Mid-morning open thread, comrades. Make premier Breitbart proud.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 06:02 AM | Comments (64)
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You kinda need to prepare yourself for the twist in these two contradictory statements, back to back. They spring through the brain like a pissed off rattlesnake. Grab some coffee, settle in.

“The average American does not view the economy through the prism of GDP or unemployment rates or even monthly jobs numbers,” Plouffe said. “People won’t vote based on the unemployment rate, they’re going to vote based on: ‘How do I feel about my own situation? Do I believe the president makes decisions based on me and my family?’”

I think you have to ask yourself "Do I feel lucky?"

Well do ya, punk?

The average American doesn't view the economy through the crazy lens of "employment". Hell no, that doesn't mean shit. They view it completely through the perspective of "does President Obama make good decisions based on me, and my family?"

...

Hasn't he been making "good decisions" since you got laid off?

And hasn't he been making "the right choices" for your family as you struggled to see the economy through the big "benevolent decision-making" lens of love and wise choices?

Well, if the answer is "yes", then shut the hell up. It's Friday morning in America. The jobs report is out soon.

Hey, it's FiAF. Good day to show up drunk at work and flash the development team in the breakroom.

Give them a reason to live, ladies.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 04:12 AM | Comments (234)
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Happy Friday, morons.

Posted by: andy at 03:12 AM | Comments (83)
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Below the fold is a video of the freakiest Charlie Sheen mask you will see all day. Mere words cannot describe how fascinatingly disturbing it is. It will not be long before the police start receiving 911 calls about Charlie Sheen robbing 7-Elevens in Pascagoula, MS. more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 11:34 PM | Comments (24)
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The Top 10 Companies That People Love To Hate

Well it's no surprise that airlines and cable companies make up most of the top ten. Or that banks make up most of the next tier of hate.

10. Facebook

9. MySpace

8. American Airlines

7. United Airlines

6. U.S. Airways

5. Charter Communications

4. Comcast

3. Time Warner Cable

2. Delta

1. Potomac Electric (Pepco)

Plus this incident may explain how US Airways edged out American and United in teh hate department.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:43 PM | Comments (637)
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He thinks we're on the fast track to a debt crisis.

Earlier talk of this coming 5 or 7 years down the road might have been a touch optimistic.

If yields on our T-bills hit 9% (which they might; junk bonds, yo!), then our indebtedness explodes as trillions more are added to our growing debt just due to increased interest-service (and as we have no way of paying that, we just add that new debt to the old debt and take out even newer debt to pay for that).

A scenario that looks pretty likely is our debt:GDP ratio hitting 250% by 2030.

But don't worry; that won't happen. The system will explode before ever permitting such a ludicrous ratio.

From Allah's comprehensive round-up on the debt limit debate and the near-impossibility of any real reform.

Posted by: Ace at 04:42 PM | Comments (195)
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Woody Allen had a joke in Sleeper about the NRA. Called to explain what the NRA was to an oblivious girl from the far future, Allen said, "The NRA used to help criminals get guns so they could, you know, shoot citizens. Kind of a public service."

I always thought that was a good joke, even if, politically, I didn't agree with it.

But we can now explain the Stimulus to future generations, too.

Posted by: Ace at 04:30 PM | Comments (56)
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A child rapist/murderer and the President teamed up last week to ask the Supreme Court to stay the rapist/murderer's execution in Texas so that Congress could have time to consider legislation that would invalidate the murderer's conviction. (As if that would ever pass Congress.) They believe that international law was violated because the criminal was not advised of his right to contact the Mexican consulate when he was arrested. You see, the criminal is an alien.

The relevant background details are here, but I will mention, as a preface to what what you're about to read, that last year, in a separate case, the Supreme Court ruled that, while international law is violated when an alien isn't advised of this treaty right to contact his consulate, domestic law is just honkey-dory with it because Congress never implemented the treaty. So that guy was executed. Since then, Congress has done nothing to implement the treaty.

Cue the smackdown (PDF).

The United States and JUSTICE BREYER complain of the grave international consequences that will follow from Leal’s execution. Congress evidently did not find these consequences sufficiently grave to prompt its enactment of implementing legislation, and we will follow the law as written by Congress. We have no authority to stay an execution in light of an “appeal of the President,” presenting free-ranging assertions of foreign policy consequences, when those assertions come unaccompanied by a persuasive legal claim.

Ouch.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:50 PM | Comments (328)
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No, I don't mean now, though I'm willing to consider some kind of swap with a foreign country that wants to lose one of its problem cases.

I mean when he was born.

That whirring noise you heard was WND spinning a new theory.

Posted by: Ace at 01:40 PM | Comments (184)
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I don't expect that this will be a Republican position. On the other hand, I can see the Republican Party fighting this so half-heartedly as to constitute virtual endorsement. NRO once again calls for the decriminalization of pot, particularly of the federal role in pot-criminalization:

The War on Drugs, which is celebrating its 40th year, has been a colossal failure. It has curtailed personal freedom, created a violent black market, and filled our prisons. It has also trampled on states’ rights: Sixteen states have legalized “medical marijuana” — which is, admittedly, often code for legalizing pot in general — only to clash with federal laws that ban weed throughout the land.

That last sin is not the War on DrugsÂ’ greatest, but it is not insignificant, either. A bill introduced by Reps. Barney Frank (D., Mass.) and Ron Paul (R., Texas) would remove the federal roadblock to state marijuana reform, and though the Republican House seems almost certain to reject it, the proposal deserves support from across the political spectrum.

While we would support the total demise of federal marijuana laws, this bill simply constrains the federal government to its proper role. The Constitution allows the federal government to restrict interstate commerce, and the federal laws forbidding the interstate transfer of marijuana would remain in effect. The feds would also still intercept drug shipments from other countries.

What would change is that states — if they so chose — could legalize pot that is grown, sold, and consumed within their own borders.

That line is fairly false, because the argument for federal criminalization is that states which legalize create a de facto regime of legalization even in states which don't legalize -- after all, there are no border patrols between states.

That said... Who cares? Pot would simply be smuggled into prohibition states illegally from another US state rather than flowing illegally from Mexico. I'm not sure that's much of a hill to die on, for anyone.

There's an interesting, and angry, argument against the five dumb reasons usually offered to decriminalize marijuana.

I agree with the writer that most of these arguments are dishonest, when they're not stoner-stupid. For example, here's the conclusion that the "it's not addictive" argument is largely bullshit:

Now, once again, it's widely believed that pot is much easier to quit than smoking, booze, heroin, and just about every other drug out there. But the belief that "it's not addictive" is bullshit. Want an easy way to see if you're addicted? Give it up for a year. I have a feeling that would be tough for a lot of you, considering how many can't go one fucking week without working it into a conversation. It's tough to give up something that you've built your entire personality around.

True enough, and honestly, I think that really gets to the heart of why conservatives are so against legalizing pot. (Apart from our own stated reasons, which tend to be sort of bullshitty too, sometimes.)

It's that we tend not to like pot-smokers and don't like the psychology of them.

A friend -- one who's fairly conservative, but who does smoke pot on occasion -- at least nailed me on that being my central animating reason for opposing legalization. Because I tend to think those who want legalization are kind of idiots, in the main, and trivially-minded people, and spaced-out hippies who annoy me by insisting on playing Grateful Dead dirges as parties.

But he did make the best possible case, as far as conservative principle, about legalizing pot to me:

Why should you care what the hell I choose to do in my own home? And why are you so eager to use the coercive force of the state to dictate to me what I do? Including throwing me in jail for doing something that, if not perfectly harmless, is certainly of a lower level of harmfulness than many things?

The liberty argument is a strong one.

The counter-argument, and the one I have previously relied upon/acceded to, was that the state has such a powerful interest in protecting people from harming themselves that our Duty to Protect outweighs the case for liberty.

But I don't believe that any more. For one thing, I am becoming, little by little, and belatedly, very suspicious of any argument that assigns liberty a lower priority than another value. And I'm becoming, again belatedly, very very suspicious of the general claim that we can use the Coercive Power of the State to make people live better lives.

It's not so much a slippery slope argument -- of the type "If we say the state can do X to supposedly improve our lives, who's to say they can't do Y, as well, making the same claim?" -- as it is an argument about that first step itself.

I don't think I want the state using its coercive power to lock people up any more for doing drugs.

What business is it of mine? I do lots of things that others may look down upon but I wouldn't be at all happy about having State Coercion brought to bear upon me for any of it.

So, cut through all the stuff about medicinal marijuana and the like... it's really just about respecting a citizens' basic right to do as he pleases without state coercion, so long as what he pleases does not produce direct harm for anyone else.

And I just don't buy the case for "direct harm" anymore.

Narcogeddon? One of the strongest conservative reasons against legalization is the argument made from doubt -- we do not know what a legalization regime would do. It could lead to exploding drug usage rates. It could lead to a Narcogeddon.

But Portugal did this, and did not seem to experience anything like that. In fact, drug abuse seems to have gone down. I don't usually trust Gleen Grenwald on anything but this paper on Portugal's legalization experience is hosted at Cato, and as far as I know (and I don't know -- I read this last year) hasn't been debunked.

Posted by: Ace at 01:06 PM | Comments (438)
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