I'm sort of thinking this guy is right.

Without wishing to overshare, there are several things I notice about porn use. By other people, not me.

For one thing, it's a gigantic waste of time. The "clicking" syndrome he talks about -- hunting around for a better clip -- turns what should be a ten minute thing into something than can take an hour or more.

I've mentioned that I had a friend who just gave up porn, despite not having any sort of a steady sex life. "Well," I asked, "what do you do when you just have to knock one out?"

"I do what I used to do," he said. "I use my brain. I hit the highlight reel. The spank bank."

"Doesn't that take a long time, given that you've gotten accustomed to porn?"

"It did at first. Now it takes what it used to take. Five, ten minutes."

Hmm. The chief benefit of porn was -- used to be -- efficiency. You have a physical urge that's annoying you, you throw on some dirty clip and take care of it, pronto.

But I'm personally finding the "pronto" is missing. It's kind of eating into the most important time in my life, the time I set aside for the things that really matter (such as watching a lot of TV).

The other problem, often pushed, is desensitization. I never believed this one, because I was always pretty horny, but as I get older, I think there's something to it.

I think I'm going to try this. I'm going to go a month porn-free. This really is a gigantic waste of time for what is, literally, not metaphorically, a lot of masturbation.

Now where do I get a monkey. Because monkeys are now deeply rutted into my sexual imagination. If there's no monkey, I'm just not that into it.

Via Hot Air.

Posted by: Ace at 11:32 AM | Comments (468)
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The wicked fleeth when no man pursueth.

Via @benk84, in the sidebar, who thinks I don't read his links. Of course I read his links! I love reading work other people have done. Nothing makes me happier than a good day's work I had nothing at all to do with.

Posted by: Ace at 10:59 AM | Comments (137)
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She never said it.

She never said an Ambassador, Michael Oren, said what Republicans are doing is "dangerous" for Israel, by suggesting that country does not currently have -- due to the occupant of the Oval Office -- America's full support.

Michael Oren called her, essentially, a liar. He'd never said that, he swore.

The Debster went on Shep Smith to deny she'd ever said such a thing, making something up an and putting it in an ambassador's mouth. She claimed she'd been misquoted by a conservative newspaper (The Washington Times), something that didn't "surprise" her, because, you know, conservatives lie.

“I didn’t say he said that,” Wasserman Schultz, a Florida congresswoman, later insisted to Fox News. She added that inasmuch as the Examiner is “a conservative newspaper,” it was “not surprising they would deliberately misquote me.”

Unfortunately for her, there's audio of her saying the thing she never said. The Washington Times -- that conservative newspaper that deliberately lies about things -- recorded her remarks.
more...

Posted by: Ace at 10:48 AM | Comments (151)
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If they have any concerns about the "Abortionpalooza" label, they seem to be hiding them.

I have NEVER heard this much about abortion as in that hall last night, even if you throw in every homily of my life. Every other event is sponsored by [Planned Parenthood] or EMILYÂ’s List. Then I moderated a panel for the outnumbered but undaunted pro-life [Democrats], where the panelists were asked by Salon whatÂ’s not to love about abortefacients and by Red State how come they like the infanticide president so much. America is evenly divided on this issue, but are ANY swing voters watching speech after convention speech?

David Brooks departs from his usual area of expertise of Crease Sharpness and notes this as well.

“The one cavil I will have … is this speech has — [it] reinforces something we’ve heard all night, which was how much the crowd goes crazy and how passionate they are about abortion and gay marriage and the social issues. And tonight has been about that.

“And to me it should have been a lot more about economics, growth, and debt. And that better be the job of day two and day three because they did not do it here.”

It seemed incredible to me, just a month ago, that they'd be running on abortion and gay marriage, but I suppose that's all they have.

Posted by: Ace at 09:51 AM | Comments (242)
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The funny part is when he discusses people basing their vote on "who they'd like to have a beer with."

He notes that he doesn't seek a lot of common ground with his oral surgeon. He posits he'd like an exceptional man for an oral surgeon, not "just one of the guys" he can have a beer with.

This clip is apparently from before Romney's speech last Thursday. more...

Posted by: Ace at 09:27 AM | Comments (121)
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You don't say.

“We just posted an item about the media’s reaction. Not a shocker here, Wolf Blitzer saying it was a grand slam; Chuck Todd saying that Michelle Obama owned this convention in a way no speaker owned the convention in Tampa, and David Gergen on CNN said if they have two more nights like this they could probably break this race open. The mainstream media tends to be quite smitten with the Obamas so I don’t know if we should over interpret it but there’s no doubt that’s sort of how all the taste makers in media as we talk what it does have a way shaping certainly the coverage in the morning. So I think you can anticipate that tomorrow is going to be quite glowing.”

Video at the link.

Drew had a good take -- it was a good speech. It was also a speech that attempted to pretend the last four years never happened, and pretend it was 2008 again, with Obama looking forward to finally becoming president and lowering those sea levels.

This is the sort of thing that PolitiHack can't "fact-check," but it's misleading nonetheless.

Oh, and the planned Obama address in the 70,000+ stadium has been cancelled and moved into a 20,000 seat indoor hall, because, weather. The specific weather they're afraid of is not knowing weather they could fill a 74,000 seat stadium.

Posted by: Ace at 09:01 AM | Comments (163)
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Yesterday Drew wrote about the "Government Is The Only Thing We All Belong To" video that kicked off this week's freakshow in Charlotte.

Surprising exactly no one, Team Obama is disclaiming association with the video and throwing the Charlotte host committee under the bus.

“The video in question was produced and paid for by the host committee of the city of Charlotte. It’s neither an OFA nor a DNC video, despite what the Romney campaign is claiming. It’s time for them to find a new target for their faux outrage.”

From the Slublog Collection

I mean, really. Where would anyone get the idea that a video played at the Democratic National Convention represented the Democrats or, since the donkey has been replaced with the ass this time around, Obama?

It's not like he ever said "you didn't build that" or his campaign put out a creepy web slideshow about a girl named Julia who suckles at the teat of Big Government from cradle to grave.

Why, that's just crazy talk.

In any event, the Charlotte host committee is in good company there in the Blue Bird wheel well:

WALKBACK! RT @brettlogiurato: Messina says @barackobama's tweet to Clint Eastwood was the campaign staff's idea, not POTUS. #DNC2012

— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) September 4, 2012

While I had some initial doubts about Clint Eastwood's appearance, they were clearly misplaced. It appears he scored a direct hit on our president's oh-so-delicate sensibilities.

And speaking of the bus, I'm pretty sure DWS is a lock for a prime position over the drive shaft for what should be the lie of the week (although we're talking about the Democrats here, and there's a lot of week left).

Earlier this evening, in an appearance on Fox News, Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz accused the Washington Examiner of “deliberately” misquoting her comments claiming that Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren stated that Republicans were “dangerous for Israel.”

The Washington Examiner is posting the audio below so that readers can judge for themselves whether Wasserman Schultz was misquoted.

Read the whole thing. She's such a shameless hack of a liar and Philip Klein has her dead to rights. more...

Posted by: andy at 08:19 AM | Comments (233)
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It was a very good speech and she delivered it well. This is just a fact. Remember, she wasn't trying to convince you and I that Obama is an awesome guy, she was reminding Democrats why they voted for him in the first place.

More importantly, it was a great magic trick. She managed to make his 4 years as President disappear. This is very important for Obama's reelection because he needs to convince people like the ones in this Frank Luntz focus group who voted for Obama in 08, like him personally but aren't impressed with the actual results. Obama needs to keep them focused on the personal not the results and to whatever degree Michelle's speech can help with that, it did.

As someone who can't be persuaded to support Obama however I found these two passages very telling and disturbing.

When it comes to giving our kids the education they deserve, Barack knows that like me and like so many of you, he never couldÂ’ve attended college without financial aid.

And believe it or not, when we were first married, our combined monthly student loan bills were actually higher than our mortgage.

We were so young, so in love, and so in debt.

ThatÂ’s why Barack has fought so hard to increase student aid and keep interest rates down, because he wants every young person to fulfill their promise and be able to attend college without a mountain of debt.

....

So when people ask me whether being in the White House has changed my husband, I can honestly say that when it comes to his character, and his convictions, and his heart, Barack Obama is still the same man I fell in love with all those years ago.

HeÂ’s the same man who started his career by turning down high paying jobs and instead working in struggling neighborhoods where a steel plant had shut down, fighting to rebuild those communities and get folks back to workÂ…because for Barack, success isnÂ’t about how much money you make, itÂ’s about the difference you make in peopleÂ’s lives.

Really? He was deep in crushing debt but turned down high paying jobs? This is the height of irresponsibility. It's one thing to be altruistic but it's another thing all together to expect other people to subsidize that altruism.

The Obamas, and liberals in general, don't get this. They think people are owed the resources to be whatever they want to be. You see it in people like Sandra Fluke and every speaker at the DNC last night....We want what we want, don't tell us what to do and oh by the way, if you don't cough up the money to pay for it all you're selfish and evil.

It's a childish attitude and it was full display last night (and will be for two more nights) at the DNC in Charlotte.

Posted by: DrewM at 06:23 AM | Comments (432)
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Lies, damned lies and statistics. You'll hear a lot of them this week at the Democrat Obama convention.

When it comes to the economy, 42+ months of 8+% unemployment should speak for itself, but the Dems still try to spin it as some sort of victory. When you've lost the "fact checkers", though, maybe you need a new spin.

Given that job growth is a byproduct of a growing economy, the reason we're stuck in the doldrums is clear. Coblogger emeritus Geoff did the math so you don't have to.

Yes, folks, the economy had already started to turn around in the quarter before President Obama took office. The healing had begun before the Stimulus package, and before he started propping the economy up with huge deficit spending.

...

Team Obama consistently frames an argument that presumes GDP would have continued plummeting if not for the intervention of King Putt and his band of Keynesians. But that's ridiculous. There's an enormous base level of economic activity that was always going to be reached once the panic was over. Further, a recessionary contraction in GDP tends to overshoot the mark and then bounces back sharply to get back to the previous growth path.

As Geoff points out, Team Obama always whines about what they "inherited" from the previous administration, when in fact they inherited this bounce. They should've been off to the races.

But instead they smothered the bounce in its crib by making the ill-conceived "stimulus" a permanent part of the spending baseline, enacting a huge new entitlement, screwing over GM's bondholders, conducting an all-out war on energy production, etc., etc. ...

So now the U.S. trades at a discount.

This is the real Obama record on the economy, no matter what they say in Charlotte this week.

Posted by: andy at 04:36 AM | Comments (262)
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Happy Wednesday.

Guy Benson has a good roundup of yesterday's convention stuff. I'll be honest: I didn't watch much of it.

And that's all I got today.

Oh, I suppose you could take a look at that ABC/WaPo poll showing good numbers for Romney, but keep in mind that it's an outlier at the moment.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:51 AM | Comments (207)
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