Well, Romney would probably dismiss that as irrelevant because he always stresses that he got more people on health care. That is the statistic he wants you to know.

But there's also the issue of how much health care costs.

Perry's Texas and Huntsman's Utah kept health care costs low, while they rose briskly under Romney.

Thanks to George.

Posted by: Ace at 12:27 PM | Comments (67)
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I don't know if I should say "Duh" or praise them for noting a trend.

Anyway, they do note it. And not in a scary, what-have-we-become way.

To those who say guns are masculine, Ellanson says, "It would depend on how you define femininity. I think a capable woman is the most feminine expression of power that there is."

So women shooters could be "girly girls"?

"Very much so," Ellanson replied.

Actually, re-reading it, it's pretty pro-gun. I imagine that's because Women's Choices Must Always Be Supported, Because, That's Why, and not because CBS is now big on the 2nd Amendment.

Posted by: Ace at 12:14 PM | Comments (77)
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A guy complained to a company about not getting an update on the delivery time of his new videogame controller. The CEO of the company* got dickish about it, and then started acting like... well, like a nerd without any social sense, who just had an intense need to Win An Internet Argument, forgetting that he sort of had a company's consumer relations to keep in mind, too.

* Correction: He wasn't the CEO of the actual company manufacturing the controller, but CEO of a company hired by the manufacturer to do PR and customer service. This seems to be a bad hire.

Then the guy forwarded to email chain to the nerds at Penny Arcade, who have a lot of sway in nerdworld, and who run an expo called PAX. The CEO didn't seem to believe he was now talking with the head of PAX, and kept insulting him in nerd-like ways.

Anyway, eventually the CEO realized he was F***in' With The Wrong Nerd and then went suddenly from Internet Tough-Guy to a "Hey Let's Be Friends" P***yboy, begging forgiveness.

But it was too late.

The whole chain, for the completists out there (overlap of "nerds" and "completists" approaches 100%) is at Penny Arcade.

Thansk to Dave @ Garfield Ridge.

Posted by: Ace at 11:22 AM | Comments (170)
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I didn't even say "heroes" because that upsets the liberals. And I don't even want this to be overly partisanized, because the left will of course double down.

So you hate the war. Got it. Check. But you have also long claimed you support the troops, and you've also claimed that you're terribly upset that our boys are being sent off to fight in an unnecessary and unwinnable war.

If that's the case, shouldn't they be honored for their sacrifice? If President Bush ill-served them, isn't that all the more reason to honor them for their duty and courage?

But no, there will be no fanfare. It's Vietnam II: The Chickens Come Home To Roost for the left.

“It really disturbs me that nearly after nine years of war in Iraq that this president wouldn’t welcome home our many heroes with a simple parade in their honor,” the 2012 Republican presidential candidate told nearly 100 members of the Westside Conservative Club.

“Maybe it’s because this war is unpopular with Democrats, I don’t know. But, Mr. President, our soldiers come first and it comes before party politics. We need to welcome our soldiers home – give them that parade, give them that pat on the back, tell them thank you for the freedom that we have in this country,” Perry told the suburban crowd during a stop on his central Iowa bus tour on Wednesday.

The problem is that military values -- hard and time-tested -- contradict liberal social welfare state values -- soft and new (ish).

It's not just the war. It's that the wrong people, subscribing to the wrong tradition, would be in the spotlight, and the left is quite determined that the only true heroes are politicians, reporters, actors, musicians, and college professors.

Posted by: Ace at 11:03 AM | Comments (106)
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Allegedly.

It has been alleged. There is such an allegation.

From that Traci Nobles sext-partner.

She says -- ahem, she alleges -- that Weiner brought up the possibility of 3-ways. Not the classic two girls one guy three-way, which is just a natural expression of the wonderment of sexuality in all its glory, but the ugly, twisted, morally-dark kind.

"I'm not really talking about other chicks... How about with another guy?" Weiner asked Nobles.

"Hmmmm, haven't done it before," Nobles said.

"It can be hot," Weiner replies.

"Are you turned on by other guys?" Nobles asked.

"Well it depends on the guy, but generally yes," Weiner divulges.

But...

"Anthony's not gay though," an insider told RadarOnline.com.

"He's just very open sexually."

"Very Open Sexually"

It's the "handicapable" of sexual self descriptors.

Or let me do a different one:

"Well it depends on the guy, but generally yes"

Not the answer your Dad was looking for.

Oh Anthony Weiner. You are a silly, silly goose.

Posted by: Ace at 10:34 AM | Comments (172)
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Dave Weigel.

Think about it. If Ron Paul was suffering and taking damage from the stories about his old newsletters, what sort of voters would abandon him? Who'd be offended by signed editorials about fleet-footed blacks and skeezy gay men? Well, everybody, hopefully, but you'd expect independents, Democrats and liberals, the people boosting Paul in Iowa and New Hampshire, to react the most negatively.

You know who wouldn't agree? Barack Obama, who described his party's white voters as "bitter" people "clinging to their guns and religion" who loathed people who were "different."

Slublog asks:

If his GOP numbers had gone up post-newsletter, imagine what the headlines would have been.

Hey, here's a possible alternate take, Mr. Weigel: Democrats and liberals are not nearly as anti-racist as they like to imagine themselves to be.

They are primarily anti-racist as a tactic in their primary drive of being anti-conservative, and anti-racism is only important as it contributes to the anti-conservative cause.

When a known, demonstrable, egregious, David-Duke-promoting racist is actually useful in the anti-conservative cause, how they flock to his flag.

Posted by: Ace at 10:16 AM | Comments (110)
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Well, that's how I read it.

The Republican Party has two top priorities this cycle: Reduce government spending and defeat ObamaCare. ObamaCare's chief political and constitutional weakness is the individual mandate. Other parts of it are actually popular or at least not unpopular (such as letting adult children stay on policies until age 26); our best path to undoing ObamaCare is focusing on the individual mandate.

And defending the mandate as "conservative," every inch of the way, and actually showing uncharacteristic passion while doing so, is would-be Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

I'm sorry. I have tried. I recognize the attractive parts of Romney. He's smart, he's put-together, he doesn't scare the moderates, he polls consistently well, he has a nice family that recommends him.

But Romney will not bend in his singleminded mission to make himself unelectable.

It's going to be hard enough to repeal ObamaCare without our own nominee flacking for it.

This is like a hardcore doctrinaire pacifist running for Congress in 2002 against the Authorization of the Use of Military Force against Al Qaeda. Even Ron Paul bowed to the political winds on that one and cast an ass-saving, career-saving vote in favor it.

I ask again of Romney supporters: What argument do you suggest we bring into 2012 on ObamaCare, when Romney keeps calling the individual mandate "fundamentally conservative"?

Oh right, we're supposed to make some dry, sterile proceduralist argument that the mandate is awesome in and of itself; it's just that the wrong tribunal imposed it.

Yay...?

I take back my previous assertions that at least Romney is smart.

He's not smart. Not where it counts. Not in the grit.

Posted by: Ace at 09:12 AM | Comments (362)
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But I'll post stuff.

Posted by: Ace at 08:42 AM | Comments (113)
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G'morning. To get you started:

Here's a primer on the Iowa caucus system. We're gonna be talking about it all next week; might as well brush up on the methods and madness of Iowa's archaic primary system.

BTW, I'm starting to hope for a Paul win in Iowa; it would almost certainly mean that the state would finally be stripped of its first-in-the-nation status. Yeah, I know. Somebody has to go first. I get that. Iowa doesn't seem like that great a great choice anymore. Let somebody else get pandered to every four years. It might do us good to send the bloated state political apparatus to the chopping block. You like to throw around the word "establishment?" That's an establishment, guys.

Several of the candidates did another pro-life forum yesterday. Gingrich said he'd write personhood legislation to exclude judicial review. Perry said he'd ignore an adverse Supreme Court decision on a personhood law. Santorum said if the court struck down personhood legislation, "you do what you do in every case when the court strikes it down: You fight." I'm not sure what that means. Bachmann didn't get to answer that question. Paul didn't go.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:52 AM | Comments (574)
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Time Off Around The World

The US is at the lower end but still better than Canada so we have that going for us. more...

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:00 PM | Comments (722)
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