G'mornin' g'mornin. Hallo hallo.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 05:17 AM | Comments (236)
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Whoa! That report from the Medicare actuaries released last week that concluded ObamaCare would raise premiums? The Obama Administration had it a week before the final vote...and sat on it:

The economic report released last week by Health and Human Services, which indicated that President Barack Obama's health care "reform" law would actually increase the cost of health care and impose higher costs on consumers, had been submitted to the office of HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius more than a week before the Congressional votes on the bill, according to career HHS sources, who added that Sebelius's staff refused to review the document before the vote was taken.

"The reason we were given was that they did not want to influence the vote," says an HHS source. "Which is actually the point of having a review like this, you would think."

Apparently, copies of the report were sent to Sebelius and to the White House.

So in addition to midnight votes and bribes to reluctant Congressmen, the Obama folks sat on government reports, reports that the taxpayers paid for, which would have shined a light on the President's healthcare reform lies. And that's what they were. He can't plead ignorance. His own actuaries were telling him it would raise premiums while he was going on TV and saying the opposite.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 08:22 PM | Comments (296)
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Welcome to the Monday.

Taco the Baby Tortoise Who Comes When Called
Well kind of. But I guess that's doing pretty well for a creature with at best a pea-sized brain. But he's still pretty cute. So yeah I guess I like turtles too.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:51 PM | Comments (724)
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The law requires an otherwise-justifiable stop/detention before the provision about checking papers on a "reasonable suspicion" of illegal status kicks in.

The law requires police to check with federal authorities on a person's immigration status, if officers have stopped that person for some legitimate reason and come to suspect that he or she might be in the U.S. illegally. The heart of the law is this provision: "For any lawful contact made by a law enforcement official or a law enforcement agencyÂ…where reasonable suspicion exists that the person is an alien who is unlawfully present in the United States, a reasonable attempt shall be made, when practicable, to determine the immigration status of the personÂ…"
Critics have focused on the term "reasonable suspicion" to suggest that the law would give police the power to pick anyone out of a crowd for any reason and force them to prove they are in the U.S. legally. Some foresee mass civil rights violations targeting Hispanics.
What fewer people have noticed is the phrase "lawful contact," which defines what must be going on before police even think about checking immigration status. "That means the officer is already engaged in some detention of an individual because he's violated some other law," says Kris Kobach, a University of Missouri Kansas City Law School professor who helped draft the measure. "The most likely context where this law would come into play is a traffic stop."
As far as "reasonable suspicion" is concerned, there is a great deal of case law dealing with the idea, but in immigration matters, it means a combination of circumstances that, taken together, cause the officer to suspect lawbreaking. It's not race -- Arizona's new law specifically says race and ethnicity cannot be the sole factors in determining a reasonable suspicion.

Kris Kobach, a law school professor and former advisor to Attorney General John Ashcroft on immigration matters, says, "The bill was drafted in expectation that the open-borders crowd would almost certainly bring a lawsuit. It's drafted to withstand judicial scrutiny."

Posted by: Ace at 05:04 PM | Comments (171)
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If I've been thinking about it all day, technically it's not "pre-mature"*

The drug, taken one to three hours before sex, is shown to make men last three times as long.

That's up to three whole minutes fellas. Can I get a witness?

The story says just right out, in your face, that as many as one in three men suffer from "arriving at the station before the train's ready to leave". I don't have any numbers to back this up, but I'll bet the other two are likely IT types or accountants.

Not yet approved for use in the US. I guess it will be at some point, and when it is, well, I predict dire consequences and general mayhem.

*I don't know who to credit for that joke, but I like it.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 04:52 PM | Comments (146)
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FreedomWorks cuts a video of their hate-mail and hate-phone-messages, plus lots of pictures from protests when dissent was legal.

Must watch.

I want to know when the motherfucking media is going to acknowledge the 8 years under Bush.

Posted by: Ace at 04:24 PM | Comments (73)
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Woa. I don't think a couple of beers with the preznit is going to smooth this one over.

...I would also learn later, albeit obliquely, from the same Affirmative Action Officer, that Prof. Gates had, indeed, presented quite a decent offer to my college, entailing the institutionalization of an annual scholarship program for two African-American students from my college to Harvard, only if I could, in not so many words, I presume, be swiftly, effectively and permanently disengaged from my job. The Harvard heavyweight would also, according to the former Affirmative Action Officer, promise the college an undisclosed handsome monetary largesse....

H/T Booker Rising

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 02:48 PM | Comments (155)
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As Gabe posted below, Obama is urging all Americans to turn out for the polls in November to create a historic level of participation among all colors, races and creeds.

Well, not so much, of course. He wants "young people, blacks, Lations and women" to show up at the polls. White men needn't bother.

Is this racist? If the liberals' typical definition of racism were applied consistently, of course it would be racist. But of course it's not applied consistently. Racism is something white people, and Republican white people in particular, do. Liberals and especially black liberals are incapable of being racist.

If Obama's exhortations for only some of the electorate to participate in democracy sounds racist to you, why, that's probably a defect in you character -- and, in fact, probably evidence of a deep-seated, subconscious streak of racism in you yourself.

But that's just the standard-issue double-standard we all know and loathe. There's another disturbing element to it -- the automatic presumption among the privileged class that wherever blacks and whites diverge in political thought, it must be whites who are in the wrong, and not only in the wrong, but almost certainly motivated by racism.

But if it's not racist or wrong for blacks to generally vote according to the perceived "black economic interest," why is it wrong for whites to do the same? This is rarely explained, and when it is explained, it usually amounts to little more than rationalized ipse dixit restatement of the double-standard. It's wrong for whites to vote according to their perceived economic interest because they benefit from "white skin privilege" and they are the "dominant social group," upon whom a greater burden of acting for the greater good is placed, etc. Asked to defend the huge assumption of the rightness of a racial double-standard, academics tend to simply dream up closely-related assumptions and assert them (and claim those assumptions, in turn, "prove" the assumption they were asked to prove in the first place).

Let's not be childish about this. We are instructed every day that blacks are poorer than whites. There is no lack of evidence for this fact. It is therefore no surprise at all that blacks should generally favor wealth redistributionist policies more than whites, as blacks, being poorer, will tend to pay less into such a regime and receive more benefits out of it. Nor is it any surprise that whites should generally oppose such policies, as whites, being richer, will tend to pay more into such a regime and receive less.

There is hardly any cause here for liberals interested in honest, civil debate -- which they all to a man assure me is all they care about lately -- to scream "racism" over differences in white and black opinions over Obama's wealth-redistributionist agenda. You can call opponents of it greedy (but then, how are poorer blacks who are to be favored under that system any less greedy than whites, given that both are acting according to the precise same factor -- perceived personal net-economic self-interest?), but you can hardly brand someone "racist" for wanting to have an extra two or three thousand dollars.

Everyone wants an extra two or three thousand dollars. Politics, famously played within the 40-yard-lines in America, is 90% about who shall have an extra two or three thousand dollars and from whom shall be forcibly extracted that "free" two or three thousand dollars.

It is only an intellectual thug or "hater" who could assert that someone's quite-rational and utterly-understandable desire to keep two or three thousand dollars that he earned in the first place is evidence of racism and a vicious animosity towards blacks, rather than just wanting a fucking Sea-Doo this year.

This is as clear-cut an example as possible of a political position having nothing at all to do with race, as a formal matter, nevertheless causing a sharp divide between the races.

Another example -- cutting government payrolls. If my experiences at the DMV are any guide, there are a lot more blacks, as a fraction of the black population, working government jobs than whites (again, as a fraction of the white population).

If everyone in America, say, cares enough about ten other people enough that they take those other people's economic situations into account at all when making political decisions, we would find (and I am just making these numbers up out of whole cloth for illustrative purposes) that the average white guy might have a 1.5 people in his group of ten that he cares about with a public job, whereas the average black guy might have 2.3 people in his group of ten.

And that causes big disagreements between the races on cutting government payrolls. For the white guy, it's more upside -- he gets to lower the costs of government for himself, and only 1.5 of the people he knows could be adversely affected by the cuts. For the black guy, on the other hand, while he too would get the benefit of a cheaper and leaner government, he now has to worry about 2.3 people in his circle of close friends who will be harmed by that choice. Black enthusiasm for slashing government payrolls will thus be dampened.

Again, at no point in this topic was race explicitly a factor. This isn't about civil rights or interracial marriage or affirmative action. It's about as non-racial a subject as you could think of, and yet the races will have, due to different circumstances, noticeably differing levels of support for the policy.

And, again, simple economic self-interest perfectly explains both the voting behaviors of whites and blacks on this issue. But even though whites' voting behavior is easily and completely explained by morally-neutral economic concerns -- "Hey, if I cut government's costs, I'll have more money for myself and my family" -- the left and the media (BIRM) insists on supplementing that explanation with the cry of racism.

And when it comes to explicitly racial policies like affirmative action quotas and "plus factors"? Forget about it. Obviously a white man who opposes affirmative action quotas is a racist. It's simply not possible that he could see affirmative action quotas as by design making it harder for him to get key things in the one life God has granted him -- a good job, a plum promotion, a slot in an elite college -- and therefore opposes it simply because it disadvantages him and, indeed, harms him.

No, the only possible explanation as to why he should not want his employers, colleges, and own government discriminating against him is his hatred of the black race.

Once upon a time, charges of "racism" would chiefly be expected to fly in issues which explicitly reference race, such as affirmative action, or, lately, illegal immigration. The left's major innovation in the past 15 years is to apply that exact same paradigm to issues having nothing superficially to do with race such as tax policy, heath care policy, and, Dear Lord, even environmental policy.

Now, regarding Obama: In my own mind, what he did here is not racist. There is a very simple reason he wants blacks, Latinos, and women to turn out to the polls in great numbers: those cohorts vote for him. The man doesn't have to be a racist to understand that the more minorities and women show up for the polls, the better the odds the Democrats avoid an electoral Chernobyl.

On the other hand -- imagine the reaction if a Republican specifically urged white men to turn out at the polls like they've never done before.

In both cases -- in Obama's and the hypothetical Republican's -- it would be a case of the men acting not out of any particular racial impulse but instead doing simple statistics and deciding that if a group votes more for you than your opponent, you want more of that group voting -- obviously! -- but in only one case, of course, would the charge of racism attach.

And Obama and the Obama-loving media will never explain why this should be the case, but friends of his like Louis "Skip" Gates -- last glimpsed in the vicinity of a white officer who was "acting stupidly" in the sage opinion of our president -- will offer you a bunch of jargonized just-because-I-said-so twaddle about why double-standards are not only acceptable, but morally obligatory.

Posted by: Ace at 02:04 PM | Comments (143)
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Oopsie!

Britain's airspace was closed under false pretences, with satellite images revealing there was no doomsday volcanic ash cloud over the entire country.

Skies fell quiet for six days, leaving as many as 500,000 Britons stranded overseas and costing airlines hundreds of millions of pounds.

Estimates put the number of Britons still stuck abroad at 35,000.

However, new evidence shows there was no all-encompassing cloud and, where dust was present, it was often so thin that it posed no risk.

The satellite images demonstrate that the skies were largely clear, which will not surprise the millions who enjoyed the fine, hot weather during the flight ban.

Jim McKenna, the Civil Aviation Authority's head of airworthiness, strategy and policy, admitted: 'It's obvious that at the start of this crisis there was a lack of definitive data.

...

The National Air Traffic Control Service decision to ban flights was based on Met Office computer models which painted a picture of a cloud of ash being blown south from the Eyjafjallajokull volcano.

These models should have been tested by the Met Office's main research plane, a BAE 146 jet, but it was in a hangar to be repainted and could not be sent up until last Tuesday - the last day of the ban.

Evidence has emerged that the maximum density of the ash was only about one 20th of the limit that scientists, the Government, and aircraft and engine manufacturers have now decided is safe.

But don't worry. That climate data from millions of years ago and the models about temperature in the future? Solid. No chance of that being wrong. Now hand over your economies and freedoms to those who understand these things.

Posted by: DrewM at 01:34 PM | Comments (110)
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(Okay, technically the voting is still open. But Collins, Snowe, and Nelson voted against cloture. It be done.)

Just watched it on CSPAN2.

Waddaya know? McConnell managed to hold his guys together to prevent the Democrats from proceeding on their flawed financial reform bill. Ben Nelson crossed over, making this a bipartisan effort (although I expect the legacy media will keep calling this a "Republican filibuster.")

Democrats can bring the bill back for another vote later in the week. Meanwhile, Republicans may propose one of their own.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 01:28 PM | Comments (25)
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