued jobless benefits rose to a record high, indicating that the labor market remains weak.

The government said continuing claims rose to 6,883,000 in the week ended June 27, the most recent data available.

That's an increase of 159,000 from the previous week's revised total of 6,724,000 and was the highest reading since the Labor Department began keeping records in 1967.

This isn't bias. It's malpractice.

Posted by: Slublog at 06:09 AM | Comments (1)
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