People don't like reruns.

People also tend to change the channel on a show when they realize it's a rerun.

Especially if they didn't like it the first time.

Posted by: Ace at 01:33 PM | Comments (244)
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We seem to be getting rather far afield from the actual issues in this campaign, and more on the rules about audience participation and ticket allotment.

“They definitely packed the room," Kevin Kellems, a Gingrich adviser, told the Post.

But that’s not the case, according to both the Florida Republican Party and the Romney campaign. The party, which doled out 900 of the 1,200 tickets, says most of them went to “rank and file” Republicans.

I guess if "Debates" are central to the case for your nomination, this becomes a concern.

Posted by: Ace at 01:19 PM | Comments (173)
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Via Instapundit, this just popped up in my NSS (No Shit Sherlock) feed.

I like this part:

(For those who arenÂ’t familiar with the ins and outs of the female reproductive cycle, women are most fertile during ovulation, when their ovaries release an egg, and least fertile during menstruation, when they shed the unfertilized egg and the lining of the uterus.)

That's for Andrew Sullivan. They might have added further, "Andrew, we're talkin' about the baby-hatch!!!"

A study had men listen to ten women at various points in their menstrual cycle, and guess which stage they were at.

The men had a one in four chance of guessing correctly, but they actually did so 35 percent of the time, a significant difference, the researchers say.

So there you go.

...

So what was it about the womenÂ’s voices that gave away their reproductive status?

Ahem.

In another run, men weren't told the test was to guess at menstrual cycle state, but were just asked to judge the voices on "attractiveness." In this test they said the ovulating women were had the most "attractive" voices, 34% of the time.

Hormones induce the vocal changes that give women away. “Vocal production is closely tied to our biology,” Pipitone says of men and women. For example, “Cells from the larynx and vagina are very similar and show similar hormone receptors.”

No comment.

Posted by: Ace at 12:21 PM | Comments (359)
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This is monetary stimulus. You don't do stimulus in a naturally-growing economy.

Mull that one over: The Fed is declaring that it needs to run the same super-easy monetary policy when the economy is growing by 2% or 3% as it did amid the worst of the financial panic. And keep doing it past the horizon. The unavoidable implication is that the Fed doesn't think the economy will grow any faster until what would be halfway through Mr. Obama's second term. The other implication is that the Fed has no idea what to do other than to push even harder on the monetary accelerator. Maybe this time, it hopes, the economy's clutch will engage.

...

It's no coincidence that such a restatement of principles is coming now, when the Fed is looking to justify its extraordinary monetary interventions. If there were any doubt about this intention, Mr. Bernanke put it to rest in his press conference when he said more "quantitative easing" is likely if growth doesn't accelerate soon.

Facts: 1.7%. Crisis-level monetary stimulus. "Quantitative easing."

Spin: Green shoots. America is Back!

Simple question, really: If the economy is recovering, then why isn't it recovering?

Thanks to ATaLien.

Posted by: Ace at 12:05 PM | Comments (110)
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Soft power. Soft, flaccid, shriveled power.

The junta that runs Egypt has banned a group of Americans and Europeans working on democracy promotion from leaving the country, among them the son of Ray LaHood, President Obama's Transportation secretary.

Sam LaHood, the director of the International Republican Institute's (IRI) Cairo office, told the Associated Press that he was turned away at the airport last Saturday as he sought to fly out of the country. It has since emerged that a number of other employees of foreign NGOs have been barred from departing, stemming from the December raids by Egypt's ruling military on their offices, among them those of the National Democratic Institute (NDI).

...

Egypt alleged that the groups were illegally funding local political groups, and seized computers, documents, and cash in the armed raid. But preventing their executives from traveling – presumably because criminal charges may be brought against them – is a major escalation.

The organizations agitate for human rights and democracy and so forth, and Egypt's junta of paranoid Islamists see this as a foreign conspiracy to inject non-Islamic thoughts into their backwards medieval horror show.

Thank Goodness Obama demanded Mubarak depart immediately, rather than oversee a year of democratic institutions-building in advance of his departure.

Meanwhile, in Syria, a massacre of up to 30 people.

A "terrifying massacre" in the restive Syrian city of Homs has killed more than 30 people, including small children, in a barrage of mortar fire and attacks by armed forces loyal to President Bashar Assad, activists said Friday.

Posted by: Ace at 11:24 AM | Comments (143)
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Giant bunny eating banana, deer and kitten cuddling, and nursing an abandoned baby fruit bat.

The fruit bat is named "L'il Drac." more...

Posted by: Ace at 10:49 AM | Comments (95)
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I trust everyone is right at this moment googling "Bear Mace" and seriously considering ordering it.

"Do you think you can come here all weekend, **** my wife and nothing will happen?"

So what happened is that a couple, a man and woman, invited this Internet Stranger over, apparently to sex the wife, but let's face it, ass gas or grass, no one rides for free.

Prosecutor Gary Dow told the court that the weekend 'had gone well' before matters escalated.

It's important to enter that into the legal record.

He said Mr Greenan [Internet stranger] had been woken up on the couch at 4am by Reid [Weirdo Married dude] who invited him into the couple's bedroom for a smoke.

Mr Dow said: 'The complainer sat on the toilet seat and Mr Barclay held a phone out to take a photo.

"The complainer."

'He told the complainer, "smile for the camera."

'He went to get up and Leanne Reid said "f****** smile". She also had said that she was going to get a knife to stab him.

'Mr Barclay then said to the complainer, "Do you think you can come here all weekend, **** my wife and nothing will happen?".'

Barclay then instructed Reid to give him the [bear] repellent, which he told police he had bought in Canada, before he sprayed it on his victim.

Mr Dow added: 'The complainer then ran out of the house leaving his belongings.'

Hold on to your hats:

Representing Barclay, defence agent Neil McShane told the court that drugs had played a part in the weekend's events.

They took ketamine. I don't even know what that is. But I always hear about it in these weird sex situations. It's frequently name-checked on CSI.

It seems to be some kind of veterinary anaesthetic which induces hallucinations in humans.

Ketamine can be used in podiatry and other minor surgery, and occasionally for the treatment of migraine.

Well!

I don't get this whole "have sex with my wife" thing. I always think that that stuff is Gay Substitute Sex for Guys Who Don't Want To Think They're Gay.

Anytime you've got another dude as a critical actor in your swinging sexcapdes, I've got a news bulletin for you: You're gay. You're just getting Close to the Fire without touching the Fire, but you're really, really interested in that Fire, aincha?

Just my opinion.

Anyway, Bear Mace and ketamines. Weird internet sex parties.

Totally a CSI episode. All you need to add is anaphylactic shock (from the Bear Mace) and then the couple disguising the accidental killing as self-inflicted, add a little bit of blah-blah between Marge Helgenberger and her stupid gangster father, and you're all set.

Posted by: Ace at 10:14 AM | Comments (207)
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The Q4 annualized quarterly rate is supposebly (which is like supposedly, except with the added implication that you'd have to be extra dumb to accept this at face vaule) 2.8%, which isn't good, but the actual rate for the year 1.7%.

By the way, Bush's average growth rate from 2001-2005 was 2.8%. More than a point higher than Obama's "recovery." And if you remember, Bush's recovery was considered horrible, virtually a depression.

Now when Obama hits 2.8% for one quarter -- just one quarter -- it's great. That 1.7% rate for all of 2011? Also pretty great.

That said, I was listening to Adam Carolla, and he and Allison Rosen were discussing the economy and its likely determinative roll in the 2012. Carolla successfully diagnosed the situation -- It's not what the economy's actually doing, but how the media will spin it -- but then added that it was his impression things were in fact getting better.

That worries me. I always like getting the input of less-partisan types, because it's their beliefs, not ours, that swing elections.

And even after noting that of course the media is going to spin this as an improving economy, he said he sort of felt like it was an improving economy.

Posted by: Ace at 09:24 AM | Comments (235)
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When Mom herself tells you an article's good, it has to be linked.

Tax reform and entitlement reform are the really big ideas. The first produces social equity plus economic efficiency; the second produces social equity plus debt reduction. And yet these are precisely what Obama has for three years steadfastly refused to address. He prefers the easy demagoguery of “tax the rich.”

After all, what’s he got? Can’t run on his record. Barely even mentioned Obamacare or the stimulus, his major legislative achievements, on Tuesday night. Too unpopular. His platform is fairness, wrapped around a plethora of little things, one mini-industrial policy after another — the conceit nicely encapsulated by his proclamation that “I will not cede the wind or solar or battery industry to China or to Germany.” As if he can command these industries into existence. As if Washington funding a thousand Solyndras will make solar economically viable.

Soviet central planners mandated quotas for steel production, regardless of demand. Obama’s industrial policy is a bit more subtle. Tax breaks for manufacturing — but double tax breaks for high-tech manufacturing, which for some reason is considered more virtuous, despite the fact that high tech is less likely to create blue-collar jobs. Its main job creation will be for legions of lawyers and linguists testifying before some new adjudicating bureaucracy that the Acme Umbrella Factory meets their exquisitely drawn criteria for “high tech.”

What Obama offered the nation Tuesday night was a pudding without a theme: a jumble of disconnected initiatives, a gaggle of intrusive new agencies and a whole new generation of loopholes to further corrupt a tax code that screams out for reform.

If the Republicans canÂ’t beat that in November, they should try another line of work.

Good article.

I wish people would focus more on Obama's odd conception of the role of government in the economy.

He only cares about the "dividing up the wealth" agenda.

He's not at all interested in how that wealth actually gets created. Or in fashioning policies that encourage the creation of wealth.

In fact, as Krauthammer notes, when asked in the 2008 campaign if he would raise capital gains tax rates even knowing that would 1) retard growth and 2) produce lower government revenues, he said, yes, certainly he still would raise them, because raising the tax rate was a good in and of itself.

It's fairerer or something.

If America's big problem was that we had a huge, huge pile of excess money and needed some pissant bien pensant to think of exciting new ways to spend it-- well, in that situation, certainly Obama would be a candidate worthy of serious consideration.

But that doesn't seem to be our problem. Quite the opposite. The problem seems to be that we don't have much excess money we're looking to waste. The problem seems rather that we have not nearly enough excess money. In fact, we're at negative 16.4 trillion dollars in the Big Pile of Excess Money Needing Spending column.

And Obama's plan? Let's argue over divvying up the profits even though we don't have any profits and in fact are 16.4 trillion in the hole.

Posted by: Ace at 08:31 AM | Comments (227)
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Oh, and a urine chaser.

Seriously? A major corporation -- well, okay, it's not major, but it is still a broadcast network -- signed off on this?

And they did sign off on it. They had problems with it, but then gave it the green light.

Posted by: Ace at 08:03 AM | Comments (196)
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