ObamaCare 'propaganda' on our favorite shows?

Here IÂ’ll just pause to remind the entertainment industry that it has about half the approval rating of the NRA. (In January, at the peak of NRA attacks, the gun-rights group had a 44% favorability score as against 24% for the entertainment industry, an NBC News/WSJ poll found).

Nor is pushing politics a winning business model: In the last frenzy of Hollywood propaganda, during the mid-2000s peak of Bush Derangement Syndrome, we were treated to such dismal and didactic Iraq War dramas as “Lions for Lambs” (final gross: $15 million), “In the Valley of Elah” ($6.8 million) and “Grace Is Gone” ($51,000 — that’s right, thousand, as in “less than the cost of the Evian they drank on the set”).

At least those films werenÂ’t planted by the White House, though. This time itÂ’s different. An industry that loves to trumpet its fierce devotion to the First Amendment is putting itself at risk when it willingly becomes another tool of the DC power elite.

Posted by: CDR M at 06:02 PM | Comments (655)
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I've had another post ready, since Wednesday, but decided it might be too much of a "thinky" piece for the weekend. Hence, you now get dogs.

Sure, I know it's officially, "Caturday", but there's a good reason for the post. These folks can use your help and, knowing that there are copy-cats out there, inspired by the evil of others, perhaps the shelter in your own hometown could use a little help with security and, perhaps, you will be inspired to reach out to them. more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 12:21 PM | Comments (239)
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I pulled this from the AoSHQ yahoo group and thought this might be interesting to y'all on a slow Saturday. Lots of good stuff here. Thanks to Michael Shields for posting it to the group.

Remember the story about a Yale professor, embarrassed because Tea Partiers aren't as stupid as he thought? Read this comment on that Yale professor's blog, by a self-identified Brazilian named, Rodrigo Del Cistia Andrade:

Let me add an international twist:

I am a Brazilian self-taught Software Engineer. I also taught myself English, to the point where I managed to hold a Cambridge CPE, despite the fact that I've never stepped on anglophonic soil and zero formal training. So my analytic and reasoning faculties seem to be in working order.

Now, with that out of the way, here's why I strongly identify with the Tea Party: in my view, they are right, and they are the US's lifeline. They represent the virtues that led to American Exceptionalism (and YES, this does exist).

I find caricaturing Tea Partiers extremely ironic, and it would be hilarious, weren't it so revolting. In my experience, being a lefty liberal is EASY. It is the default stance of the intellectually lazy. All you have to do is feel (specially "good about myself" kind of feel), and never solve anything. Here's, in my view, why:

I live in the logical endpoint of Fabian socialism. Born to and raised in a culture where the concepts of "right" and "left" are non-existent (I take that back, actually "right" is a language stand-in for "evil"). We have over 30 political parties, and they are all some variant of the left. From Social Democrat parties to "Trotsky-ish" parties. Our *current* constitution, which dates back all the way to the Guns 'n' Roses era ( 1988 ), is pretty much a Soviet Constitution (1936) copy/paste job. Culturally, the population is in pretty much a state of "1984 meets Brave New World" in terms of ideology...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 10:52 AM | Comments (181)
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If I got this right there's an open thread under this one for political type stuff. This is for football type stuff.

Here's the pickem leaderboard from @MikeTalley73:

Knightbrigade - 74
Jay in Ames - 73
Syrias You Guys - 71
Boyz in da Hoodies - 71
Wvhokie - 68
BigBoy - 68
Gator Nation - 67
MikeTalley73 - 66
Murph - 65
tiger23 - 63

Top ten schedule for today, all times EDT:

Iowa at (4) Ohio State, 3:30pm
(24) Auburn at (7) Texas A&M, 3:30pm
(9) UCLA at (13) Stanford, 3:30pm
Arkansas at (1) Alabama, 7pm
(6) LSU at Ole Miss, 7pm
(5) Florida State at (3) Clemson, 8pm
Washington State at (2) Oregon, 10pm

Over at ESPN, "What Makes Baylor and Oregon Offenses So Great?"

Speed might be a factor.

BaylorÂ’s average touchdown drive is 1:18, the fastest in the FBS, while Oregon is the fifth fastest at 1:33. The Bears have 28 touchdown drives that lasted less than two minutes, second to OregonÂ’s 31. No other FBS team this season has more than 17 such drives.

Baylor and Oregon score quickly because they get a lot of big plays and they play fast. Baylor is averaging an FBS-high 10.8 plays per game that gain 20 yards or more, Oregon is second with 9.6 such plays.

The Ducks average one play per every 19.7 seconds, fifth fastest in the FBS, and the Bears are tied for the seventh-fastest pace at 20.1 seconds per play. The average FBS team runs a play every 24.9 seconds.

Add a solid running game and you have a couple of scoring machines. Your best shot at beating them is to put up points and don't stop.

Fall has fell in Texas, sunny and in the 60s. Great football weather. Have a good weekend morons and remember the open political thread down yonder.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 08:32 AM | Comments (102)
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For political type stuff under the football post

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 08:30 AM | Comments (98)
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Pretty shocking stuff

El Salvador has one of the toughest anti-abortion laws in the world. A side-effect is that women who suffer miscarriages are sometimes suspected of inducing an abortion - and can even be jailed for murder.

Last year when Maria Teresa Rivera suffered a miscarriage, she was sentenced to 40 years in jail for aggravated murder.

Quintanilla was found guilty and sentenced to 30 years in jail..."The medical reports couldn't explain why the baby died, but the prosecutor made me out to be a criminal who could have saved my baby even though I had passed out in pain," she says.

Suicide was the most common cause of death in 2011 among 10-to-19-year-old girls, half of whom were pregnant, according to Health Ministry figures.

El Salvador is one of five countries with a total ban on abortion, along with Nicaragua, Chile, Honduras and Dominican Republic. Since 1998, the law has allowed no exceptions - even if a woman is raped, her life is at risk or the foetus is severely deformed.

My mom miscarried 3 or 4 times before my bro and I managed to make it out alive, then miscarried again a few years later before our parents gave up trying, so this is a question of particular interest to me.

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 06:34 AM | Comments (268)
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Unlike Ace, who is a furry, entertaining, and gifted writer, I lack the patience to put together a thoughtful, well-researched, and coherent post. Thus, what follows is what one might call a 'stream of consciousness' post. It is simply a collection of my thoughts as spilled forth upon awakening on Wednesday, October 16th.

I awoke this particular morning with the Cartoon Network blasting away as I had fallen asleep with the t.v. on full blast. I reached for the remote to switch the channel to Cspan, then I noted the time and remembered that the House and Senate were not yet in session.

Yes. I take note each night, as I have for several weeks now, the time at which Congress will take to the floor the following morning. Let's move on....

Eventually, I settled upon Fox News but found that my head was spinning and I couldn't really pay attention to what was on t.v.

China? Really? CHINA?! The U.S. of A. is in debt to China. The most prosperous, freedom-loving, self-reliance-driven country in the world is now in debt to China. Americans are not indebted to another country... NO! That's just not the way it works. America is the country to which OTHER nations are indebted. We are the nation who bails out the sickly Democracies around the world. WE are the ones who establish leverage through the indebtedness of others. How the hell did this happen?

Socialism! That's it! It's creeping into our lives in such small measure that it is upon us before we take notice. It's insidious in nature. Socialism feels good. It sounds like such a good idea until you find yourself up to your neck in brown-shirts, as we did just recently with the takeover of national parks by the Obama-directed NPS police.

Just doing their jobs! That is the defense bandied about by the left and the right. Yes. But what IS their job? When did the commitment to 'protect and serve' become so flimsy so as to collapse under a simple command to attack? Innocents, both foreign and domestic, were held captive, at gun point, for the simple crime of daring to visit a national park. We on the right have expressed our outrage over the incident but, other than bitching and moaning, what have we, can we, do to enact consequences to those actions?

A simple order was all it took to turn armed citizen against unarmed citizen. And people say it can't happen here...

Hollywood! Education! Media!

My head was spinning. With my eyes still barely able to focus but my mind racing like a cocaine-fueled NASCAR driver, I search for answers. How did we get here?

more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 02:44 PM | Comments (247)
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Open. Just like the teeny-tiny little part of the government that was closed.

Hallelujah! The Republic is saved.

Posted by: andy at 03:58 AM | Comments (265)
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Hey, let me start you weekend with a huge downer.

It is beginning to appear that the "New Normal" of very slow growth -- almost indistinguishable from a recession -- is going to be with us for a long time to come.

Previous generations of politicians could reach agreements on taxing and spending by punting their differences to the next generation -- that is to say, where they could not agree, they could agree to borrow the difference, and expect the next generation to pick up the tab.

This was never moral nor responsible but it was workable so long as each generation was wealthier than the last, so that the next generation would have the money to pay for the previous one's profligacy and irresponsibility.

What happens when that is no longer true?

We are about to enter a truly brutal phase of American politics, in which we will less and less be able to call in the wealth of the next generation as a way of papering over differences between segments of the population. For a long time to come, a Winner today will not make a Loser some time down the road (who cannot complain too much, as his loss will register in the future).

Government-Mandated Winners will come at the expense of Government-Selected Losers in the here and now, people who can and will object. Passionately, and even, possibly, violently.

The United States has been, thusfar, exceptional in a fairly low level of social disorder and political violence. Such things plague most of the rest of the world, but the United States has mostly avoided such things.

But we avoided such things because we were always becoming richer, and could afford to float a certain amount of keep-the-peace debt.

But we've lost that exceptional advantage. The last big innovation in American industry was the internet, and while this does provide certain improvements in informational efficiency, it has nothing like the game-changing effects of the rise of mass production, or the rise of the steam engine and then the gas-powered engine, or the rise of electrification, the explosion in agricultural productivity, and so on.

Those were major technological breakthroughs that provided immediate increases in wealth and then even more increases over a period of decades, as the technologies were further exploited.

The internet boom and potent, cheap computing power provided a small boost in the mid-nineties, and by 2010, its capacity to increase efficiency was all but fully exploited.

There will not be another big gain in American productivity, and hence American prosperity, until there is a similarly large breakthrough in a technology with wide economic implications.

Or a change in government policy. Which seems increasingly unlikely.

Or a change in the national character, away from entitlement and sloth and towards self-reliance, hustle, and industry. Which seems increasingly... impossible.

Here now begins the Spoils Society, born in the throes of the Decadent Phase of American History.

Perhaps in 20 years we'll figure out fusion power and we'll have another period of growth for 20-30 years. Or perhaps again not.

I guess we'll just have to hope. Because that's all we're reduced to now, hoping that someone somewhere does something to bail us out.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 04:20 PM | Comments (472)
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A long piece from Yuval Levin, well worth reading.

The tone of the CMS officials who spoke with me was a kind of restrained panic.... The insurers are very, very worried about the viability of the exchange system—especially but not exclusively at the federal level.



One key worry is based on the fact that what they’re facing is not a situation where it is impossible to buy coverage but one where it is possible but very difficult to buy coverage. That’s much worse from their point of view, because it means that only highly motivated consumers are getting coverage. People who are highly motivated to get coverage in a community-rated insurance system are very likely to be in bad health. The healthy young man who sees an ad for his state exchange during a baseball game and loads up the site to get coverage—the dream consumer so essential to the design of the exchange system—will not keep trying 25 times over a week if the site is not working. The person with high health costs and no insurance will. The exchange system is designed to enable that sick person to get coverage, of course, but it can only do that if the healthy person does too. The insurers don’t yet have a clear overall sense of the risk profile of the people who are signing up, but the circumstantial evidence they have is very distressing to them. The danger of a rapid adverse selection spiral is much more serious than they believed possible this summer. They would love it if the administration could shut down the exchange system, at least the federal one, until the interface problems can be addressed. But they know this is impossible.

That's the more bureaucratic, bloodless way to say "death spiral," of course. But I almost like how much more clinical it is.

He reports that insiders expect the enrollment period to be extended-- to them, it seems obvious it will have to be.

A delay of the individual mandate penalty—which effectively begins in the middle of February—is not thought to be a crazy idea (though the people I spoke with said they have not seen internal preparations for such a move at this point).

The nightmare scenarios, the “unthinkable options,” involve larger moves than that—like putting enrollment on hold or re-starting the exchange system from scratch at some point. No one seems to know how this could work or what it would mean, but everyone involved is contending with a far worse set of circumstances than they were prepared for. This is a major disaster from their point of view, not a set of glitches, and they simply do not know how long it will take to fix.

The very best of hands, as Instapundit always says.

Buck up, little campers -- your health and life are now in the hands in the very best and brightest of the Federal Government Bureaucracy, a field of employment known for attracting go-getters, self-starters, high-achievers, and honest brokers.

Michael Barone considers the implications of a major policy failure on the political standing of the Democrats, which is all perfectly obvious but still enjoyable to ponder.

One caveat I'd add, though: A team is never as good as it looks when it's winning and it's never as bad as it looks when it's losing.

Unless it's the Giants.

No, even the Giants, actually. They'll win one or two games this year. I think.

So I think we must be careful to not over-predict disaster, and thereby reduce expectations so low that even Barack Obama can meet them.

Posted by: Ace at 02:47 PM | Comments (354)
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