Actually, it will be the USS Tripoli.

Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus announced today the selection of USS Tripoli as the name for the NavyÂ’s next large-deck amphibious assault ship (LHA 7).

The USS Tripoli will be the third ship to bear the name Tripoli. The name commemorates the capture of Derna in 1805 by a small force of U.S. Marines and approximately 370 soldiers from 11 other nationalities. The battle, later memorialized in the Marines’ Hymn with the line “to the shores of Tripoli”, brought about a successful conclusion to the combined operations of the First Barbary War. The first USS Tripoli, an escort carrier, fought in the battle of the Atlantic during World War II. The second, an amphibious assault ship, earned nine battle stars, a Meritorious Unit Commendation, and a Navy Unit Commendation for service in Vietnam.

“USS Tripoli and the proud heritage the name represents will be an inspiration for generations of sailors and Marines who serve aboard and those who come in contact with her, reminding all the freedoms our Navy protects are as vital today as they were centuries ago,” Mabus said.

All true but after the USNS Cesar Chavez, The USS John Murtha and The USS Gabriele Giffords, color me....skeptical that there's not a little bit of political ball spiking going on here.

H/t to @USS_Fallujah, a Twitter feed dedicated to getting the Navy to name a ship after one of the US Marine Corps greatest battles.

A great cause but it's not going to happen with Obama in the White House.

Posted by: DrewM at 03:24 PM | Comments (141)
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Because of the Fauxcahontas problem, they don't want to say who the American Indian professor is. Such a professor is listed on their census report.

But when asked, "Who?," they refuse to say.

Posted by: Ace at 02:18 PM | Comments (234)
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And she says that's not calling him a name.

Obviously, shoe on the other foot, we'd be having a National Discussion on Race.

Via @adamsbaldwin, a new name for Elizabeth Warren: Fauxcahontas.

Oh, and This is Wonderful: MSNBC race-baiter and extremist Karen Finney "jokes" (?) women will be dead by their mid-thirties under Romney and Ryan.

That long? We must be slipping.

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Posted by: Ace at 01:39 PM | Comments (184)
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It's not just the cheaper oil or thousands of construction jobs. It's about existing jobs:

The overall 830,000 barrel a day project is aimed at moving crude derived from the Alberta oil sands to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast, which face declining volumes of oil from traditional suppliers, including Mexico and Venezuela.

If those refineries are facing declining volumes -- less work -- workers will be laid off. Here's an opportunity to keep Americans refining oil, but Obama will not have any of that on his watch.

“Today there is just one person standing in the way of tens of thousands of new American jobs: President Obama,” said House Speaker John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican. “After nearly four years of review, delay and politics, he is out of excuses for blocking this job-creating energy project any longer. Every state along the proposed route supports the pipeline, and its builder has jumped through every bureaucratic hoop.”

Posted by: Ace at 01:17 PM | Comments (83)
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(original information pulled)

A note about releases and polling-
I get tip offs to releases in my email from a variety of sources -every one of them legitimate- and got burned with this "Survey USA WI" poll. Thankfully SurveyUSA responded quickly on twitter to make it clear the release was invalid, rather than any delayed reaction. From now on, tips on polling need to include a URL link or PDF. While I'm a relative nobody, Ace isn't and I won't post false information on his site. It does no good to fake data of any kind, whether it "helps" or not. I enjoy being the guy to "break" a poll. I live and breathe numbers. I don't enjoy being the guy who looks silly.

Posted by: CAC at 12:45 PM | Comments (46)
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One of the central points of 1984 is that in true totalitarianism, the State must displace the natural allegiances of love -- romantic, familial, and brotherly (and, though Orwell might not agree -- Love of God, too)-- with a love of State.

The State must displace those so that it can occupy the central allegiance of a subject's life.

It would help the State to accomplish this goal if it could take over the functions of natural human relationships -- such as providing succor and support.

Such is Obama's vision, encapsulated in his Prototype Protagonist Julia-- who just happens to share a first name with the heroine in the Orwell novel.

At 31, the story tells us, "Julia decides to have a child. Throughout her pregnancy, she benefits from maternal checkups, prenatal care, and free screenings under health care reform." In due course she bears a son named Zachary, the only other character in the tale.

Harsanyi is right. Obama is setting forward a vision contrary to the American tradition of self-sufficiency--a welfare state that runs from cradle to grave. And it's a dishonest vision, because it presents all of these benefits as "free," never acknowledging that they are paid for through coercive taxation.

...

The most shocking bit of the Obama story is that Julia apparently never marries. She simply "decides" to have a baby, and Obama uses other people's money to help her take care of it. Julia doesn't appear to be poor; at various points the story refers to her glamorous career as a Web designer, and it makes no mention of her benefiting from poverty programs like Medicaid or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.

In 1999 Lionel Tiger coined the word "bureaugamy" to refer to the relationship between officially impoverished mothers of illegitimate children and the government. "The Life of Julia" is an insidious attack on the institution of the family, an endorsement of bureaugamy even for middle-class women.

Meanwhile, the Great Hope of the Common Man will net a record $12 million in a single celebrity fundraiser.

We're at war with Eurasia.

We have always been at war with Eurasia.

Posted by: Ace at 11:58 AM | Comments (266)
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Posted by: Ace at 11:22 AM | Comments (127)
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Tops for a superhero film, just barely edging out The Dark Knight.

I saw it today. This isn't my review, this is just a post about the business/news side of it. At a 10:15 am show, a large theater was nearly 100% sold-out (and I think probably 100%). I got there ten minutes early and had to search for seats.

You have to admire the business plan behind it all, and especially the execution. Like The Lord of the Rings, this is the sort of thing that sounds like a good idea... until you realize it automatically begins with a production budget of $200 million or more, and if it's not good, you eat most of that.

So it's a risk.

The upside is that major billion dollar franchises don't just grow on trees. And if you can invent one out of whole cloth, you're almost just printing money.

Who the hell thought, just four years ago, that Iron Man would be a major franchise character (Iron Man?!!? For years he was a supporting player in his own middle-sellilng comic book, for crying out loud).

And this all started because someone had the bright idea to do a little fan service in a post-credit segment at the end of Iron Man. And because Samuel L. Jackson's agents called the Marvel people looking for some kind of role in Iron Man (most likely, the Rhodey role, though it doesn't say here).

Spider-Man had been indentured to Sony, and the X-Men and Fantastic Four were already at Fox, but the remaining roster of potential movie heroes was still plenty deep. First up: Iron Man, an alcoholic gazillionaire playboy who builds his own rocket-powered exoskeleton. Then there’s the Hulk, a brilliant scientist who turns into a massively strong, uncontrollable green monster. Oh, and Captain America—a supersoldier from World War II brought into the present—and Thor, a hammer-wielding Norse god with superpowers and family drama that makes the real housewives of Atlanta look like the Osmonds....

All those characters had something else in common: They were the core of a comic book team that began in 1963 called the Avengers, Marvel’s answer to DC’s Justice League of America....But the idea that Spider-Man movies could happen in the same universe as X-Men movies? Save that kind of talk for the comics shop, kid. “On almost every movie,” says Kevin Feige, head of Marvel Studios and a veteran producer of films based on Marvel comics, “the writer or director would go, ‘Hey, could we add this character?’ And someone in the legal department would say, ‘No, we can’t do that.’”

With Iron Man, though, Marvel itself was running the show—and suddenly the answer was, “Hell yes.” Samuel L. Jackson’s agents had called Feige to ask about a part in Iron Man... So Feige asked director Jon Favreau to add a scene with Jackson as Fury, welcoming Iron Man’s alter ego to a larger world of superheroes. “He was not only telling Tony Stark about the Avengers,” Feige says. “He was telling the audience.”

If Iron Man had flopped, the cameo would have been a throwaway joke. But the movie made $318 million in the US...

Marvel started cranking out a new crop of movies, each featuring a different character, and fans began to realize that they hinted at a wider crossover potential. Stark had Captain America’s shield in his house. The bad guy in The Incredible Hulk got injected with a version of the supersoldier serum that created Captain America. It wasn’t that hard; Marvel was there to help the writers with a whole basket of Easter eggs: paramilitary agencies, Nazi scientists, magic cubes, secret formulas, and so on. The moviemakers started watching one another’s rough cuts and consulting with a “creative committee” of Marvel Comics writers. “In the first Iron Man, the Easter eggs were simply inside jokes for the Marvel faithful,” Favreau says. “By the time the second one rolled around, part of the agenda was to build toward The Avengers.”

So, four years later, and they've cranked out five movies which turn out to be extended advertisements for yet another film. And all of them pretty good. (Captain America and Iron Man 2 a little disappointing, The Incredible Hulk surprisingly decent (though maybe I just like it because it's almost more about Captain America, who I like a lot, than the Hulk)).

All of these guys were second-stringers in the comic books, and virtually unknown to anyone who wasn't a nerd. You can count the number of comic book heroes the general public is aware of one one hand, and part of another: Batman, Superman, Spiderman, the Hulk a little, maybe the X-Men, and maybe some of the characters people remember from the Super Friends, like the Flash or... um, Zan and Jana and their Space Monkey Gleek. (Corrected. Turns out it's "Gleek," not "Gleep.")

But they actually executed "The Avengers Initiative" they inserted as a joke for fanboys at the end of one movie. And they already made $300 million in some (only 30 or so) overseas markets in a week, and will almost certainly make $400 million or more in America. And then the rest of the world markets brings that to a billion, easily.

And they already made a billion making people pay for the prologues to this movie.

Billions of dollars because someone got the bright idea to toss in a joke for nerds.

Posted by: Ace at 11:01 AM | Comments (168)
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Adam Yauch was the gravely-voiced one. Usually wore three-day stubble.

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Posted by: Ace at 10:26 AM | Comments (154)
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Who could have foreseen this?

Both the number of unemployed persons (12.5 million) and the unemployment rate (8.1 percent) changed little in April. (See table A-1.)

And the labor force participation rate -- the ratio of people actually working?

ThatÂ’s a new 30-year low in the participation rate. HereÂ’s the chart from the BLS for the last 30 years:

Captain Ed notes that at least one cable news channel, CNBC, actually reports this:

Though the headline number indicated job creation, the total employment level for the month actually fell 169,000.

Posted by: Ace at 10:06 AM | Comments (146)
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