Why Do Despots Hate Teh Boobehs?

There just seems to be something about ladies' bosoms that drives authoritarians to distraction.

Pakistani Council of Islamic Ideology Declares Padded Bras To Be The "Devil’s Cushions”

The Council also invited shop owners who were in the business of importing and selling female underwear. The Council advised the shop owners to bring lingerie samples, so that the council could see about what the protesters were angry about."[sure, sure..ed]

"Last month the protesters gathered outside an outlet inside Park Towers and occupied the entire floor and chanted slogans against padded bras. They asked the government to put a ban on the import and sale of padded, vibrant, colorful bras and demanded legislation that would outlaw the purchase of any underwear that is not white or beige colored.

“Padded bras are evil as they make the breasts look bigger and perky”, said one of the protesters. “Only devil women show off private parts. Muslim women should be as humble about them as they can. In fact they should be ashamed of their breasts, both of them[glad he cleared that up 'both of them'..ed].”

And then you have this:

Venezuelan President Takes A Hard Stance Against Fake Boobs

President Hugo Chavez is firmly anti-breast implants. Speaking on a United Nations summit on great racks a state-run television station, Chavez railed against plastic surgeons who “convince some women that if they don’t have some big bosoms they should feel bad.” Chavez added that some women in Venezuela, where the breast implant business is booming, will get plastic surgery even if they’re struggling to make ends meet, which he called a “monstrous thing.”

Those who would rule over the world always start with the boobies. more...

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:46 PM | Comments (737)
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The Purity Sleuths are at it again. Ace touched on it earlier that DeMint is under attack for defending Romney.

Such a deep line of thinking by the All Caps Brigade (thanks, Miss80sBaby) has not gone without recognition, and using the most advanced neuromological imaging we are just now discovering their supreme knowledge. It took weeks of scanning dozens of brains of the ACB, but a common image kept popping up when a .000001% deviation in orthodoxy was suspected by the test subjects.

That image is here. Warning, it is very, very detailed and may blow your minds, but it really provides an insight into the depth of thinking the ACB possesses: more...

Posted by: CAC at 04:23 PM | Comments (471)
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Vid at CNN.

A couple of points here: The problem is not just that Obama has been, until now, de facto in support of Qaddaffy staying in power. That sort of realpolitik judgment might be defensible.

The problem is that his desire to look good for the cameras and his Michael-Jackson-like dwindling band of worshippers causes him to say things like "Qaddaffy must go" and then sneak in a quick long 18 holes of golf.

Announce a policy, idiot, and then commit to it. Do not encourage Libyans to join the rebellion only to then sit back and be slaughtered in huge numbers.

That's blood on the hands.

If it is your policy to sit back and do nothing, then say so, so people can make potentially life-saving decisions based upon the real facts of the situation.

Meanwhile, the French say they're ready to begin airstrikes at 6:00 ET tonight. And that will entail attacking Qaddaffy's air-defense network and radars and radio towers and such. (That always needs to be done as a first step if you're flying over hostile territory, of course.)

I actually think the French can do this and turn the war around.

I don't get people. They don't seem to understand the difference between Western infantry capabilities and Western airpower and seapower capabilities.

Our infantry is the best in the world, but even the best infantryman in the world isn't an order of magnitude better than a third-world militia. Of course he's trained better, has better tactics, better communication. He has better armor, though that's hardly a decisive advantage because no typically-worn body armor can stop a rifle bullet. He may or may not have a better main gun, but he does have better grenade launchers and such.

When our infantry is in the field, there's a good chance there will be a lot of deaths on our side, because infantry guys are still doing the same things as other infantry guys, and have all the same weaknesses. Our guys are better (and bigger and stronger and braver, too), but at the end of the day they are still individual men running around in an extremely dangerous environment with a spotty armor advantage and using offensive weapons technology that came to maturity at or around 1940.

There may have been a few small improvements here and there in automatic carbines and rifles since 1947, but they're tiny. Our infantry's weapons are, by and large, not particularly more effective than a squad of Nazis were armed with in 1942.

That is not the case with airpower and seapower, which have the full benefit of 70 years of rapidly-maturing technology since WWII.

It's also true of tank technology. Compare the Gulf War to the War in Iraq. The Gulf War was fought on terms most advantageous to us -- tank vs. tank, and our jets vs. their tanks, and our helicpoters vs. their tanks. Infantry was involved but lightly.

100 casualties on our side. We could have killed virtually the whole Iraqi army as it retreated from Kuwait but we didn't out of pure mercy.

Another thing I don't get is this idea that we have to commit fully and actually win the war for the rebels. The hell with that. They're big boys. If they want to fight, let them fight.

But we do not have to go to full and total warfare in every foreign conflict. This should not be a binary thing. It should not be full and complete commitment up to and including a massive infantry invasion or nothing.

But taking out their tanks and jets? And maybe a few columns of troops?

This is not a difficult task for a Western-tech-level air force. It's still dangerous, as planes can be shot down, but wiping out a backwards, Soviet-crap-export-model third-world tyrant's airforce and tanks is not a tough row to hoe for a Western force.

Yes, even France should be able to manage this.

France doesn't have to win the fight for the rebels. All that needs be done is to subtract Qaddaffy's advantages from the equation.

Disagreement, From Andy McCarthy: He notes that no one seems to be calling for Obama to seek and receive Congressional authorization -- for what it's worth, I think he's right to point that out. Congressional authorization is necessary. Congressional authorization would also be useful in limiting the parameters of any engagement-- that is, no invasion.

Which is what he seems to want to avoid most of all.

I'm Not Knocking Our Infantry: didn't mean to knock our infantry. I don't know how many times I can say it is the best.

But our infantry's key technology will, and always will be, a 20 year old man's body. That is the "weapons platform" we add weapons to, same as we add bombs under the wing of a jet.

Even though our guys are physically stronger and tougher and smarter and better trained, we are all working with the same basic weapons platform -- a 20 year old man's body. There is a limit as to how much better one 20 year old man's body may be than another.

Compare the difference between an M1A1 Abrams tank and a T72 soviet export model tank.

There is a far, far larger gap between those two. A T72 cannot even penetrate the armor of an M1A1 -- it poses no risk to it.

That is obviously not the same situation with the human weapons platform, no matter how much better it might be than the enemy's.

A T72's shells will literally bounce off an M1A1's armor. With the exception of pistol ammo hitting a covered area-- bullets don't bounce off infantry.

Posted by: Ace at 01:16 PM | Comments (629)
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Cute St. Patrick's Day stunt. more...

Posted by: Ace at 11:10 AM | Comments (215)
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Before getting to the link, the source here -- "The Daily" -- is some kind of i-phone based news-app or something. So there is not some long journalistic tradition at the organization ( whatever that may count for anymore).

On the other hand, the reporter, Joshua Hersh, seems like a conventional, "real" reporter and not some kind of internet hoaxster. His stuff's appeared (according to that Atlantic blurb) in The New Yorker, the New York Times, and the New Republic.

I suppose he might have gotten sloppy or misleading here about what constitutes a real "Clinton insider" in a bid for a Drudge link and big name recognition, but that would seem pretty unproductive, given that he seems to have a genuine career going.

I wanted to check up on all that because this is, as Captain Ed says, "too good to check."

I want to believe.

Fed up with a president “who can’t make his mind up” as Libyan rebels are on the brink of defeat, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is looking to the exits.

At the tail end of her mission to bolster the Libyan opposition, which has suffered days of losses to Col. Moammar Gadhafi’s forces, Clinton announced that she’s done with Obama after 2012 — even if he wins again.

“Obviously, she’s not happy with dealing with a president who can’t decide if today is Tuesday or Wednesday, who can’t make his mind up,” a Clinton insider told The Daily. “She’s exhausted, tired.”

He went on, “If you take a look at what’s on her plate as compared with what’s on the plates of previous Secretary of States — there’s more going on now at this particular moment, and it’s like playing sports with a bunch of amateurs. And she doesn’t have any power. She’s trying to do what she can to keep things from imploding.”

Let me just guess that the Make Believe Media is not going to take this as a jumping-off point for asking if President Final Four is maybe a little scattered, feckless, and indecisive on important matters.

Posted by: Ace at 10:50 AM | Comments (230)
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Hard pandering? Or genuine curiosity? Bear in mind, he just repudiated his previous strongly pro-choice position in favor of a pro-life one.

I don't know.

I repeat my basic take that this is Obama's problem, not mine.

Speaking about the president, Trump – in line with "birthers" who question the president's citizenship – said he, too, had his doubts that Obama was born in the U.S.

"Everybody that even gives a hint of being a birther Â… even a little bit of a hint, like, gee, you know, maybe, just maybe this much of a chance, they label them as an idiot. Let me tell you, I'm a really smart guy," he said.

He explained the source of his doubt: "He grew up and nobody knew him. You know? When you interview people, if ever I got the nomination, if I ever decide to run, you may go back and interview people from my kindergarten. They'll remember me. Nobody ever comes forward. Nobody knows who he his until later in his life. It's very strange. The whole thing is very strange," he added.

I get the "nobody knows him" thing -- we don't know anything about Obama's college chums, most likely because they were hardcore radicals and it's all suppressed -- but I still don't get how you have doubts he was born in the US when there is a fair amount of evidence that he was and none -- like, none -- that he wasn't.

Still: Not my problem.

Oh, Trump says he'd be willing to spend $600 million of his own fortune in a bid for president, which he says gives him a tremendous advantage over the field.

It's an advantage, sure. Obama's going to raise $1 billion, a lot of it from his shady overseas admirers thanks to his odd decision to not require a zip code authorization for such donations.

Second look at Trump? No. Again, I give all Comedy Props to his war on Rosie O'Donnell's fat cells, but I just don't see that playing well with in the more sincere, "nicer" regions of the country.

Plus... Good heavers, not only the divorces, but the New Year's Model syndrome. And all the stuff that almost certainly took place around the times of the divorces that we don't even know about.

Trump doesn't strike me as the sort of guy who's not going to take advantage of his wealth.

Posted by: Ace at 10:38 AM | Comments (181)
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In yesterday's thread, we got a heartening response from some LEOs who are horrified by Palmer's threatening letter to businessowners who supported Walker.

Patrick Dorwin at Badger Blogger:

the tactics of the WPPA are wrong. Our police officers are entrusted with a great responsibility, and they swear to do their job, upholding the laws of Wisconsin, no matter what their personal opinions might be.

More from a Badger with a badge.

And two weeks ago, John Balcerzak, the former president of the Milwaukee Police Association—the collective bargaining unit representing rank-and-file Milwaukee police officers and detectives—e-mailed WTMJ radio to distance sworn law enforcement officers from the WPPA executive director. “Jim Palmer is not a police officer,” Balcerzak noted. “He is a lawyer.”

As SF noted in an earlier post, during heated political discourse, labor unrest, or civil strife, law enforcement officers become the uniformed arbitrators of fairness.

One section of The Law Enforcement Code of Ethics reads, “I will never act officiously or permit personal feelings, prejudices, animosities or friendships to influence my decisions,”

I guess Mr. Palmer never actually ran this letter idea by a few of the the rank-and-file. If he had, an actual police officer could have told him that it wasn't a good idea and would besmirch the integrity of all WI LEOs.

Posted by: LauraW at 09:45 AM | Comments (97)
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I didn't forget this because I never knew it -- Jim DeMint actually supported Romney in 2008.

I don't know if he still supports him, but he's not changing his mind due to the current political problem of RomneyCare.

“One of the reasons I endorsed Romney [in 2008] is his attempts to make private health insurance available at affordable prices,” said Sen. Jim DeMint (S.C.), a GOP kingmaker.

DeMint blames Democrats in the Massachusetts State Legislature for adding many of the features to RomneyÂ’s plan that many on the right decry.

“It just depends on how he plays it. For me, I think he started with some good ideas that were essentially hijacked by the Democrat Legislature,” DeMint said.

...

“It’s a hurdle, but I don’t think it’s a hurdle that can’t be overcome,” said one top conservative lawmaker who spoke on background.

“I think, in the end, we recognize that not every candidate has everything you want. Some candidates are weak on some issues and strong on others; there’s no perfect candidate out there,” added the Republican legislator, who backed one of Romney’s opponents three years ago.

The article notes that many believe a much bigger hurdle for Romney is his Mormonism.

I think that's unfair and unamerican, frankly. Millions of Christians know well the sting of animus based on religious belief; no serious person can say "Well, sure, that's unfair, but it's okay if I do the same, because I'm right."

I actually do think that that many voters will not consider Romney due to his religion, and that's one of the reasons (there are several) I don't support him -- I believe there are too many Republican primary voters with a beef against Mormonism (cult, etc.) to really make him a top-level candidate. In a way I'm deferring to prejudice, but I just don't see that situation changing anytime soon.

Not that there aren't good reasons to oppose Romney; there are, of course. One too many, I think. A flip-flop on abortion might be get-around-able; maybe RomneyCare too. But both? It's like having two rooks linked in a line. Mutually supporting and reinforcing.

But the fact he worships Jesus Christ with a stranger backstory than most religions have? That's just not fair.

One of my main problems with Huckabee is how he crudely pushed the religious thing in battling with Romney. A lot of the other stuff -- raising taxes, issuing naive clemencies to killers based on naive pastors claiming they'd found Jesus -- are problems of judgment and ideology and reason, but I thought the Mormon-trashing part of his campaign showed a serious defect in character. It was just too sleazy and crude for me. And, again, unamerican.

Via Hot Air. One of the things that still amazes me is how quickly people become horrible RINOs.

Ann Coulter just got kicked out of the club for being a RINO (Ann Coulter.. RINO?). Now... Jim DeMint?

My view of DeMint just fell off a cliff. Jumped. The. Shark.

I am sure he will attempt to rehabilitate himself, but he can kiss any 2012 presidential aspirations goodbye.

Norwegian on March 17, 2011 at 12:44 PM

On the other hand, there are more reasonable replies...

Sorry, Jim. YouÂ’re wrong on this.

MadisonConservative on March 17, 2011 at 12:43 PM

...

I guess it must be Romney’s “turn.”

We all know how well how Republican candidates do when it’s their “turn.”

Bat Chain Puller on March 17, 2011 at 12:45 PM

Two good points that don't rely on excommunication as a tool of persuasion.

When did it become out of fashion to say merely that someone is "wrong"? When did "wrong" -- a negative adjective, of course -- become too weak to be a useful word?

Why are so many determined to replace "wrong" with "unrighteous"?

There's just a level of emotionalism in all of this I find wearying. Maybe I'm not emotional enough and prefer to keep most arguments on the intellectual plane, and reserve emotion for the truly repellent.

I don't think the emotional emoters ever consider that they're wigging the rest of us the fuck out.

Oh, By the Way, DeMint Is Wrong: Romney is so determined to never say "I was wrong" that he's subcontracted that job out to all of us -- we all decide he was wrong on RomneyCare.

So not only does Romney get wacked with being wrong in the first place, he also gets it wrong on whether he was wrong.

To avoid being called wrong once he gets to be called wrong twice.

Not smart.

As the David Spade comedy special had it: "Take the Hit."

On a deeper level, I compare this to Charlie Crist. Crist seemed to be betting that Obama and socialism were the future -- and he seemed ready to embrace that future.

Someone who thinks, in his heart, that socialism is destined to win and isn't all that bad is obviously not someone who's going to fight it very hard.

No way that Romney is like Crist at that level. But, on a smaller level: Look, he's been positioning himself for a run at the presidency for years, I think. I like that discipline and planning.

But as far as the steps he believed he needed to take to become electable -- these are poor judgments. It feels like he was betting against conservatism with his various defensible-but-not-conservative positionings. So, to me, that's an error in judgment, and one that I fear will have consequences down the road -- if he was betting against it before, I imagine he'll bet against it again.

Part of his plan I don't get -- he ran in a liberal state and adopted liberal social positions, I guess to get elected and to make him a moderate in a presidential election, but then he... kind of completely reversed all that and tried to become a hard-charging conviction social conservative?

That's a big audible. Changing field like that sometimes pays off but usually results in a tackle in the backfield.

I don't know about Romney. He seems like one of those very smart sorts of guys whose judgment is just very often suspect. Good intellect, not-so-good cunning.

Posted by: Ace at 08:55 AM | Comments (406)
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Most people think that messing with elections is a big deal:

Two former leaders of the Oakland County Democratic Party are facing a total of nine felonies for allegedly forging election paperwork to get fake Tea Party candidates on NovemberÂ’s ballot.

“It is not a partisan statement, and we need to make that very clear,” said Oakland County Prosecutor Jessica Cooper.

Former Oakland County Democratic Chair Mike McGuinness and former Democratic Operations DirectorJason Bauer face up to 14 years in prison if convicted.

“Some of the people didn’t even know they were on the ballot till they began receiving delinquency notices of filings that were required as a candidate,” said Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard.

The crimes include false swearing, perjury, and forging records. The investigation is ongoing and will likely extend to other Michigan counties.

Note: the press and some bloggers are carefully reporting that these men are former Democratic officials, which I suppose is technically true now. They are former party operatives at this moment. But they were both official representatives of the Democratic Party at the time they set up their fake Tea Party scheme. They only quit their party posts after their crimes were discovered.

It's a little thing, but Democrats shouldn't be allowed to distance themselves from this even a little bit. Don't think for a minute that the Democrats didn't greet the creation of fake Tea Party candidates with indecent glee and hope that the frauds would sway elections.

Thanks to Doug M.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 05:43 AM | Comments (209)
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I haven't given California a good rhetorical kick in the nuts for a while, and it's past time.

A little while ago, CalPERS (California's giant pension system) was pondering reducing their "expected rate of return" calculation from a ludicrous 7.75% to a merely ridiculous 7.5%. This was ostensibly to bring future funding rates into closer contact with reality. (Not much closer, though; the actual rate of return considered "safe" is around 4%.)

Well, apparently this twenty-five basis point reduction caused the blood of several municipalities to run cold, because it would have meant millions of dollars in additional contributions would be required this year. So CalPERS decided to leave their ludicrous rate-of-return expectations alone for the time being. Pull quote:

A decrease in the Calpers rate of return to 7.5% would have bumped up what local California governments pay on behalf of government workers by 1.5% to 3% of payroll costs each year and 3% to 5% of what they pay on behalf of police officers, firefighters and other public-safety officers, a Calpers spokeswoman said.

Also, a decrease in the rate, also referred to by public pension plans as the discount rate, drives down the funded status of a pension plan, or the difference between its assets and long-term liabilities. Calpers is about 70% funded, it says.

Now, here's the thing...everyone involved knows that the 7.75% return rate is probably bullshit. CalPERS knows it, the municipalities know it, and the actuaries know it. The great bull market of the 1980-2000 period is long gone, so 20-year averages are going to be skewed by the outsized rates of return of the 1990's. If you only count the 10-year averages, things don't look so rosy; and they look even worse going into the next decade. But if the states actually had to honestly account for their pension obligations, they'd immediately go into a fiscal crisis due to the huge amount of contributions needed to bring their pensions to "fully funded" status (about 80%).

So a 7.75% rate of return is only possible if CalPERS (and the other broke states) take some pretty huge risks with their capital. The exact same kind of risks that burned them during the 2008 crash. (Which exacerbated, but did not cause, their pension problems, by the way. States have been shorting their pension funds for years and years.) But admitting the truth is not only politically unpalatable, but would also mean jacking up contributions to completely ruinous levels.

Illinois is in the same boat, as is New Jersey and many other states. Chronic underfunding of pension plans is how many city councils balance the books every year. Need an extra ten mil for some project or other? Just bump the rate-of-return on your pension fund twenty-five basis points or so, and then pay ten million less into your pension plan! Presto! The actuaries will play along because they can't prove you're wrong; full of shit, maybe, but not completely insane. It's possible that the market might turn around and generate those returns. Maybe.

Then years go by and the economy turns as it is wont to do. You have too many retirees and too few taxpayers and all your costs have skyrocketed and it's all of a sudden costing you half or more of your city's general fund just to cover pension costs because the investment return rates didn't quite pan out the way you'd hoped. This means tax hikes, service cuts, bond issues (debt), and/or personnel cuts in the public service. It's a shit-sandwich that no mayor or governor ever wants to eat, yet they prepared the meal themselves years earlier as city councilmen and selectmen when they approved these ludicrous pension scenarios.

There is an old saying that figures don't lie, but liars can figure. Much of the calamity now facing the cities and states in this nation is a direct result of the truth of that statement.

California: boned. Illinois: boned. New Jersey: boned. In fact, there are probably 30 to 35 states that are facing fiscal Armageddon at some point due to out-of-control public-employee pension and healthcare costs. The number of municipalities in distress probably runs into the thousands.

The Loyal Order of the Terminally Boned (LOTB) grows apace.
more...

Posted by: Monty at 05:12 AM | Comments (78)
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