Hello!

Scratch a lefty, find a Nazi. The Will to Power is usually right there under the surface. They have a shared belief that the State is God and shall put things "right" by whatever means necessary, and if people have to die, so be it bonus.

Lars Von Trier, director praised for daring to tell Europeans that America sucks, has previously expressed his hatred of democracy.

And... Bjork.

‘Björk isn’t a woman, she’s a little troll,’ he said, adding, however, that he had had a decent working relation with her. ‘She’s an evil bitch, who tried to ruin the film from the beginning. She walked in the first day thinking: ‘Here I come, and you’re going bankrupt’.’
Von Trier added that he had wept in desperation and hurled a chair into a television set during his fights with the singer.

He also repeated his description of US President Bush as ‘an asshole’, and said democracy had the same problem as his films.

‘The problem with democracy is that people are too stupid. The elect the wrong people to parliament,’ von Trier said.

The instructorÂ’s recent censure of other Danish filmmakers, whose films he has called superficial and Â’shit without contentÂ’, has enraged many of his compatriots.

The countryÂ’s hottest male star, Mads Mikkelsen, recently declined an offer to appear in von TrierÂ’s upcoming dogma film, saying he made Â’shitty filmsÂ’.

A "dogma" film is a film made according to some punk-type manifesto. Shot on digital video, using natural lighting at the source, eschewing technical trickery of film-making (i.e., 50% of the reason you go to the movies at all). Like a more-professionally shot home video.

He did a trio of films he called "America: Land of Opportunity" (yeah, irony), that included cute snippets about blacks. Yeah, scan down for that, you'll know it when you see it.

His most outrageous provocation was the film Anti-Christ. I have no idea if it's any good -- it seems like a technical exercise in calculated offensiveness, but I suppose it's possible it succeeds, in a limited fashion, as a technical exercise -- but check out the plotline if you want an idea of the sort of things he makes movies about. That's Wikipedia, so it's not profane, but a sort of clinical-language content warning because the plot of the film is truly horrific.

So: A man with anti-democratic, leftist beliefs, who also seems to have some weird psychosexual dysfunction and clinical depression going on?

This guy? A Nazi? Shut up, no way!

“I really wanted to be a Jew and then I found out that I was really a Nazi, you know, because my family was German, Hartmann, which also gave me some pleasure,” the Danish director said with a cheerful smile.

“I understand Hitler,” he added. “I think he did some wrong things, yes absolutely, but I can see him sitting in his bunker in the end.”

...

“I’m just saying that I think I understand the man. He’s not what you would call a good guy, but, yeah, I understand much about him, and I sympathise with him a little bit, yes,” he said.

“But, come on, I’m not for the Second World War. And I’m not against Jews (but) not too much because Israel is a pain in the ass.”

He said this on a panel at Cannes, debuting his latest "little shitty film." Next to him? His actress/victim Kristin Dunst:

His star Kirsten Dunst, who is also of German descent, looked uncomfortable and murmured “oh my God, this is terrible” to co-star Charlotte Gainsbourg. But the auteur assured her: “There will come a point at the end of this”.

He also said a little bit more.

"Okay, I am a Nazi..."

"Nazis tend to do things on a grander scale..."

"Perhaps we can have a Final Solution for journalists...."

Holocaust jokes, I love 'em!

Thanks to Shawn.

And also: Bjork.

Oh: The Jammie Wearing Fool link (the main link I provide) is a two-fer story; the other part, the one he highlights, is Peter Fonda announcing Obama is a "f***ing traitor" for letting the foreign corporation BP dictate to the Coast Guard what they should do in the Gulf Spill.

Also worth reading.

But I really don't like this Lars Von Trier cat. Or Nazis.

I also don't like Bjork but I figure he just got lucky with that one.

Posted by: Ace at 10:07 AM | Comments (265)
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Not a huge deal, and if it weren't for this, they'd just have some other crap making fun of conservatives.

He really is way too proud of his ability to produce ID.

I was proud to produce ID on exactly one occasion: My 21st birthday.

This is Obama's one big accomplishment.

Okay, this is his other big accomplishment. The one Bush didn't help him with.

Posted by: Ace at 09:38 AM | Comments (209)
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...especially, the article notes, if he also refuses to cut spending and in fact increase the spending of government to the high levels he prefers.

I wasn't all that surprised that the article noted that Obama's tax-pledge is a lie. That is just mathematics, and not even very difficult math. What surprised me is that the article also undermines liberal shibboleths that the rich don't pay their "fair share" in taxes. You can't prove such a thing mathematically, because the question of course turns on the non-mathematical values question of what a "fair share" might be. But it does produce a lot of charts showing the rich pay more, and not just more in absolute terms (that's a given), but in percentage-of-income terms.

Despite the left's whining/wishcasting on this point, the income tax code is already progressive. It is good to see TNR inject some reality into the increasingly-poorly-named Reality-Based Community, but I doubt very much it will take.

Of course, you might argue weÂ’re short on revenues because the tax code has let the very wealthy off the hook in recent decades. Maybe so, but itÂ’s hard to see that in the data. According to the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, the effective tax rate for all federal taxes in 2009 was 18.2 percent. The effective rates by quintile were:

Lowest -0.9
Second 6.6
Third 13.4
Fourth 17.2
Top 22.9

But maybe the real action is within the top quintile of income-earners, with the super-rich making out like bandits. Again, the Urban-Brookings numbers donÂ’t support that story:

80-90 19.4
90-95 22.0
95-99 23.5
Top 1 percent 26.1
Top 0.1 percent 27.9

This is just a one-year snapshot, of course. What about trends over time? We know that the distribution of income has become less equal in recent decades, with those at the top commanding a larger share. You might think that the share of taxes paid by high earners has declined during this period, shifting the burden to those below. But according to the CBO, that hasnÂ’t happened either. While the share of national income for the top quintile and the top 1 percent has risen considerably since the mid-1980s, their share of total federal taxes has risen even more.

You might still argue, however, that the right comparison is not across time but across national boundaries. Surely the rich pay more of the total tax burden in other advanced democracies, and we need to become more like them. Wrong again. Using 2005 OECD data, The Wall Street Journal recently reported that the share of taxes paid by the top 10 percent in the United States is 1.35 times larger than their share of income. The comparable number for France was 1.10 times; for Germany, 1.07 times; for the OECD as a whole, 1.11. And this is what we should expect, given that most other democracies rely less on income taxes and more on alternatives such as the VAT, which is less progressive.

All to the good, but that is a detail. The major point is: Obama must tax the middle-class to fuel his rapid expansion of super-government, and he knows it, and he's lying when he claims he doesn't know that.

The middle class can either reject Obama or they can begin setting aside thousands of dollars of their money to pay for Obama.

The middle class needs to be made aware of something: Obamamania is a costly thing. Is Obama The World's Most Perfect Man? Maybe so. But get ready to pay the exorbitant prices The World's Most Perfect Man will naturally command.

And here's the problem, as Salam Reihan writes in NRO, for Obama: The people he will steal his taxes from are exactly the same people he needs to do well with to be re-elected.

Voters in households earning more than $100,000 constituted 26 percent of the 2008 electorate. By any standard, President Obama performed very well with this bloc in 2008. In the 2010 House elections, in contrast, voters in over-$200,000 households chose Republicans over Democrats by a margin of 64 to 34 percent, while $100,000 to $200,000 households favored Republicans by a more modest 56 to 43 percent margin. The presidentÂ’s political advisers are keenly aware of the fact that Democrats need to improve their performance with these voters or face defeat in 2012. This helps explain the profound irrationality of the Obama administrationÂ’s approach to key public-policy questions.

By irrationality, he means that Obama needs two things that can't be together: He needs to lie his ass off about the middle class not being taxed, and yet, to appease the left (or his own quivering conscience) he needs to raise spending higher and higher and hold the line on cuts.

With one hand, he claims he won't increase revenue through taxes on the middle class; with the other hand, he increases spending so high the deficit is now literally the biggest the world has ever seen.

Ask to choose between A and B he chooses C: Fiscal catastrophe in 5 years.

But that's what he does, of course. Obama is not a man who likes A/B decisions. He likes happy, made-up fake options, like voting present, kinetic actions, and borrowing money from the Chinese.

The Wall Street Journal notes that here the right and left agree on the facts. That is, they both agree on the same figures. The left may look at the numbers and say "Ah good, finally, we can be serious about taxing the middle class, as we need to," and the right can say "No, cut spending," but as to the actual facts we are all in agreement.

Except for the mendacious president, who pretends facts aren't facts and figures aren't figures because the only number he cares about is the 271 electoral votes he needs for 4 more years.

Inside the Beltway, one of the most hallowed chestnuts is that so polarized have our politics become, we can no longer agree on basic facts. Mr. Galston and Mr. Salam and their respective allies disprove that. Both agree on the revenue problem, though their policy conclusions veer off in sharply opposite ways.

...

The argument over taxes and spending, of course, is never fully won. The good news here is Messrs. Galston and Salam have met across the ideological spectrum to offer a good starting point. For those of us who believe that America is best served by a debate that forces citizens to make a clear choice—and that Mr. Ryan has the better part of the argument—we say, "Bring it on."

No Leaning Here: I called TNR "liberal leaning." DrewM and others note that saying TNR leans to the left is like saying Michael Moore leans to the heavy.

I've changed it.

Posted by: Ace at 08:59 AM | Comments (100)
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450 now.

Why? Because he's tying Britain's commitment to the effort to Obama's -- and Obama already declared he'd be moving troops out of Afghanistan by the summer.

But the move is bitterly opposed by military chiefs, who claim it risks throwing away the gains made by British forces.

Colonel Stuart Tootal, ex-commander of 3 Para, said: "We should only get out when the job is done properly.

"We are on the right track, but if we take our foot off the gas now, we risk all the success and investment we have achieved so far."

Mr Cameron's order fulfils a long-standing promise to President Barack Obama to bring the war to an end in step with the US.

Previously he had set 2014 as a deadline, but then ordered plans for early draw-dawns, hinting that they're leaving a lot earlier than 2014.

by this summer, at the same time the US will start reducing its troop numbers.

The main argument against Cameron's decision is driven by the fear that a premature removal of British troops could highly hinder the counter-insurgency mission led in Afghanistan, thus enhancing the Taliban's influence throughout the country. Detractors regret that Cameron's decision seems to be more political than strategic. In addition to Bin Laden's death, the number of British troops deaths in Afghanistan, which amount to 364, have also played a key role. Since the beginning of the operation in 2001, public opinion and support for the mission has decreased considerably as the British death toll increased.

Posted by: Ace at 08:34 AM | Comments (102)
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From Hot Air. Pretty good. He uses a movie trailer to propose. more...

Posted by: Ace at 08:27 AM | Comments (51)
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I put this in the headlines last night but since I've been pounding on Newt pretty good for the last few days, it only seems fair to give this a post too.

Gingrich and Ryan traded emails and spoke on the phone, a call that “went really well,” Gingrich’s spokesman Rick Tyler told Fox News.

The former House speaker also held two conference calls with Tea Party leaders, one on Monday night and one Tuesday morning, to explain what he meant by his comments Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Politico reported. “We’ve tried to correct the record and admit it could have been done better,” Tyler told Politico. “We move on.”

Gingrich went "On the Record" with Greta van Susteren Tuesday night to respond to criticism over his comments.

"I want to set a precedent for new kinds of presidential campaigns," he told van Susteren. "I made a mistake and I called Paul Ryan today, who's a very close personal friend, and I said that."

Before the apology, Gingrich spent a good part of the day doing damage control with bloggers and other pundits. During one of the conference calls Newt tried to make lemonade out of lemons by tying his rough (to be polite) first week in the race with Ronald Reagan.

“Every once and awhile there's going to be a problem, and you gotta spend three or four days fixing it,” he said. “If you go back and look at Ronald Reagan's record, the opening week of the campaign in Sept. 1980, they didn't have a very good week. And they had to go back and fix it. This happens occasionally. The trick is to relax, look at it, try to figure out what happened, and keep moving.”

And with that candidates comparing themselves to Reagan hasn't only Jumped the Shark, it's been ripped to shreds and eaten by the shark.

Newt also said he was surprised by the adversarial tone of the Meet the Press interview and wasn't ready for it. Mind you, he's been on the show 30 something times over the years,. He should also know that even if they've been nice to him while he was out of office and chilling on the global warming couch with Nancy Pelosi, now that he's even a remote threat to Obama (he's not really but the MFM doesn't take chances), he's going to be destroyed by the press.

Poor Newt, no friends on the left or right any more.

Actually, that' not entirely true. The obnoxious Dana Milbank comes to Newt's defense. However one gets the feeling this new found respect for Gingrich is simply a club with which to beat up on the GOP and conservatives. As Slu notes, Milbank wasn't always such a fan of Newt or the old GOP.

Hackery, thy name is Millbank.

Posted by: DrewM at 05:52 AM | Comments (298)
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Meredith Whitney: Muni bond holders are in for a shock. Given the parlous condition of most states' finances combined with Clintonian accounting methods (don't ask, don't tell), it was inevitable that munis would lose their luster.

America: a nation of freeloaders? It's hard to escape that conclusion nowadays. From the article:

[T]he size and scope of American government is wildly excessive, regardless of whether it’s funded by taxes, borrowing or money-printing. An accumulating public debt is nothing but the routine, unavoidable effect of chronic deficit-spending, which itself reflects a deeper problem: Many Americans want more government than they’re willing to pay for – which means many want something for nothing – which means we’ve become a nation dominated by free-loaders.

Why the slow-motion collapse of Greece matters to the world economy and not just to the Eurozone. If nothing else, Greece stands as an example to the rest of us of what happens when nations live beyond their means.

And speaking of the Eurozone, remember how Jean-Claude Trichet wanted to reassure everyone that Spain wasn't in the same kind of trouble as, say, Portugal? (After assuring everyone that Portugal wasn't in the the same kind of trouble as Greece?) Well, the Spanish don't seem to be on the same page as Trichet. That's the essential problem with using the "austerity" route to reform a nation's debt: it only works if you can get the citizenry to buy into it.

I'll keep hammering this point as long as I'm able: The Chinese "economic miracle" is mostly a sham. The Chinese are awash in cheap Western money, essentially, and when that money dries up (which it is doing right now), the Chinese don't have much of a domestic market to fall back on. Plus, in case anyone forgot, they're still run by Communists who don't really believe in that whole "capitalism" thing.

Like most Democrats, public pension actuaries are in love with a girl named Rosy Scenario. But the sad truth is that most rate-of-return estimates are wildly overoptimistic. As I've said before: the basic problem is that we suck at predicting even the short-term future, much less the long-term future.

The Social Security deficit is now permanent. It will run in the red from now on, at an accelerating rate.
more...

Posted by: Monty at 05:01 AM | Comments (118)
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This has shades of President Obama's refusal to defend DOMA section 3, even though though it was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Clinton. It also recalls Governor Schwarzenegger and AG Brown's refusal to defend Prop 8 in court, despite that constitutional amendment being passed by the people of the State of California.

Governor Walker has declared unconstitutional Wisconsin's domestic partnership law, which was passed by the legislature and signed into law by his predecessor. He is therefore refusing to defend it in court.

Democrats who controlled the Legislature in 2009 changed the law so that same-sex couples could sign up for domestic partnership registries with county clerks to secure some - but not all - of the rights afforded married couples.

Wisconsin Family Action sued last year in Dane County circuit court, arguing that the registries violated a 2006 amendment to the state constitution that bans gay marriage and any arrangement that is substantially similar.

Republican Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen refused to defend the lawsuit, saying he agreed the new law violated the state constitution. Then-Gov. Jim Doyle, a Democrat, hired Madison attorney Lester Pines to defend the state.

Walker, a Republican, replaced Doyle in January and fired Pines in March. On Friday, Walker filed a motion to stop defending the case.

"Governor Walker, in deference to the legal opinion of the attorney general that the domestic partner registry...is unconstitutional, does not believe the public interest requires a continued defense of this law," says the brief, filed by Walker's chief counsel, Brian Hagedorn.

What parade of horribles does the domestic partnership law --- alleged by the plaintiff Wisconsin Family Action to be an arrangement "substantially similar to marriage" and thus banned by the anti-gay marriage amendment --- visit upon the good people of Wisconsin?

The registries allow same-sex couples to take family and medical leave to care for a seriously ill partner, make end-of-life decisions and have hospital visitation rights. But according to Fair Wisconsin, they still confer only about a quarter of the rights associated with marriage, lacking provisions to allow couples to file joint tax returns or adopt children together.

I don't know much at all about Wisconsin law or trial procedure. It's possible that the court can and will allow a private party to intervene to defend the law, since Walker won't. It's also possible that this is the effective end of the defense and the judge will have no alternative but to rule in favor of the inaptly named plaintiff.

What I do know that this decision by Governor Walker is cruel. Cruel and cowardly. Republicans presently control the Wisconsin legislature and the governor's mansion. If Walker feels that this is so important, he could attempt to repeal the domestic partner law. Instead he's lending legitimacy to the idea that Governors and Presidents may simply refuse to defend laws with which they disagree and thereby nullify previous legislatures (or, in the case of many Western states, ballot initiatives).

Update: In reply to several commenters:

First, there is a legitimate question whether the domestic partnership registry is "substantially similar" to marriage and therefore banned by the state's anti-gay marriage amendment. Commenters suggesting that I am unaware of the state marriage amendment might want to re-read the post. That's what the lawsuit is about.

Second, to the commenters who believe that the Governor may simply declare that there is no question, that the law is unconstitutional, please distinguish President Obama's DOMA non-defense and Governor Schwarzenegger's Prop 8 non-defense. I've seen them repeatedly criticized here for failing to defend these laws, which they believe to be unconstitutional. By your argument, there is no problem with their decision to "uphold the constitution" by sabotaging court cases.

Yes, an executive may choose which cases to pursue. Obviously, he has no control when the state is the defendant and his constitutional duty is to defend the state if any reasonable argument can be made in defense of state action, whether it's a state agency or a state law.

My irriation with Walker does not stem solely from the fact that he's not defending the state law. He may honestly believe it is unconstitutional and we should assume he's telling the truth about that. It's inexcusable, then, that he continues to enforce this supposedly unconstitutional law -- thereby allowing the lawsuit to proceed -- while refusing to defend it -- thereby sabotaging any defense to the lawsuit.

This is what I objected to about the President's DOMA strategy. Yes, executives can, consistent with their obligations to their constitutions, refuse to defend unconstitutional laws. But there is a serious problem with refusing to defend what they continue to enforce. That's a transparent attempt to create a judicial ruling that the executive can then hide behind when they'd rather not take the heat for their beliefs.

In our system of government, the judiciary has final say over the constitutionality of laws. That doesn't mean that no one else gets to have an opinion. It only means that the judiciary gets the last word. For very important reasons, however, the judiciary relies on the parties to bring each case and to vigorously defend their position. Here, the state allowed this case (WFA wouldn't have standing if the state weren't providing domestic partner registration), but Gov. Walker is choosing to not vigorously defend the state's interest. That's an abdication and it interferes with the court's ability to determine the constitutionality of the law.

Ultimately, executive nullification via sabotaging lawsuits is a form of legislating-on-the-sly that perverts the separation of powers. Small "r" republicans should seriously consider the consequences of letting governors and presidents simply pick and choose which laws they will defend. That sounds a lot like rule by executive whim, rather than representative rule via the legislature.

Oh, one last thing: To the morons suggesting I called Obama's DOMA decision "not a big deal", actually, I called it "unjustifiable" and condemned it.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 03:31 AM | Comments (206)
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Seems like everybody's got a price.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:49 AM | Comments (77)
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Tech Support Tuesday: Surfing The Web Safely

So here are some tools I use that let me wander through even the dodgiest, most questionable areas of the innertoobs in search of ONT fodder and uh, more niche-y pr0n without having to worry about viruses or malware. So far (4+ years) they have yet to ever fail me.

1. An anti-virus program: I use Avast since it's effective, non-intrusive, and free for home use.

2. An anti-spyware/malware program: I use Spybot Search and Destroy since it works, is frequently updated, and best of all is free. Microsoft also has a free scanner that seems to work well.

3. A decent browser: I prefer Firefox due to its extra features and plugins and fewer security holes. Internet Explorer 9 might be okay, but I still view it as unproven.

4. A pop-up blocker and/or ad blocker in your browser: For Firefox I recommend Adblock Plus or NoScript. Most web malware these days seems to infect via malicious ads so the best defense is just to block them.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:55 PM | Comments (859)
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