No, really.

[T]he Obama campaign is again trying to inspire the youth vote in a way that goes beyond the same old buttons, lapel pins, and posters. In fact, we recently heard that the POTUS has teamed up with cosmetics company Le Métier De Beauté to create a set of three mini nail polishes — in patriotic red, white, and blue, of course — plus a simple black carrying case, all emblazoned with the horizon symbol from 2008.

Sorry About The Unavoidable Unpleasantness Which Transpired In Your Mouth

Here's some nail-polish.

thanks to @starchambermaid.

Posted by: Ace at 08:18 AM | Comments (184)
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Via Hot Air, Charles Krauthammer writes of the coming Reckoning.

Ultimately, the question will hinge on whether the Commerce Clause has any limits. If the federal government can compel a private citizen, under threat of a federally imposed penalty, to engage in a private contract with a private entity (to buy health insurance), is there anything the federal government cannot compel the citizen to do?

If Obamacare is upheld, it fundamentally changes the nature of the American social contract. It means the effective end of a government of enumerated powers — i.e., finite, delineated powers beyond which the government may not go, beyond which lies the free realm of the people and their voluntary institutions. The new post-Obamacare dispensation is a central government of unlimited power from which citizen and civil society struggle to carve out and maintain spheres of autonomy.

...

Rarely has one law so exemplified the worst of the Leviathan state — grotesque cost, questionable constitutionality and arbitrary bureaucratic coerciveness. Little wonder the president barely mentioned it in his latest State of the Union address. He wants to be reelected. He’d rather talk about other things.

Posted by: Ace at 07:40 AM | Comments (276)
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Ed at Hot Air notes another episode of "fake but accurate" reporting that has become the hallmark of our MSM.

In this case, it involves a situation where aspiring journalist Mike Daisey with Ratheresque delusions of grandeur, and having learned nothing of eithical value from the Stephen Glass incident, lied about what he had witnessed in China at factories producing Apple products.

Ed laments that the media is helping nobody if they refuse to pay any sort of homage to reality.

...That makes it harder for real journalists to get those truths out to the public, who wonÂ’t put much stock into their claims after having been burned by them with the mediaÂ’s credulous treatment of Daisey until his exposure.

It seems that this is a lesson that some in the media never learn — fake but accurate doesn’t mitigate anything. It’s as satisfying as the orgasm in When Harry Met Sally. And it’s sad that eight years after the CBS/TANG memos debacle, Topolsky and the Washington Post want to make an argument that fake but accurate has some merit in the journalistic sense.

What Ed is missing is that, to the left, being "right" is more important than being factual.
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Posted by: Open Blogger at 06:35 AM | Comments (162)
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I am really surprised that the blog here allowed the second anniversary of the passage of Obamacare to pass without any sort of comemmoration at all.

While pretty much everything democrats said about it was a lie, and pretty much everything its opponents said about it has come true, there's one group that's left out of that prognosticating checklist: House Republicans.

On several occasions, and as recently as a year ago, the leadership have promised to defund the fluker. As the holders of the federal purse strings, they had every ability to just. not. pay. for. its. implementation.

But as you may have already realized, implementation proceeds apace.

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Posted by: Open Blogger at 04:06 AM | Comments (263)
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FRIDAY! WOOOOOOOO!!

57% of Americans say the government should approve Keystone XL, all of it and not just the bottom half. That includes majorities of Republicans and independents and a plurality of Democrats.

Speaker Boehner's office provided this helpful visual aid:

Liberals now outnumber conservatives in just one state, Massachusetts, and the District of Columbia. Nationwide, conservatives outnumber liberals by nearly two to one.

Environmentalists dispute GOP claims that Obama is an economy-destroying envirowackjob because they didn't get ponies with their anti-prosperity EPA and DOE regulations, or something.

The strange underground booms in Clintonville, Wisconsin, made the NYTimes print version. It's a weird situation and nobody seems to know anything.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:53 AM | Comments (261)
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The Geography of Government Benefits

Sadly these days we all suckle off the Federal teat to some degree or other:

The share of Americans' income that comes from government benefit programs, like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, more than doubled over the last four decades, rising from 8 percent in 1969 to 18 percent in 2009.

But the percentage of our income that comes from the government does vary quite a bit by state and county as this interactive map from the NYT shows. Here it lumps together all checks coming from the government but you can also break it down by individual benefits.

The average is around 18% but in some counties the percentage rises to nearly 50%. And note that this is just income - pork and federal grants to state and local government aren't included.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:33 PM | Comments (679)
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This is Thomas Buch-Andersen from the show Detektor. He examines the rhetoric Obama's uses when dealing with foreign leaders. It appears there are certain recurring themes in his diplomatic language.

Remember, Obama has a gift. He said so. more...

Posted by: rdbrewer at 04:00 PM | Comments (491)
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Meet Danielle Smith, of Alberta's Wildrose party.

Well, that's unfortunate, and sort of funny, and I'm sure we can just move on from this with a brief chuckle. These things happen. No big deal.

“These stories continue to reinforce stereotypes about women… they tend to focus on women’s’ bodies instead of focusing on what women bring to the table in terms of their competencies,” said Clare Beckton, executive director of Carleton University’s Centre for Women in Politics and Public Leadership in Ottawa.

“It can and does make women think twice about running (for office).”

Beckton said it’s “highly unlikely if this was a male candidate that they would be making these kinds of comments” and that “sexism continues to exist” for women who want to become involved in politics.

Whoops, I guess not. Seems like the candidate's poor choice of graphics is somehow a reason to snipe at me.

You ride around on a semi-pornographic tit-lorry and that's my fault?

Thanks to @slublog.

Posted by: Ace at 03:13 PM | Comments (430)
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Big deal?

I don't think so, really. I think people overestimate the precision with which people speak (when it's in their partisan interests to pick over those words).

I thought the same thing with that idiot Eric Felcherson (or whatever his name is) and his "Etch-a-Sketch" remark, and I don't think Santorum's speaking precisely or rigorously here.

You know, sometimes -- most times -- people are just runnin' their mouths.

When I speak I know the general point I'm making and I know the next three or four words that will be tumblin' out of my word-hole. Beyond three or four words, no idea. It's all improvised, baby.

I think people know this -- or should know this, at least -- but pretend they don't when they want to parse word choice and read into things and yadda yadda yadda.

It's all a little silly. We sit here parsing casually-constructed off-the-cuff sentences as if they're clauses from the Constitution or verses from the Bible.

And no one ever says, "Hey, man, he was just blabbing, you know?"

Anyway, I didn't believe Romney intended to completely reverse his often-stated position on religious liberty with a single off-handed sentence offered to a local reporter, I didn't believe his communications manager intended to announce to the world his boss was ready to "shake up the etch-a-sketch" and reverse all of his positions, and I don't believe Rick Santorum is making a rigorous, well-considered statement that he'd rather have Barack Obama in office than a Republican.

Oral communication is simply not a terribly precise medium. Unless you ask the same question multiple times, putting the subject on alert to precisely what you're asking (and all implications thereof), I just don't take oral statements as being very rigorous or well-considered.

And speaking of oral communications: I also didn't believe Barack Obama when he vowed, too many times to count, that he would not bust in our collective national mouth. See, I knew he was just sayin' what came to mind.

I knew what was going to happen. We all did.

Some of us, like those in the media, wanted it to happen, of course.

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Posted by: Ace at 02:19 PM | Comments (324)
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Occupy, the people who have no jobs, have announced they're going to take a break from not working and go on strike from not working, which, logically speaking, should mean they'll in fact start working.

But it doesn't, and it won't.

Occupy Wall Street, largely forgotten over the last few months, aims to make a comeback from this winter’s hibernation with an ambitious plan: a crippling May Day “general strike” in the tradition of 1930s radicalism.

The grand promise is what one occupier, Brendan Burke, described to BuzzFeed as “a day without the 99%.” But in the city where the movement was born, it’s already suffering from what has emerged as one of Occupy’s signal weaknesses, the lack of ability or interest to make alliances with liberal institutions. Despite public solidarity, there’s little relationship between the Occupy movement and organized labor. And as a result, even the most progressive New York labor leaders say their members will not participate in the May 1 strike…

Posted by: Ace at 01:32 PM | Comments (186)
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