From Hot Air -- just kidding, Truman, I know it's in the sidebar; I just wanted to see the vein in your forehead -- the Obama Job Slaughter continues.

President Obama's United States Department of Agriculture has delayed shale gas drilling in Ohio for up to six months by cancelling a mineral lease auction for Wayne National Forest (WNF). The move was taken in deference to environmentalists, on the pretext of studying the effects of hydraulic fracturing.

“Conditions have changed since the 2006 Forest Plan was developed," announced WNF Supervisor Anne Carey on Tuesday. "The technology used in the Utica & Marcellus Shale formations need to be studied to see if potential effects to the surface are significantly different than those identified in the Forest Plan." The study will take up to six months to complete.

Apart from the obvious -- another 200,000 jobs delayed, and probably delayed for longer than six months; plus the general signal to business that Obama will attempt to make every endeavor your attempt extremely costly, so don't even bother -- this reinforces my belief that liberals celebrate the abstract over the concrete.

When you think about jobs liberals like, versus jobs conservatives like, you will generally find the that the more abstract a job is -- and here I mean "abstract" to mean "removed from the physical, the concrete, and the dirty by one or more steps" -- you'll find that they tend to be soft jobs. Media advisor, writer, designer. One of the more concrete jobs they favor is the law, but that itself is far removed from actual production of goods -- law does intersect with business, but far away from the actual production of goods. Where law intersects with business it does so in a paper way -- businesses are referred to in court filings, but of course the businesses are abstracted, as the law just deals with them as legal actors. Not as real companies, with real workers and real management, producing real goods.

This is why liberals with something of a pragmatic streak go into politics. On one hand, politics does intersect with people's lives in tangible ways. On the other hand, what makes politics attractive to this psychological type is that it's a no-dirty-hands occupation. Everything is position papers and talking and media-type stuff.

As I've noted before, this all goes back to the Victorian fiction that a carpenter, who actually did a great deal of mental work, including creativity, in his job, was just a "hand worker" and therefore lower class while a drudge at the Bank of England, who merely did third-grade-level summing of accounts all day, was a "mind worker" and therefore middle class.

The liberal mindset is bewitched by this fiction -- this daft, stupid fiction -- and declares that everyone working in liberal-type fields must be of a different intellectual class than those lowly businessmen who merely manufacture goods that people wish to voluntarily buy.

And ergo, only they can make the proper decisions about whether these mentally-lower-class individuals can ply their dirty working class trades.

You don't have to be a liberal to recognize that any time you take oil or coal or shale out of the ground, it's going to have an adverse impact on the immediate environment. Not so much as the hysterical environmental lobby claims, of course, but some.

But liberals seem to live in a fantasy world in which, ideally, all of us would just be passing around pieces of paper to each other. That is, they seem to believe the world, if they got it all set up properly, would consist of only work in the soft, abstract, "clean" fields liberals prefer (clean, because they tend to be pushing paper back and forth, rather than digging and building and sweating), so, that being the ideal State of Man, there's really no problem trying to hurry that along and penalize those dirty hand-workers who want pump some oil out of the ground.

But because they are, mentally, so removed from the concrete, they are free to believe in magic. The magic in this immediate case is the magic of electricity. They seem to want a steady power supply for their MacBooks and their editing software and their Media Centers with Bose speakers, but they don't really want to think much about how that vital spark actually makes it into their homes' copper wires.

In their own minds, they've neatly cleaved the real, vital, vigorous, and dirty from their own existences, which they have endeavored to make as abstract, sedentary, and "clean" (except for those trees) as possible, so they just don't see the connection between energy production and their own energy consumption.

The electricity is magic. It will always be there, as it has always been there before, right? So, no problem killing every industry that actually tries to make some electricity.

Solar power is the perfect Magic Beans Solution for this problem with reality. It's technically not magic; it actually exists. Sort of. So it's the perfect Pretend Energy Source. Just pretend that it's an efficient source of energy, just pretend it doesn't cost far more than any other source, just pretend there's not a whole lot of environmental impact caused by the production of all those exotic chemicals required to produce the cells -- just pretend enough, and you've got your Magic Power Source, where your iPad works but not a puff of smoke rises into the air.

There's a real childish mentality here. Kids like burgers, but they will get very emotionally upset when they see a cow being butchered. I can't blame them. They're kids. And I think even I'd be shaken to see a cow pulled up by its hind legs and electrocuted, or killed by a hammer-blow to skull.

And yet, I know that my burger relies on just this process. There are no magic burgers. If I want to eat a burger -- and I do -- I have to accept that there are going to be some cows killed and butchers.

The liberal mentality has a very powerful capacity to deny reality, to escape uncomfortable facts like this through a combination of training -- they teach themselves to pretend -- and a lack of a real, hard intersection with the real, hard world.

It causes all sorts of problems. Currently we have one of them in the White House.

Posted by: Ace at 08:48 AM | Comments (229)
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This just in: Obama is still a SCOAMF.

Posted by: DrewM at 07:04 AM | Comments (426)
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FRIDAY! Woooooo!

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:47 AM | Comments (320)
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33 Years Ago Tonight: It Happened

And what was it? Well a 3 word hint: Worst. TV Special. Ever.

That's right - on November 17th, 1978 the Star Wars Holiday Special aired on CBS for the first (and last) time. A night that will live in infamy:

The Star Wars Holiday Special is legendary amongst Star Wars fans. Created to bridge the gap between the first Star Wars movie in 1977 and its 1980 sequel The Empire Strikes Back, The Holiday Special only aired once in America and immediately rocketed to infamy by being so notoriously bad that it swings back over to good, ninja-kicks it in the groin, leaves good in a crumpled heap, and moves all the way back into shockingly horrible. ...The awkwardly-inserted musical numbers and endlessly boring live-action scenes combine to create a perfect storm of awfulness.

And how awful was it? So awful that George Lucas vowed to never let it be seen again and swore that he would track down every single copy and destroy it. So terrible that all the Holiday Special-related toys and merchandising plans (and Lucas sure loved himself those merchandising rights) were permanently canceled lest they remind anyone that it had happened.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:58 PM | Comments (538)
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Joe Walsh (Ind Ill.), John Mica (Fla.), Thaddeus McCotter (Mich.), Dan Burton (Ind.), Walter Jones (N.C.), Paul Broun (Ga.), Mike Pompeo (Kansas), Cynthia Lummis (Wyo.), Connie Mack (Fla.), Jeff Duncan (S.C.), Todd Akin (Mo.), Tim Huelskamp (Kansas), Jeff Landry (La.), Tim Murphy (Penn.), Steven Palazzo (Miss.), Dennis Ross (Fla.), John Carter (Texas), Ted Poe (Texas), Vicky Hartzler (Mo.), Kenny Marchant (Texas), Lynn Jenkins (Kansas), Quico Canseco (Texas), Charles Boustany (La.), Alan Nunnelee (Miss.), Diane Black (Tenn.), Ann Marie Buerkle (N.Y.), Allen West (Fla.), Blake Farenthold (Texas), John Culberson (Texas), Frank LoBiondo (N.J.), Steven Pearce (N.M.), Lynn Westmoreland (Ga.), Trent Franks (Ariz.), Louis Gohmert (Texas), Denny Rehberg (Mont.), Bob Latta (Ohio), Rodney Alexander (La.), Gus Bilirakis (Fla.), Blaine Luetkemeyer (Mo.) and Tom Graves (Ga.).

They're the 40 Republicans who called on Obama to demand Eric Holder's resignation over "Fast and Furious" today.

“In intentionally letting over 2,000 firearms ‘walk’ across the border into Mexico,” it continues, “the [ATF] — under the leadership of Attorney General Holder — carried out an operation that left a U.S. Border Patrol agent dead, broke federal law and attempted to build a case for gun control. Operation Fast and Furious has proved to be one of the most serious errors in judgment carried out in recent history by a federal agency.”

From a "realistic" POV, there's no chance Obama even gives this a glance. Too early in the process, and there's an ongoing "Nixon-like" fight underway (SWIDT?) over documents subpoenaed by Issa's committee.

From a "politics" POV, it's perfect. Keep the pressure on Holder and the DoJ, keep F&F in the spotlight, hammer them relentlessly on this. Don't. Let. Up.

UPDATE: Mexican Attorney General Marisela Morales (oh my) seeks extradition of six suspects "accused of participating in a plot to arm Mexican drug cartels with guns from the United States." via adamsbaldwin

UPDATE2: 46 now. [via WilliamAmos]. Not sure who the missing 4 are.

I shall call them, "The Forty, Forty-Six ok The Gang of At Least Forty-Six And Counting"

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 04:33 PM | Comments (259)
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Joe Biden sings the praises of Jon Corzine, who would later be investigated by the FBI for "borrowing" investor money to place huge bets on European sovereign debt (subsequently lost, in a major bankruptcy).

Have these imbeciles and thieves made a single right step? more...

Posted by: Ace at 03:31 PM | Comments (183)
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Tommy Christopher just emailed me to say this only proves the OWSers are interested in education.

They were caught in the middle of madness.

Some grade school students were forced to walk a gauntlet of screaming “Occupy Wall Street” protesters just to get to school on Thursday.

It was a wild day in lower Manhattan for most everyone involved, including elementary school children who had to brave the mayhem just to get to class on the other side of Wall Street.

In the middle of thousands of protestors yelling and chanting — some kicking and screaming – CBS 2’s Emily Smith found little school kids trying to get to class. Nervous parents led them through the barriers on Wall Street. The NYPD helped funnel the children, anything to ease their fears while some protestors chanted “follow those kids!”

“These guys are terrorists, yelling at little kids,” one father said.

Infiltrators, I assume.

If I were mayor, right about now I would be passing out real ammunition to selected people.*

* This does not mean I endorse violence, it means that I'm against it. Citation: Tommy Christopher.

Thanks to @iowahawkblog.

Posted by: Ace at 02:46 PM | Comments (182)
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Obama "privileged"?

That's racist. Everyone knows one of the deepest, darkest stereotypes about blacks is that they grow up rich and privileged.

"That's the dog whistle that Rick Perry is going for. The president was not raised privileged. He wasn't handed anything. He absolutely had to work for everything that he got. But for Rick Perry to say that President Obama was privileged and didn't have to work for what he got, the code is, he got into Columbia University, he got into Harvard University not through merit, not because he's smart, but because he took the place of someone else through affirmative action, that someone else being someone white," Mr. Capehart said on Martin Bashir's MSNBC show.

Let's just stipulate for the record that anything we say about the Pampered Princeling is racist, and move on.

Guys?

By your definition of "racism," we're going to have a lot of "racism" this campaign. Because your definition is "anything that isn't super-positive esteem-boosting about a black person!," and, I hate to break this to you, but we've got some negative things to say.

Brace yourselves and pace yourselves, is I guess what I'm trying to say. I don't want you to have aneurysms.*

* Well. Actually, I stand in solidarity with any aneurysms that should befall you, and Tommy Christopher tells me that's okay to say.

Thanks to RD.

Posted by: Ace at 02:23 PM | Comments (173)
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Why is it cunning? Because let's face it, we wanted to hear that, and now he's in a spat with the entirety of the pinched-face liberal media.

"He grew up in a privileged way," Perry said while explaining his ad attack that decries President Obama's description of America as being "a little bit lazy over the last couple of decades."

Obama made the comments Saturday in Hawaii during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit as he explained the nation can do a better job of selling goods outside of the U.S.

"You know, he never had to really work for anything and he never had to go through what Americans are going-you know, there's 14-plus million Americans sitting out there, some of them watching this program tonight that don't have a job," Perry said in an interview on Fox News.

"The president has never felt that angst that they have in their heart."

Smart. Look, in terms of primary politics, you really can't go wrong busting on Obama in a personal way and starting a headline-grabbing feud with the media.

Which isn't to say he doesn't believe it.

Just that sometimes what you believe turns out to be advantageous to say.

I'm not sure what kind of a hardship tale Obama had as a youngster. It probably is wrong to say, as a youngster, he was "privileged."

But for the entirety of his juvenile and adult life, he's been pampered, and endlessly promoted without actual achievement based on his promise alone.

Yes, that is privilege. It just kicked at around age 15.

Posted by: Ace at 01:50 PM | Comments (188)
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Hardest hit: Poor little Tommy Christopher, the hapless hack, who spins his little heart out claiming that of course its natural and right to hold a moment of solidarity for a would-be presidential assassin.

It’s an odd moment, and one which reinforces liberal stereotypes about compassion and inclusion (what conservatives call “bleeding heart”),

Wrong, asshole. It reinforces stereotypes about the left's "bi-curious" attitude towards political violence.

They romanticize it. They excuse it and support it... when the right people are murdered.

And even when one of their own is shot at. The important thing is to preserve the left's general monopoly on the allegedly-legitimate use of violence in political agitation.

... but conservatives are asking questions along the lines of Ace Of Spades‘ rhetorical overreach: “If anyone in the Tea Party expressed solidarity with Jared Loughner (and if a group of Tea Partiers than bowed their head in respectful silence for him), do you imagine the media would have been interested?”

If there was a way to go back and make it so that Loughner (the shooter in the tragic Tucson massacre earlier this year) only managed to ding a pane of bulletproof glass, I bet we would all take that deal. ItÂ’s a hideous comparison, variations of which are all over the conservative Twittersphere.

ItÂ’s silly, too, because their point, that this exact moment would have played very poorly against the Tea Party, is completely valid. Why undercut it by comparing Ortega to monsters like Loughner and Timothy McVeigh?

So Tommy Christopher's heart pumps piss for poor little Ortega.

The difference between mentally deranged Jared Loughner and mentally deranged Ortega seems to be only that Ortega chose a harder target -- both had the will to kill. It's just that Ortega happened to want to kill the most protected man on the face of the earth. Whereas Loughner's victim was a barely-protected-at-all Congresswoman who, like most Representatives, mixed freely in crowds with only a body man or two as (weak) security.

But Tommy Christopher knows which side his sad bread is buttered on, and that's on the side of defending the left at all costs, and always finding some fault in the right.

I thought political violence was bad -- and encouraging it, or sympathizing with it, is likewise bad.

Not so, says Tommy Christopher. The left is permitted to do it. Only the right shall be attacked for it...

When it happens -- and it almost never does. That's the funny thing, Tommy Christopher dreams up fantasies and criticizes the right for things that they actually didn't do ("targeting symbols!"), while giving a complete pass to the left for actually standing in solidarity with a would-be assassin.

Sometimes people get on my ass for not defending this or that conservative enough.

Sometimes I just find things unspinnable. And I think you'd look pathetic and dishonest and cheaply whorish to even try.

So this is the reason I don't do that -- I don't want to end up like the pathetic, execrable Tommy Christopher.

I can't go down that road. It's not about integrity, per se. I don't have a huge amount of integrity. Just the ordinary amount.

It's about shame. I do not have the shamelessness of a hack like Christopher, or Dave Weigel, the willingness to play the retarded lie-monkey for a left-wing Community-Based Reality that wants to be lied to.

Posted by: Ace at 11:31 AM | Comments (422)
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