Jessica Simpson is super-duper-pregnant. Although it looks like she's carrying twins, in fact, it's just a little girl.

She said her girl would have a "non-traditional" name, which name has now leaked online.

That name? Michael Clarke Duncan.

No but it turns out it's Maxwell.

They'll call her "Maxi" for short.

Maxi?

I should say so. I should say so.

Posted by: Ace at 12:35 PM | Comments (213)
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300,000 jobs, Nancy Pelosi said. Within months, she said.

And now...

When Obama faced criticism for focusing on health care rather than economic policy in the first year of his presidency, the president responded by portraying Obamacare, to some degree, as a jobs bill. "Rising health care costs are a major driver of our long-term deficits, and getting them under control is crucial if we want to grow the economy, create jobs and compete in the world economy," the White House website says.

In fact, Obama's economic advisers went to great lengths to argue for health care reform as an economic spur. "Health care reform is incredibly important not just for the American people but for the American economy," Christina Romer, Obama's chairwoman of the Council of Economic Advisers, said during the health care debate. "Good health care reform is essentially good economic policy," she added.

And now, when asked why Obama doesn't talk about ObamaCare anymore, Jay Carney says he prefers to discuss the economy.

But wait-- ObamaCare was supposed to be a huge boon to the economy!

So let's hear it, Obama, you silly shit. Talk up ObamaCare's wonderful effects for the economy some more.

Still Unpopular: Repeal is favored, per Rasmussen, 56-39.

Among independents, it's virtually identical, but actually meaninglessly higher: 57-39.

I Regret, If Anyone Was Offended...

...that it was not good-paying jobs, but something else entirely, that was created in your mouth.

Posted by: Ace at 11:47 AM | Comments (218)
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They had a deal.

And then.

What happened? Obama and his advisers have cast the collapse of the talks as a Republican failure. Boehner, unable to deliver, stepped away from the deal, simple as that.

But interviews with most of the central players in those talks — some of whom were granted anonymity to speak about the secret negotiations — as well as a review of meeting notes, e-mails and the negotiating proposals that changed hands, offer a more complicated picture of the collapse. Obama, nervous about how to defend the emerging agreement to his own Democratic base, upped the ante in a way that made it more difficult for Boehner — already facing long odds — to sell it to his party. Eventually, the president tried to put the original framework back in play, but by then it was too late. The moment of making history had passed.

More:

A president who promised to bring the country together, who confidently presented himself as the transformational figure able to make that happen, now had his chance.

Ahem. They always forget this -- "A president who had specifically promised he'd achieve an entitlement spending reform by the end of his first term."

Let me remind the Washington Post:

President-elect Barack Obama pledged yesterday to shape a new Social Security and Medicare "bargain" with the American people, saying that the nation's long-term economic recovery cannot be attained unless the government finally gets control over its most costly entitlement programs.

That discussion will begin next month, Obama said, when he convenes a "fiscal responsibility summit" before delivering his first budget to Congress. He said his administration will begin confronting the issues of entitlement reform and long-term budget deficits soon after it jump-starts job growth and the stock market.

I can see how the Washington Post missed that -- after all, it was a Washington Post exclusive, Obama's remarks coming during a 70 minute interview with the Washington Post's reporters and editors.

But I don't read my own blog either, so I understand.

Back to the present article:

But, like earlier policy battles, the debt ceiling negotiations revealed a divided figure, a man who remained aloof from a Congress where he once served and that he now needed. He was caught between his own aspirations for historical significance and his inherent political caution. And he was unable to bridge a political divide that had only grown wider since he took office with a promise to change the ways of Washington, underscoring the gulf between the way he campaigned and the way he had governed.

In the end, that brief effort, described by White House officials as the most intense and consequential of ObamaÂ’s presidency, not only illuminated pitfalls in the road he had taken during the previous three years but also directed him down a different, harder-edged, more overtly partisan path that is now defining his reelection campaign.

Well that's the thing. When you can't run on achievements, you have to run on bile.

Posted by: Ace at 11:03 AM | Comments (162)
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You think you've got it bad? Out of work for two years, pulling your hair out about how you're going to keep it all together?

Stop crying for yourself, and shed a tear for our Man of Iron president, who has endured so much heartache, adversity, and setback in his life.

"At times he couldn't help feeling, as he told one associate, a kinship with the protagonist in Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea," writes David Corn in his new book on the presidency.

"He had, against tremendous odds, caught a big fish, but on the long voyage back to shore, his prized catch had been picked to pieces by sharks," Corn writes.

Stuttering Clusterf**k of a Sissyboy Candyass

Fix your bra-straps, Suzie, and tighten up your saddle-shoes. It's called "work," and sometimes it can break a poor girl down to tears.

via @iowahawkblog

Posted by: Ace at 10:38 AM | Comments (172)
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I gotta tell you, I love this.

Well-played.

Make them live by their own rule-book.

I really do want to know-- when will he be calling her?

It's a very good question and the press should insist on an answer.

Dear President Obama,

You donÂ’t know my telephone number, but I hope your staff is busy trying to find it. Ever since you called Sandra Fluke after Rush Limbaugh called her a slut, I figured I might be next. You explained to reporters you called her because you were thinking of your two daughters, Malia and Sasha. After all, you didnÂ’t want them to think it was okay for men to treat them that way:

“One of the things I want them to do as they get older is engage in issues they care about, even ones I may not agree with them on,” you said. “I want them to be able to speak their mind in a civil and thoughtful way. And I don’t want them attacked or called horrible names because they’re being good citizens.”

...

But here’s why I’m a little surprised my phone hasn’t rung. Your $1,000,000 donor Bill Maher has said reprehensible things about my family. He’s made fun of my brother because of his Down’s Syndrome. He’s said I was “f—-d so hard a baby fell out.”

...

If Maher talked about Malia and Sasha that way, you’d return his dirty money and the Secret Service would probably have to restrain you. After all, I’ve always felt you understood my plight more than most because your mom was a teenager. That’s why you stood up for me when you were campaigning against Sen. McCain and my mom — you said vicious attacks on me should be off limits.

Yet I wonder if the Presidency has changed you. Now that youÂ’re in office, it seems youÂ’re only willing to defend certain women. YouÂ’re only willing to take a moral stand when you know your liberal supporters will stand behind you.

ButÂ…

What if you did something radical and wildly unpopular with your base and took a stand against the denigration of all womenÂ… even if theyÂ’re just single moms? Even if theyÂ’re Republicans?

Barack Obama actually has already addressed this in his typical fashion.

After haranguing Limbaugh, Obama said he would not comment on Debbie Wasserman-Schutz's "war on women" rhetoric, because it's not his job to comment on every single thing a political actor says.

"What I can comment on is the fact that all decent folks can agree that the remarks that were made don't have any place in the public discourse," Obama said, regarding Limbaugh's insults. "And the reason I called her is because I thought about Malia and Sasha, and one of the things want them to do as they get older is to engage in issues they care about. Even ones I may not agree with them on. I want them to be able to speak their mind in a civil and thoughtful way. And I don't want them attacked. Or called horrible names because they are being good citizens. I wanted Sandra to know that I thought her parents should be proud of her. And that we want to send a message to all our young people that being part of a democracy involves argument and disagreements and debate. and we want you to be engaged and there is a way to do it that doesn't involve you being demeaned and insulted particularly when around private citizen."

But, when asked about Sharky McSnaggletooth, Obama suddenly couldn't be troubled to comment at all:

"Jessica, as you know, if I start being in the business arbitrating--"

"You talk about civility," Yellin interjected.

"And what I do is practice it," Obama replied. "I'll try to lead by example as opposed to commenting on every comment that is made by either politicians or pundits, I would not have time to do my job, that is your job to comment on what is said by them."

Obama is a very deficient thinker, or at least a very blatant liar. A guy like Clinton would at least have the chops at thinking, or at justifying hypocrisy, to spin some kind of distinction-without-a-difference to try to explain why he would comment on one but not the other.

Obama doesn't even try. He simply completely contradicts himself within, literally, seconds.

Like a child would.

A child would say, "I want the iPad now, I want it, because it's my turn."

The adult turns the iPad over.

Fifteen minutes later, the kid's brother also wants the iPad.

"Give it to your brother," the adult says, "It's his turn now."

"But I'm using it now," the child says, this rule about "Turns" no longer operative, completely irrelevant to the discussion. Now the new rule is about simple possession -- I have it, it's currently "mine."

A child doesn't even attempt to harmonize or justify these contradictory rules -- a child is rather shameless (because he hasn't learned shame yet) about the fact that he favors rules that inure to his benefit, and disfavors rules that help out his brother.

It makes no difference to a child with immature moral reasoning that he's being brazenly inconsistent. Who cares? He wants the iPad, damnit.

Now we forgive children this because they have not learned about morality yet, or about fairness, or intellectual integrity. About applying one rule for both Me and Not-Me.

We have to teach kids this stuff. And most kids do eventually learn it.

What's Obama's excuse?

He is a 50+ year old man.

Does he not yet understand that "Because I said so" is not an adequate explanation for self-serving hypocrisies?

Posted by: Ace at 10:06 AM | Comments (228)
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Over at Hot Air. Captain Ed suggests this is a possible motive for the Fast and Furious operation. "River of Iron" and all that.

“What we need to do is change the way in which people think about guns, especially young people, and make it something that’s not cool, that it’s not acceptable, it’s not hip to carry a gun anymore, in the way in which we changed our attitudes about cigarettes.”

Can I ask a stupid question?

If you can't make young urban people (the people Holder's talking about) think that it's not "cool" and it's not "acceptable" to murder people -- or to maim them, forever, crippled, brain-damaged, or impaired for life -- what are the odds you can convince them that simply carrying a piece of steel is a horrible thing to do?

Given the natural (or so I once thought) revulsion people have for taking another human life, isn't that a stronger foundation to build a "brainwashing" campaign on? After all, hopefully they've already got a sense that it's not "cool" to commit murder.

Right?

And if you can't make the sale there, where you're already sort of a quarter way home (at least), what good will this brainwashing campaign about guns do?

Or am I wrong? Do they not have this (I thought) inborn aversion to murder?

And if they don't -- should we not, perhaps, begin there? Begin at the beginning, as it were?

This society has a long and proud tradition of helping the less fortunate, no matter what Critical Race Theorists and Marxists (but I repeat myself) might say.

But the society cannot be all about that. Law-abiding citizens should not be made to give up core rights simply because some cohorts cannot handle that right.

Nor, of course, should the core principle of economic freedom be sacrificed because some people simply do not have the core psychology or skills to live secure, stable lives.

Posted by: Ace at 09:27 AM | Comments (174)
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If atheists are so logical and rational and sensible -- which is the key point of atheistic evangelism, of course -- why are they behaving in counterproductive, emotional, cult-like ways?

As Shatner said, "Get a life."

Because a local religious group had blessed a highway, the atheists came in with "unholy water" and scrubbed the highway to remove the blessing.

So, um, you fight what you believe is their pretend magic with your own pretend magic?

I understand the point here is parody or something, but this sure doesn't jibe with the "logical, rational, sensible" claim made by the Church of Atheism. What it seems like is a lot of teenager-ish acting up, a lot of anger over hurts in the formative years, a seething need to get payback against faceless oppressors.

"We come in peace .. now that's normally what aliens say when they visit a new planet, but we're not aliens, we're atheists!" Humanists of Florida director Mark Palmer shouted to the group along Highway 98.

Oh yeah, one more thing: The other big evangelistic point of atheism is that it will "free your mind from hidebound thinking about gods and spirits, and free you from the shackles of organized religion."

Do these particular guys seem free from that? Or do they seem just as interested in God and organized religion as the religious?

What I'm trying to get it is that if they are "liberated," where is the evidence of their liberation? Shouldn't they, minds now free, be pursuing more important things?

One of the reasons I call attention to such hypocrisies and sillinesses among organized atheists is to demonstrate a point.

I myself am atheist/agnostic (or even Deist) depending on the day of the week.

But one of the central planks of the Church of Atheism is that religion is inherently evil and causes you to behave like an asshole.

Well, that's not true. Most religious people are as far away from assholery as is possible.

Sure, there are the always-present Some. Some are assholes. Sure.

But if it's religion that's causing all this illogic and anger and emotionalism and pettiness and spitefulness and general assholery, why is it so present among those who have no religion?

For those liberals and atheists who are sure that atheism causes such social ills as racism, hatred of America's enemies, and conservatism -- well, I'm atheist. Religion had nothing to do with it.

You know how sometimes an alcoholic can get away with truly awful behavior by pointing to the bottle and saying, "Hey, it wasn't me, it was Johnny Walker?"

But if you're actually not a drinker you have nothing to blame your personality on?

I'm like that. I can't point to religion and say "It was the Bible talking." All my hate, racism, misogyny, elitism, disgust with the "99%," warmongering, oil-loving, etc. -- the entire list of faults conservatives are charged with daily -- that's just me, baby.

That's just me.

If you want to talk about illogic -- let's talk about reductivism in political, psychological, or social thought.

It is extremely easy, tempting, and useful to attempt to reduce very complex phenomena into a single, easy-to-comprehend motive force.

It's also almost always wrong and generally a mark of someone who needs to reduce things to a single factor, because their brains squeal and grind when attempting to think about multiple factors interacting with each other, suppressing each other, or amplifying each other.

It's a supreme mark not of illogic per se but of minds which are simply not very high functioning. Oh, it's logical enough when you boil the factual landscape down to "Religion is bad." Given one single factual input, you can logically tease out all sorts of simple logical conclusions that flow from that -- "and thus should be opposed," etc.

But is the factual landscape really that simple and featureless?

I have no idea why I'm conservative, and neither do the liberals. It could just be (as I suspect so, so much of this is) that I saw bad examples of what I consider now to be tropes of liberalism while I was growing up, as a kid, and reacted poorly to them, and hence began to build in my mind a general aversion to such things. Stuff like unduly calling attention to oneself, of causing social friction (again, often to call attention to oneself), spouting off sanctimoniously but hypocritically (again, usually to call attention to oneself, here, particularly to one's strongly implied moral and intellectual superiority).

I always had the idea that if you were superior in some aspect, people would note that on their own. Without your pontificating about it yourself.

I suppose I also reacted poorly to the idea that, in a contest between People Who Build and Make Things And Thus Are Rewarded with Money, and People Who Argue Passionately and Eloquently That They Should Share In The Bounty of What The People Who Make and Build Things Have Received, I tended to view the latter as free-loaders and rent-seekers.

And I couldn't help thinking that if they spent less time arguing they should have a share of what the Builders and Makers had acquired, and more time Building and Making, we'd have more stuff all around and society would advance and poverty would decrease and lifespans would lengthen. All sorts of good things.

I have never been an organized or industrious person but I have always respected those things. They seem like superpowers to me. I don't think I should get to share in the natural result of such virtues (material security is the one that most concerns liberals) simply because I had less of such virtues.

Anyway, it's just possible that when I grew up I saw a lot of Asshole Liberal conduct, and did not see a lot of Asshole Conservative conduct, so, me wanting to run from the asshole camp, I tended to be conservative.

(And I'll stipulate for these purposes that many liberals had the opposite experience. My point lies elsewhere, so this stipulation is easily made.)

But what motivates the Church of Atheism is this stupid, emotional, brain-dead impulse towards reductivism. You know what causes war? Religion. You know what causes hate? Religion. You know what causes icky conservatism? Religion.

Not really. If you guys were thinking about this a little harder you might realize that a basic personality type lies behind a religious nature and conservatism and and impulse towards traditionalism.

Perhaps R does not lead to C. Perhaps a complex of different factors (which for simplicity's sake I'll just call U for "Ur") leads to both R and C.

That's a small point, but I think it's important to note it.

If freeing yourselves from religion has really made you more rational and all-around better thinkers, why do I see not only no evidence of such increased rationality and overall brainpower, but what I'd mark as a net decline?

Conspiracy Theory: My brief against this sort of thinking is exactly the same as by general brief against Conspiracy Thinking -- the stupid reductivst impulse to simply the complex world into One Big Black Hat.

And I think that's what the Church of Atheism is -- a conspiracy theory. It has all the tropes, all the same simplicity, all the same ginned up anger (isn't emotion a bad thing to rationalists?).

You know who really killed JFK?

Religion.

There you go.

Nice and simple. The way the simple-minded prefer it.

Posted by: Ace at 08:39 AM | Comments (402)
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Insane, and outrageous. We're now frightening 3 year old kids because of our political unwillingness to face the truth about terrorists. Video at the link.

via Jim Geraghty

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 08:19 AM | Comments (82)
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I think the UAW has a pretty sweet deal -- something like 95% pay for a laid-off worker -- so that's pretty awesome for them.

But for the car, and the taxpayer-slash-owners, not so much.

eneral Motors Co. is suspending production of its Chevrolet Volt electric car for five weeks amid disappointing sales.

A GM spokesman said Friday that the company will shut down production of the Volt from March 19 until April 23, idling 1,300 workers at the Detroit-Hamtramck assembly plant.

The Volt was rolled out with great fanfare in late 2010 but has since hit bumps in the road. Sales have fallen short of expectations, and its reputation was bruised by an investigation into a possible fire risk.

As I've said 100 times, like most of the president's "investments," the "products" invested in were entirely political, not commercial. They were political products, invested in not for any commercial purpose but to appease a political constituency.

PS: Given the timing here -- GM needs a bailout (or rather the UAW does), a liberal president is elected on a "lower the sea levels" platform, GM just coincidentally has an all-electric (um, not all-electric at all, but so it was claimed) car in the works -- does it not appear that the Volt was rushed to market as part of the company's appeal to Daddy Sugar?

Posted by: Ace at 07:50 AM | Comments (193)
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Some non-political, feel-good palate cleansing:

Originally set for February, the Dragon launch date was pushed back for additional testing.

This launch is long over-due, and I'm not talking about SpaceX. I'm talking about escaping the government monopoly on the business of space and letting the free market do what it does better than any government ever has: Picking Winners.

April 30th is now the date that, armed with the finest minds private capital can buy, a little luck, and an unstoppable desire to do what people tell you is impossible, we leave behind the wasteful, moribund albatross of NASA and get the space program back on the fast-track to success.

SpaceX already has commercial launch contracts inked. This is going to happen, people, and if they show a profit, commercial spaceflight will snowball. more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:53 AM | Comments (144)
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