The subhed of this story is "Nasty Tardis."

A doctor performed a search and recovered 54 bags of heroin, 31 empty bags used to package heroin, prescription pills and $51.22.

Fifty one dollars and twenty two cents?

The loose change too? Did she think it would be easier to access that way? Like the change belts that tollbooth operators use?

The woman is charged with three counts of possession with intent to distribute and one count of Almost Being Too Classy.

Posted by: Ace at 09:27 AM | Comments (157)
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The Libyans deny it, but the claim is that a Libyan fighter was ordered to bomb the rebels but instead turned and crashed his plane into a loyalist barracks, killing Qadaffy's son.

Posted by: Ace at 09:09 AM | Comments (58)
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Sorry for the fluff -- I'm putting stuff in the sidebar but I'm not feeling "real news."

But this is something.

The overrated (and likely to go into a ratings dive) Glee uses a lot of music licensed from musicians, of course. Ryan Murphy, the show's producer, is reading his own press clippings and now thinks he's some kind of Music Jesus and that anyone who refuses to license their songs for his show -- in which they'll be camped up -- is a Judas.

The argument seems to have started when Murphy demanded the group Kings of Leon let him turn one of their songs into a campified joke and they said no.

Well, Murphy didn't like that. Not one bit.

Murphy tells THR: "F--- you, Kings of Leon. TheyÂ’re self-centered assholes, and they missed the big picture. They missed that a 7-year-old kid can see someone close to their age singing a Kings of Leon song, which will maybe make them want to join a glee club or pick up a musical instrument."

On Wednesday, hours after the THR story hit the web, Followill Tweeted: "Dear Ryan Murphy, let it go. See a therapist, get a manicure, buy a new bra. Zip your lip and focus on educating 7yr olds how to say f---."

I think that last bit is about the show's appeal, superficially, as a silly sing-a-long show for young kids while it meanwhile is mostly about sex (and mostly gay stuff lately).

Slash of Guns N Roses also declined this super-big honor of having your songs being done by a scripted version of American Idol.

Well, they asked the Foo Fighters about one of their songs, and they refused. Former Nirvana drummer turned Foo Fighters leader Dave Grohl is now telling Ryan Murphy off.

"It's every band's right, you shouldn't have to do f--king Glee," he said.

"But then the guy who created Glee is offended that we're not, like, begging to be on his f--king show. F--k that guy for thinking everybody should want to do Glee."

"The Glee guy, what a f--king jerk," Grohl adds. "Slash was first. [Glee] wanted to do Guns N' Roses. Slash is like 'I f--king hate musicals. It's worse than Grease.'"

"Then [Murphy's] like, 'Well of course he'd say that, he's a washed up rock star. That's what they do. Then Kings of Leon say, 'No, we don't want to be on your show.'"

"And then he's like, well, they're snotty little a$$holes. It's like, Dude, maybe not everyone loves Glee. Me included."

He pricked Murphy's balloon a little more, when asked if he's ever watched the show:

"I watched 10 minutes. It's not my thing."

It's a very minor thing, but I like that Grohl is standing up to a silly hysterical bully.

I know the show is popular with some people (including readers and cobloggers), but I doubt any of its fans are as convinced of the show's crucial centrality to culture and education as its idiot producer is.

Teaching Seven Year Olds to Say the F-Word: Now, this is a good song, and Gwynneth Paltrow does a decent job singing it, but is this really a show for seven year olds?

If seven-year-olds are watching Glee to learn -- learn stuff about appreciating music and "being themselves" or whatever -- what else are they learning about?

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Posted by: Ace at 08:58 AM | Comments (193)
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Who killed the Afghan civilians? Not the Taliban -- US forces. Twelve men are on trial in Seattle for going rogue psycho and "staging" fake enemy attacks in order to justify attacking civilians.

That is older news -- they're already being prosecuted -- but now Der Spiegel has published the photos.

Some of the activities of the self-styled "kill team" are already public, with 12 men currently on trial in Seattle for their role in the killing of three civilians.

Five of the soldiers are on trial for pre-meditated murder, after they staged killings to make it look like they were defending themselves from Taliban attacks.

Other charges include the mutilation of corpses, the possession of images of human casualties and drug abuse.

All of the soldiers have denied the charges. They face the death penalty or life in prison if convicted.

The case has already created shock around the world, particularly with the revelations that the men cut "trophies" from the bodies of the people they killed.

An investigation by Der Spiegel has unearthed approximately 4,000 photos and videos taken by the men.

The magazine, which is planning to publish only three images, said that in addition to the crimes the men were on trial for there are "also entire collections of pictures of other victims that some of the defendants were keeping".

The US military has strived to keep the pictures out of the public domain fearing it could inflame feelings at a time when anti-Americanism in Afghanistan is already running high.

The frustrating thing is that the Taliban-lovin' Pashtun, confronted with shoe-on-the-other-foot demonstrations of psychopathic murder, will never put 2 and 2 together and realize "Wait a minute! This is what we're doing! This is wrong!"

Obama Ghraib? Drudge's new headline makes a point I didn't consider -- this is Obama's Abu Ghraib.

I hate politicizing stuff like this, but I'll do it defensively: The claim was made that Abu Ghraib was chargeable to Rumsfield, Cheney, and Bush, that it went "straight to the top," that it was their cowboy mismanagement that encouraged it or caused it.

Well. What about this "kill team" then? We seem to have a very, very, very distracted president. Maybe if he spent more time watching Afghanistan than practicing his drive he could have averted this.

It took me a fair amount of searching to discover when these crimes took place -- under Bush or under Obama? Since most media reports don't provide this basic information, I began to suspect that it occurred under Obama.

Suspicion confirmed.

When and where did these crimes take place?
They are alleged to have happened earlier this year [the article was written in September of 2010], while the 5th Stryker Brigade was stationed at Forward Operating Base Ramrod, west of Kandahar. The region is one of the most dangerous in Afghanistan.

How did they come to light?
The investigation was launched after a soldier from the 5th Stryker Brigade informed his superiors that some of the accused were smoking marijuana. The informant was allegedly attacked and threatened with death as a result. Staff Sgt Gibbs reportedly showed the fingers collected from Afghan corpses to the whistle-blower to stop him talking.

My point is not that this is Obama's fault but rather that it as much Obama's fault as Abu Ghraib was Bush's -- that is, not really either man's fault.

But if the leftist media is going to claim outrages are always chargeable to top leadership, then they have to explain why that rule applies to Bush but not to Obama.

Although, in fairness -- Obama's lazy and spends most of his time watching basketball games and playing golf. So he probably really didn't have anything to do with it, as it has barely anything to do with any major event that occurs in the country or the world.

Posted by: Ace at 07:29 AM | Comments (211)
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Here's a taste:

Debt is now the father of us all. In some sense, every cruise missile fired, every Social Security check cashed, ever NPR show aired is done so in part with borrowed money. In response, the president saw the impending doom of insolvency, appointed a bipartisan commission to draft a solution, and then ignored his own appointees’ recommendations. So far the excuse is largely that George Bush ran up debt as well, although last month Obama’s red-ink exceeded the entire 2007 budget deficit under Bush — 30 days of Obama trumping 365 of Bush.

Do read the whole piece.

It's clear to me that we as a people have become sunk in a kind of magical thinking: that because we have lived in the most prosperous and wealthy society in the history of the world for so long, that we deserve to do so, and will continue to do so...forever. There doesn't seem to be any apprehension on right or left that our debt is tied to real actual wealth, and that every dollar of debt we accrue must be paid off at some point -- by our children, and our children's children.

We are in a very real sense selling our own children into indentured servitude so we can continue to live beyond our means.

This makes me incredibly angry. It offends me on a very deep moral level. If we had simply arrived on the scene with the situation as it is, we'd be baying for blood and demanding fundamental changes. But since we have marinated in this dream-world for our entire lives, we simply take it as our due. There is the incoherent but widely-spread belief that...well, things will just work out, somehow, without anyone having to make any difficult decisions.

Our debt represents a real loss of wealth. The future output of industry and the labor of millions is being traded -- without their consent! -- for the immediate gratification of the wealthiest people in the history of the world. We are telling our kids (and their unborn children) that they will have to do without so we won't have to. They will have to work like donkeys and forgo many pleasures because Mom and Dad (and Grandpa and Grandma) can't bear to cut back on their spending. Worse still: many of us didn't bother to have children of our own, and so are larding debt on other people's children.

As I said -- if we had just been dropped into this system rather than growing up in it, we'd be calling it child abuse, and would demand that this atrocious debt be borne by the people who incurred it: us.
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Posted by: Monty at 05:17 AM | Comments (196)
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WaPo's factchecker looks at the Democrats' claims about the President's signature law and finds, unsurprisingly, that they are making the same lies that have been debunked over and over again.

McConnell framed his speech in negative terms, citing data to back up his language. Both Democrats and Republicans can pick and choose numbers and studies to make their case, but we found that generally McConnell did not exaggerate or use bogus figures. In fact, he correctly described a Congressional Budget Office analysis suggesting a potential reduction in employment of 800,000 jobs (technically, one-half of 1 percent of household employment in 2021) that other Republicans have misrepresented.

By contrast, House Democrats appear to show little hesitation about repeating claims that previously have found to be false or exaggerated.

That's because they care nothing for the truth and know that their brain-dead followers won't either. Click over for the details, but the three claims that got WaPo's factchecker worked up are that same old fibs that ObamaCare creates jobs, reduces the deficit, and has caused small businesses to provide more health insurance.

Time and again these claims have been shown to be false. Democrats keep repeating them because they wish they were true. And here's the thing: unless the Democrats can find a way to make them true the elections in 2012 are going to be an even bigger shellacking than the mid-terms in 2010.

That's why the Obama Administration is doing everything it legally can -- and some things that likely aren't legal -- to mitigate the effects of ObamaCare.

Obama administration officials say they were expecting praise from critics of the new health care law when they offered to exempt selected employers and labor unions from a requirement to provide at least $750,000 in coverage to each person in their health insurance plans this year.

Instead, Republicans have seized on the waivers as just more evidence that the law is fundamentally flawed because, they say, it requires so many exceptions. To date, for example, the administration has relaxed the $750,000 standard for more than 1,000 health plans covering 2.6 million people.

...

Waivers are usually seen as a way to deal with exceptional circumstances in which the enforcement of a law or policy might cause hardship. But with the new health care law, exceptions like these have become increasingly common. They provide wiggle room in a law originally thought to be strict and demanding.

There are three types of waivers being discussed right now. The most common are the minimum coverage waivers that have been handed out to unions, major corporations, colleges, and local and state governments. Those can be applied for by insurance providers and they're awarded to insurance providers. HHS has handed out about 1,040 of them.

The second type of waiver is the medical loss ratio waiver, like the one just awarded to the state of Maine. Those can be applied for by states that believe the new MLR rules will disrupt the insurance market in their state. It is then awarded to the state, though its effect is to waive the MLR rules' application to insurers in that state. Several more MLR waiver applications are pending with HHS.

The third type of waiver being discussed is a Medicaid mandate waiver. Several states believe that the new Medicaid coverage mandates will bankrupt them and they are accordingly seeking a reprieve. Secretary Sebelius says she does not have the authority to grant this type of waiver.

In any of these cases, there have been no waivers granted to inviduals (contra Ed Morrissey), although many individuals will certainly benefit from their insurers not having to comply with ObamaCare.

ObamaCare is so burdensome, so bad for the insurance markets generally, that not even the Administration which shares its name is standing up for it. Like the Democrats in Congress, though, the Obama Administration is hoping that the law will magically work as advertised in 2014.

Administration officials said the waivers showed a pragmatic, flexible approach to carrying out the law. Without the waivers, said Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, many employers would have increased premiums, and some would have dropped coverage altogether.

In other words, ObamaCare does the opposite of what the President said it did. It will raise premiums and, unless the Democrats get their individual coverage mandate, cause burdened businesses to drop coverage. The forthcoming economic catastrophe when businesses no longer have the option to structure their insurance coverage according to their needs, but rather according to the demands of HHS, is obvious.

Which is why even the President is now tepidly supporting an opt-out for states that want to come up with their own healthcare solutions. On the anniversary of ObamaCare, the stark reality is that nobody, not even the law's namesake, believes it will live up to the Democrats' lies.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 03:46 AM | Comments (44)
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Who would want to ignite things just one at a time?

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:55 AM | Comments (72)
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They mostly come out at night. Mostly.

Playboy AofSHQ After Dark

I think I've covered this before but Playboy After Dark was a TV show hosted by Hugh Hefner that debuted in January 1969 and ran for just 26 episodes. It was designed to give the feeling that you were present at a private happening cocktail party at Hef's pad. Despite its short run it managed to include some iconic bands of the time and now it's like a time capsule of period groovaliciousness.

Here's some classic videos from PAD with Iron Butterfly and Ike and Tine Turner.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:38 PM | Comments (760)
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Well it is about that time again. Since last week the art thread has been moved to Sunday at the suggestion of a moron (I was too drunk to remember who) claiming it would serve better as a compliment to Monty's Book Thread (and inadvertently Ace's Film Review). Part 1 of my 10 part “Art Every Moron Should Know” begins here, with a review of Picasso's masterpiece Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (The Women of Avignon) and what it implicates today:

Pablo Picasso. 1907. Oil on Canvas. (Museum of Modern Art, New York)
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Posted by: CAC at 04:40 PM | Comments (93)
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These are the people Wisconsin Republicans hope will do the right thing next week and vacate the spurious stay order by a radical (and vacationing) Madison judge:

As the deeply divided state Supreme Court wrestled over whether to force one member off criminal cases last year, Justice David Prosser exploded at Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson behind closed doors, calling her a "bitch" and threatening to "destroy" her.

The incident, revealed in interviews as well as e-mails between justices, shows fractures on the court run even deeper than what has been revealed in public sniping in recent years. Problems got so bad that justices on both sides described the court as dysfunctional, and Prosser and others suggested bringing in a third party for help, e-mails show.

How did the the Journal Sentinel get these private emails, you wonder? Oh, yet another justice gave them out at the request of the newspaper. A liberal justice.

It's like this. Wisconsin Supreme Court justices run for election and though they are nominally non-partisan the Court frequently splits along the usual lines. At the moment, there are four conservatives on the court and three liberals. Justice Prosser, a conservative, is running for reelection this year. An election that will take place April 5, to be exact. Unless he is reelected, Prosser's term ends July 31st.

Anyway, I normally wouldn't bother to flag state politics here at the HQ, but these are the folks that Wisconsin Republicans are depending on to do the right thing on the budget repair bill. And while the Republicans absolutely have the law on their side here, the unprofessional behavior on the Court gives me little confidence that the Justices can follow it.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 03:29 PM | Comments (101)
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